Abby with the Mosaic Manatee Statue on the boardwalk in Blue Springs State Park.

Blue Springs State Park in Orange City, Florida November 15 – 29, 2024

Hoping I can get this post up before the year ends. If you’re reading it, that means I succeeded.

Friday afternoon, November 15th around 12:30 we left Lake Louisa State Park for what SHOULD have been a 90 minute drive to Blue Springs State Park in Orange City, Florida for a 14-night stay. That drive turned out to be 2 hours and 15 minutes thanks to the perennially heavy traffic in Central Florida.

This was our first time staying at Blue Springs State Park. Our site is good. It has an asphalt pad, which we noticed most did NOT as we walked Bella around the campground loop before sunset. We have water and electric and the campground has a rather ill-placed dump station for emptying when we leave. As is typical with “Real Florida” campgrounds, they are mostly sand so we laid out our rug to try and reduce the amount of Florida that gets tracked inside Nomad.

There are 51 campsites in the campground area and they can handle RVs up to 40 feet in length. The sites are in the midst of a forest of sand pine scrubs and palm plants of various types. It is a fairly easy hike from the campground sites to the spring. There are two recently built bathhouses with accessible stalls and showers. We made use of the bathhouses during this stay since we also had our middle granddaughter with us part of the time. Three people in Nomad means we fill the gray and black tanks in less than 2 weeks if we don’t make use of the bathroom/shower facilities in the campground. No one wants to break down their set-up partway through their stay in order to go to the dump. We found the restrooms/showers to always be clean each time we made use of them.

After walking Bella Saturday morning I drove Cindy over to her friend Carmen’s house in Daytona Beach where she was meeting up with two other friends, Kim and Caroline. It was a momentous gathering. Although they have each visited the others individually over the years, the four ladies realized that this was the first time all four of them had been together since 2009.

Bloodwork and Bird Watching

Monday morning we were up at 6 am and out the door at 6:20 so I could get to the local medical lab. Yes, it’s that time of year when I give up various bodily fluids to be analyzed and scrutinized. I schedule these as early in the morning as I can since they are fasting tests. That way I can grab breakfast afterward before I starve.

Following breakfast it was a quick stop for a few groceries and then back to the campground to walk Bella. Then we rushed out to a 9 am volunteer-led Florida Scrub-Jay walk at the park. It was just us and Chuck, who leads the tour and is a member of the local Audubon Society chapter. He was very knowledgeable and it turned out he has been to a lot of the same places we have visited across the country in our travels. So we had that and our growing love of bird watching in common.

Did you know that the Florida Scrub-Jay is the only bird species unique to Florida?

They are highly intelligent birds that can grow to approximately 12 inches long. They have blue feathers on their tail, wings, head and collar, with gray feathers on their back and belly. They love the Blue Springs State Park and surrounding areas for the scrubby flat woods and low-growing oak scrub trees. In 1987 the Florida Scrub-Jay was put on the federal threatened species list and by 1993 the population had declined by almost 90 percent.

According to Cornell Labs “All About Birds” website: “Florida Scrub-Jays are homebodies; they don’t migrate, rarely move more than a few miles from where they hatched, and they don’t like to move across areas that aren’t scrub oak. Increased fragmentation of their habitat means that Florida Scrub-Jay populations are now very isolated. Jays from the Atlantic Coast, central Florida, and southwestern Florida have different vocalizations despite being separated by less than 100 miles.”

Cindy and I thoroughly enjoyed our bird walk with Chuck and learned a lot about these beautiful aviary citizens of Florida.

The Abominable Dr. Phibes

Wednesday morning it was back to the dermatologist at 8 am and time for my transformation into The Abominable Dr. Phibes. They took a marker and drew a circle around the Basal Cell Carcinoma to show me how far they would initially start removing the fun growth. If the initial removal was successful, they also drew a line about 2 1/4 inches long diagonally through the circled area to show where they would slice the skin and then overlap it to stitch it back together. Then they injected anesthesia into my face around the site. If they didn’t get it all on the first removal, they would widen the area out in an ever-expending radius.

The famous line from “Apocalyse Now” came to me in a slightly edited form as they began lasering the growth away from my face; “I love the smell of burning flesh in the morning!” Man, it is NOT a pleasant smell. And it was right next to my nose so I couldn’t escape it as I lay there. But thankfully I could not FEEL anything.

