We wanted to return to Stuart, Florida to relax in a place more to our liking and find it we did!  Phipps Park, one of Martin County's Parks was suggested by a Stuart resident. We made reservations sight unseen, being a litttle nervous after our first blind reservation, but were so impressed with Manatee Hammock, also a County Park near Cocoa, FL, that we hoped to do as well.  We did.  Phipps Park is next to the waterway and locks that run between Indian River and Lake Okeechobee. The R/V sites are located between the water way and mitigation ponds and as a result have a nice combination of habitats and, you guessed it decent birding.  We became friends with Joe, the Park supervisor. We brought Audubon of Martin County over to do a morning of bird watching and suggested that they erect Wood Duck boxes in the mitigation ponds. Joe was pleased and asked us to put together a list of the birds we saw in Phipps Park while we were there.  Our total was fifty seven species, our favorites being a Barred Owl and Common Nighthawk.
We stayed at Phipps until we moved to Clewiston, FL to co-lead our final Audubon of Martin County birding trip to Devil's Garden and Lake Okeechobee, but returned after this trip and stayed until we migrated to the west coast of Florida for more birding and visiting Vineyard friends.

Our screened in room/tent we found to be essential to give us much needed extra space.

Phipps Park, Site 15-Bird Buggy with extra room.
Phipps Park, Site 33


Barred Owl, Stuart, Florida

We figured we could just drive away from the Northeast, head to good birding areas and just stop at a campground or a R/V resort for a night or so.  Not so.  It seems most of the campgrounds are booked between six months and a year in advance!  So instead of writing blogs daily, I am on the net finding places to stay. Now that is interesting and a challenge, but I would rather be birding and tell folks about where we are and what we have seen.
The Bird Buggy up and running, our first reservation was in Jensen Beach, FL at a place called Nettles Island which looked good online.  It is located on a peninsular in the Indian River.  Unfortunately it turned out to be a concrete jungle of double wides, huge R/V and concrete houses.  I think we were the smallest R/V in the the whole complex.  The saving grace was that it was walking distance to the ocean beach  and on the way we passed a lagoon surrounded by mangroves that gave us a chance to do a bit of bird watching. 
We were right on the water and so we could watch the Brown Pelicans feeding and the Royal and Foster's Terns  as they cruised by but the other three sides gave us
claustrophobia!
We should have figured we were in for a place less than choice when the first bird we spotted upon arrival was a Magnificent Frigatebird.
One day during our two week stint it blew a gale and the next morning we walked the beach and counted large numbers of immature Northern Gannets offshore.  The next day it was calm and not a gannet was seen.

Florida has an excellent Bird Trail, known as The Great Florida Birding and Wildlife Trail which covers parts of the whole state from the Panhandle to the Keys.  We rented a car while the Bird Buggy was waiting for a part and set off to the Orlando Wetlands in Christmas, Florida, which is one of the sites of the Birding Trail.  Our timing was impeccable as the  park opened that day.It had been closed for a month as per request of the family that gave the property so they and their friends could use the property during hunting season.There had been very little hunting  activity and as a result the birds had not been stirred up.  We checked in and saw that  Vermillion Flycatchers had been seen earlier in the day.  Trying to determine which route would be the fastest to this "electric" flycatcher was the next chore. Luckily two volunteers from the Park arrived  in a golf cart and suggested we jump onboard and they would take us to the flycatcher. Needless to say, off we rode. We saw not one but two male Vermillion Flycatchers and on the walk back we spotted around 33 species including Anhinga, Purple Gallinule and Limpkin in the short two hours we had. This is the time we wished we had the cameras cousin Sarah Mayhew and friend Lanny McDowell have. The Vermillion Flycatcher to to far away for our "point and shoot" cameras.
Female Anhinga or Snake Bird

 Purple Gallinule

We used to be nervous when one of our vessels was hauled and lifted by straps on a travelift and then set down on blocks. But seeing our Bird Buggy ignobly hauled  by cable onto a roll on town truck was nerve racking.  The Bird Buggy was chained onto the truck bed front and back. If we though putting the R/V on the truck was hard to take following the tow truck in our rented car and watching it bounce around and lean as the tow truck took corners was gut wrenching!


We made it to Freightliner in Apopka after making a wrong turn and seeing the seedy side of Apopka. We waited for almost four hours before a mechanic could check out the Bird Buggy.  He came, hoping by moving a few solenoids and fuses, that he could get us back on the road immediately.  No such luck.  Next a computer was hooked up to some place under the steering wheel of the Bird Buggy.The computer took its sweet time analyzing the problem. The results was a failed immobilizer.  Was there one in stock?  Of course not, so for three days we camped  out in the Bird Buggy in a Freightliner garage waiting for the part to arrive.  Not much different than being in a shipyard!
The bird watching was definitely limited, although we woke one morning to the cries of Sandhill Cranes much to our amazement.  Other birds in the area consisted House Sparrows, Eurasian Collared and Mourning Doves and American Crows.

Our good friend and neighbor Larry suggested that my next book be entitled "Birding American Truckstops".
We did have a nice respite with cousin Dan Whiting who lives a half hour from Apopka. He provided us with nice clean showers and we dined at a fabulous Thai  restaurant nearby.
Thanks to Preston, the Sprinter mechanic at Freightliner, we finally were underway with the hopes ,as our friend and fellow birder Hal suggested, that the "road is smooth and the exhaust is at your back."