3000 miles and Counting!
We are at fort pierce KOA in Fort Pierce, Florida for a 6 day stay.
Our big excursion was to the LoggerHead Marine life Center where they rescue sea turtles. The center was one of my favorite places so far on the trip, it was well done, and we learned a lot. The most common injuries to sea turtles are boat strikes, shark attacks, swallowing micro-plastics, and virus called fibropapillomatos (FP) tumors. FP tumors has to be surgically removed. We met a turtle that was recovering from FP, and his name was Igor. We also met a turtle named Pyari. She lost a fin from a shark attack but she can still swim just fine, and once healthy enough will be able to return to the ocean! We also learned that the gender of the turtles in the nest is determined by the temperature of the nest. The warmer the nest the more females, and the colder the more males. There is concern that with global warming more and more females hatch in each nest every year. And sometimes its too hot for any of the to survive at all. That’s why we have take care of our planet. Things like picking up trash at the beach and reducing the use of single-use plastics will help these turtles. Whenever you leave a light on at the beach it confuses the baby turtles and they walk the wrong way, that’s why at the beaches and some city’s people are trying to put more warm orange lights rather than bright white ones. Another thing that can help is knocking down sandcastles and any other stuff you built at the beach, this way the babies don’t have to climb over Mount Everest just to get to the water. These are things I have never thought about before!
My dad and I went on a bike ride to the Fort Pierce Manatee center. Sadly we did not see any manatees. They had a lot of cool tanks of fish that lived in the water just outside the center, and my favorite was the seahorse. Did you know that seahorses don’t have stomachs so they eat a lot! And the excess food they don’t want, like boness and skin, gets shot out of their heads and back into the water, so they have to have another animal, like a lobster, to help clean up the tank. Mom and Eli took the day to go see the new Wicked Movie.
Saturday morning all year long they have a huge farmers market right on the water. We checked it out and got some amazing cider donuts. That is saying something because living in Vermont the last two years I feel like I know good apple cider anything! We also got smoothies at the market. Mine was berry blast and it was delicious! 9/10! The only reason its not a ten is because there were to many seeds. We also saw a cool 3-D printing stand, where, they had all sorts of good prints.
This campground had a nice big swimming pool that we swam in most days. There was also lots of lizards everywhere and not just the tiny ones but some bigger ones with cool colors. Next we are off to Miami for Thanksgiving.
Current leg: 72
Total miles: 3153