Fortunately, after they took the offending growth to the lab and tested it, they got all of it on the first try. Yay doc, you are great! I was now the proud owner of a bloody, dime-sized hole in my face down to the muscle. It could have been worse, so I was grateful for small favors. I took a selfie (and they took photos for their records) and it was NOT pretty! I thought about adding it to the album for this post, but I decided you really wouldn’t like seeing it.

Then the really fun part started. More injections of anesthesia as they prepared to slice a line from just under my right eye down to my lower cheek. Then they pulled the two parts together to cover the hole and started stitching. One little problem; I bleed like a stuck pig, as the saying goes. The more I bleed the less effective the anesthetic shots are, so they have to keep giving me more and more shots in the face. That’s because not only am I feeling the tugging they told me to expect as they stitch but I am feeling intense pain as they sew the skin together. And, despite the nurse’s constant blotting of my face around the incision, I feel blood flowing down my lower jaw and neck.

Finally, it is all over. I take a photo of the stitches, they dress and cover the incision/stitches, give me care instructions for the next week and I am out of there. Before I left I told the doctor and the nurse how much I appreciated their constant care of telling me what they were going to do, then what they were doing as they were doing it, and why. The above probably sounds like it was horrible and I hate them, but they really were great about every aspect of the procedure. They never left me wondering what or why something was happening and I always felt secure. I would highly recommend them if you’re going to have your face sliced open, lol!

Yellow River by I.P. Freely

Remember that old joke? Thursday morning I was back to the lab to drop off even more bodily fluids at 7:30 am. There’s nothing quite like walking in with a half-gallon jug of urine you’ve collected over the past 24 hours. But my specialist wanted to see some specific things about my kidneys and bladder so…

Abby and The Manatees

Friday we picked up Abby so she could come stay a week with us during her Thanksgiving break from school. Saturday we walked down to the springs to see the arrival of the manatees. The colder weather has drawn them into the shallower, warmer waters of the springs off the St. John’s River. Lots of people came out to see them, so there was quite a crowd.

Monday the three of us took a 2-hour boat ride on the St. John’s River at 10 am. We saw lots of alligators, turtles, birds and about 145 manatees came into the springs that morning. As usual, there was one loudmouth who thought that everybody came on the ride to hear him and not the tour operator. I was going to take off the COVID mask I wore to cover the huge bandage on my face and then rip off the bandage to show him my Dr. Phibes face so he’d jump overboard, but Cindy wouldn’t let me.

Lunch with a Princess

Tuesday it was lunch with my daughter at the Miller Ale House in Altamonte Springs. This is the first time we’ve had to spend time with just each other, so it was nice to enjoy a meal and talk in person. It wasn’t long enough for either of us, but we both enjoyed the time we had. I am always so proud of my little girl and the woman and mother she has become. One of those things you realize as you get older is that you have less and less time left to spend with the ones you love, so you try to make the most of each opportunity.

Thanks for lunch, Princess!

Report to Sickbay

Wednesday was a day of medical appointments for both Cindy and I. We started with the removal of my stitches at 8:45 am. Ow! I have to keep a dressing on the cut to minimize the scarring as it heals for another week, then keep Vaseline on it to help it heal and not dry out for some time after that.

Then it was on to my endocrinologist who was happy with all my labs, blood levels, etc. He would like me to go back to seeing a nephrologist to make sure my kidneys continue to function properly. I won’t have time to see one on this trip to Florida, so I’ll have to work in seeing one when I return next November. I didn’t care for the one I used to see, so I’ll ask my Primary Care Physician to refer me to a different one.

Cindy had her appointment with her Primary Care Physician and it went about as she expected it would.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thursday we met up with Amber at the Perkins Restaurant in Altamonte Springs. If we’re not going to cook a big Thanksgiving meal, then we always enjoy going to Perkins since they serve a traditional Thanksgiving Day fare. We had an awesome server, great food and a good time visiting. We also got to see Amber’s new car for the first time (she bought it the previous Sunday) and it is nice to know she won’t be driving the old car around anymore.

Then Abby went home with her mom since she has to return to school the following Monday. We always enjoy her visits and she takes Granddad’s teasing like a champ.

Whew! It’s a long post, but it was a busy two weeks at Blue Springs State Park.

Thanks for reading and thanks for following The Wandering Wetheringtons!

1 thought on “Blue Springs State Park in Orange City, Florida November 15 – 29, 2024”

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