Sumter Oaks

The long leaf pines towered over our heads as we walked along the nature trail. The undergrowth consisted mainly of saw palmettos, one of the forest plants that colonize the ground here after a fire. I ran my fingers along the small saw tooth edge from which the plant got its name, but it really wasn’t much of a saw. We heard the distinctive hammering of a pileated woodpecker and saw the oval holes it left as it drilled dead standing timber but we never spied the bird. Still a bird heard is a bird counted.

It was almost noon and we really didn’t see many birds at the Dade Battlefield State Park, but we both noticed a soaring bird with pointed wing tips and a narrow square tail. It looked to be some type of falcon but it wasn’t going to let us see it close up and so we couldn’t id the species.

Leaving Tallahassee, we had drove to Sumter Oaks Rv, (an Escapee Rainbow Park), and had decided to spend a week. It turned out that the birding in the park was surprisingly good and of course we were greeted with the usual warmth and hugs that one always receives when in a SKP,(short for Escapee and pronounced skip) park.

We heard of the craft group, called the stitch and b#^@  and so we went to the daily gathering to see what everyone was making. There Betty and Barbara and Dave and Terry, (and of course I forget a bunch on names), made us feel welcome to their daily session.

Terry wanted to learn to wire wrap and we ended up teaching her a mini class on wrapping a pendant, and of course she did a great job with her very first piece, she wrapped the brown variegated jasper in copper wire and you could tell by the finished product that she is an experienced crafter.

Perhaps the most unusually Skp’s in the park are the four sand hill cranes who wander in and out, completely unconcerned by all the activity. The park is edged by a swamp and alligators, snakes and herons all wander in and out so one does have to keep a vigilent eye. We never did see any gators or snakes but during our stay a pygmy rattler did crawl onto one of the roads where it was persuaded to leave,(ok the image is of the little blue heron in the swamp and not a sandhill).

We made the short trip to the Dade Battlefield State Park and learned of the battle in which the Seminole killed all but three of the troops dispatched to aide another outpost. It was one of the many battles in the long and costly Seminole war. It was another of the Manifest Destiny wars fought because the US wanted to send all the Seminole Indians to Oklahoma. The Indians never did surrender and some stayed in the swamps although most were eventually defeated and forced west.

So we had a really nice week in a beautiful oak filled forest setting. Spanish moss hung from the towering oaks and swayed in the steady breeze. Elephant ears resembled giant rhubarb, bordering one edge of the swamp. All in all it was just the kind of week we needed after our long pull from Wyoming to Indiana and then to southern Florida. Sumter Oaks was just the peaceful setting we needed and of course a good time with new friends.

Clear skies