Caleb, Joseph, and Amiane visited Georgia, Aug 2017

 Joseph and Caleb left the last week of July and caught a ride to Missouri with friends who were visiting Utah. After visiting a week or two, they flew to Atlanta, Ga then took the bus to Uncle Mike and Aunt Sarah Bakers. (There is a crazy Uber ride from Uncle Steve Ashby's house to the bus station, but it just isn't the same without Uncle Steve telling it.) I was able to fly out to Georgia, stay a couple of days with Mike and Sarah, and then drive home with Caleb and Joseph in a van we picked up from Uncle Mike.

Charlie loves lizards and frogs and dinosaurs. She was excited to trade face painting with Caleb.

 Sarah took us to one of their favorite restaurants. After the meal we fed hot dogs to the alligators. They were much smaller when released this spring and they have been watching them grow over the summer.

 There are lizards everywhere. We would see them on walls, outdoor tables, window screens, just about anywhere.

 Lots of  greenery, Spanish Moss, and different types of Oak trees.

 There is a wonderful open porch attached to the library. It feels like a train station with the brick archways. It is just a couple hundred yards from the beach and is a good place to sit and watch.

Sarah and Amiane

Mike and Sarah live on St. Simeon's Island. They are in a gated community which has its own dock to a tidal river. It has a large marsh on both sides of the river, so you take the walkway to get to the river. It was different than I expected, with all the marsh grass, but so very beautiful.

This plaque commemorates Hurricane Andrew last season and the trees that were damaged.

 Early Saturday morning, Sarah, Charlie, and I went on the Sunrise Turtle walk. There are several islands where the leatherback and green turtles lay their eggs. Volunteers walk the beach early in the morning to mark new nests as they are laid (at night) and put a plastic netting over them to keep out predators, but that lets the turtles crawl out when they hatch. When the turtles start to hatch, volunteers again check the nests to see how many eggs hatched, how many did not hatch and why not (bacteria or predators being the most common).

A horseshoe Crab

 Look closely, and the funny little tracks are the baby turtles leaving the nest to head to sea. The males will never return to land, and the females return only to lay their eggs.

 The tour started and ended at the Turtle Rescue Center, where injured turtles are cared for and released if possible. This Junk Art Turtle was made out of litter picked up off the beach.

 This little frog hopped right on Charlie's arm.

Mike, Sarah, and I (and little Ben) went to a very nice Italian Restaurant. My Creme Brulee was beautiful and yummy! 

 Fishing off the dock or from the kayaks is a definite perk. These little sting rays, were actually really good eating. The flesh is a little course, but the flavor was very delicate.

Mike

Caleb

Bottom side of the Sting Ray

Timothy

 A lot of trees get washed up on the beach after the hurricanes.

Ben Baker

 Joseph

 Aug 14, 2017
      We left early Sunday morning and headed to Alabama for lunch with Uncle John and Aunt Beth Ashby at their restaurant in Alabama. I hadn't seen Aunt Beth in years. We enjoyed visiting, and the food was Awesome. Uncle John can definitely cook!
      After we left, we headed south again to hit the beach one more time and take the southern route that would take us through Texas and up through New Mexico.

Caleb

 Joseph gets a little stir crazy when he is in the car too long.

After entering Louisiana, we did a quick back track to Mississippi to reach the beach as Louisiana didn't have sandy beaches.

A Cool Carving at a park we passed while I looked for a place for a quick snack.

 Joseph really wanted to go to New Orleans and the French Quarters, so we headed their next.

 We were excited to try some Creole Cooking and sample the famous Beignets. (They were o.k., but not nearly as good as old Elephant Ears, Tiger Ears, Fry Bread or Scones that are sold at the fair).

John of Arc, Maid of Orleans Statue we passed while walking the French Quarters.

 August 15, 2017

      Our next goal was the San Antonio Zoo in San Antonio, Texas. I went years ago when Makala was a baby and I was pregnant with Caleb (who was born in San Antonio), and wanted to see how it had changed. It definitely changed. It was so updated, I don't think there were many of the old exhibits left. The summer theme was animatronics, and there were mechanical bugs and spiders that moved! I wasn't sure I appreciated that part. 

Not fun when a spider this big waves its legs at you!

 It was fun to see the baby flamingo!

The San Antonio Zoo is the most successful breeder of flamingos.

A large moving ladybug!

These berries are an amazing color. They were so bright they looked fake.

Warning: the next pictures are lizards, snakes, frogs, and toads!

      We were rather impress with the camera on Joseph's cell phone as he took all these pictures of the glassed in exhibits. They had the biggest collection that I had ever seen.

West African Leaf Viper

Young Tomistoma

This might be a komodo dragon? I wish I remembered better, or took pictures of the names or something. One of the things I learned is that there are way more types of rattlesnakes than I ever knew of. 

Look at the spikes on this guy's tale. They look like teeth!

This is the desert horned toad. I remember catching them as a child when we went to visit Aunt Jane and Uncle Kindle in Lehi, Utah. They have become pretty scarce in their native Texas habitat. The zoo hopes to bread these lizards and reintroduce them, (and the ants they eat), in Texas.

 This was the weirdest snake pattern I have ever seen. It has so many separate patterns it is hard to see the whole snake at once. It makes wonderful camouflage. 

Chameleon eyes really do look in different directions!

 This metalic blue bird was very colorful.

I have always thought the Okapi looks like a mixed up animal. We use to see one in the Colorado Springs Zoo when we lived in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Tomistoma or False Gharial, is a freshwater crocodilian.

There were more than one pen of flamingos.

 This carousel was installed in 2014  to celebrate the zoo's 100th birthday. 

The underside of a frog suctioned to the glass.

Side view of the same frog.

 

 There are lots of funny looking critters!

 On the road again and heading home!

 I remember when I got my own camera in about 7th grade and I tried to take pictures out of the window of a moving vehicle. They never turned out. Now, the camera's in these cell phones take such amazing pictures. Joseph loves to take random pictures when ever he sees something of interest.