Leaving Florida

We awoke at our usual 5:30 am time frame and made tea in the room as we did our final packing for our return flight to Cincinnati.  At 6:30 we made our way to the breakfast area for our usual Raisin Bran and blueberry yogurt breakfast.  We brought our bags to the rental car and checked out of the Day’s Inn Bonita Springs at 7:20.  We were pleased that the Wyndham points that we used paid the full $815 price of our room for five nights.  We were soon on I-75 north toward the Punta Gorda Airport.  We stopped at the Publix near the airport for sandwiches and fruit for our lunch on the flight. I topped off the fuel tank in the car while Mary was in the store.  It only took $3.00 of fuel to fill up.  We were happy with the little Nissan Versa.  Although it was small, we managed to haul the four of us around to hiking spots in relative comfort.  The big advantage of the car was that we got 42.8 miles per gallon average fuel economy for the over 1300 miles that we had driven on our trip this week.  We thought that was pretty good considering the car is not a hybrid and has a fair amount of pep.  While the rental fee was only $158 the taxes and surcharges brought the total to over $230.  Still, we had about $150 in flight costs, $250 for the nights in Homestead, $250 for meals, $70 for gas, $20 for the annual National Park pass.  Altogether we spent about $1,200 for our week in Florida.  Of course, if we didn’t have the hotel points the cost would have been $2,000.

Anhinga

We got through security at Punta Gorda airport quickly although, unlike when we boarded at CVG, we didn’t have TSA PreCheck so we had to take our shoes off and empty our backpacks. We never know when we will have PreCheck and when we do not.  Hopefully when we get Global Entry we will be able to avoid some of the check in problems.  We were in line with a lady who lives at the south end of Georgetown near Red State Barbecue.  She grew up near Clarion, PA where Mary went to college.  It was nice visiting with her.  

There was a lot of fog at the Punta Gorda airport so the flight from Cincinnati had to be diverted to Fort Lauderdale so our departure was rescheduled for 1:15 rather than the scheduled 10:59.  We ate our sandwiches and chatted with fellow travelers who were hoping to get back home this evening in time to watch the Super Bowl LIII. While we were at the gate, I saw Courtney (Kramer) Epperley who was a former Yeager Scholar and student in CI 415.  Courtney is an outstanding biology teacher at Huntington High School in the room where Pat McKee taught.  She is expecting in June and took advantage of a long weekend caused by weather related school closings to visit her family in Naples.  It was nice to see her.

Brown pelican

We boarded our flight and lifted off at 1:15 as expected for the flight to Cincinnati.  The flight was nearly full except for a few who had rescheduled when the flight was delayed.  We were picked up by the Hilton shuttle through our OneStopParking reservation and returned to our car for the drive back home for a brief stop to check on the house before going to the apartment for the week.  We are happy that the weather will be in the 50s and not the subzero weather of the week before that we avoided the week before.  

We are not birders and did not go out of our way to see any particular species of birds.  However, most birds in this area are very showy and fairly easy to identify with commonly available guides.  We made no effort to attempt to identify any ducks.  Neither did we bother listing all of the common birds like robins, sparrows and starlings.  Birds that we confirmed seeing during our week in Florida:

Brown Pelican White Pelican Anhinga Double Crested Cormorant White Ibis Glossy Ibis Limpkin Sanderling Roseate Spoonbill Great Egret Cattle Egret Snowy Egret Reddish Egret

Little Blue Heron Great Blue Heron Green Heron Yellow-Crowned Night-Heron Black-Crowned Night-Heron Black Stilt Red-Shouldered Hawk Broad-Wing Hawk Kestrel Osprey Belted Kingfisher Common Moorhen

Purple Gallinule Common Gallinule Wood Stork Sandhill Crane Red-bellied Woodpecker Pileated Woodpecker Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker American Crow Wild Turkey Turkey Vulture Black Vulture Blue-Grey Gnatcatcher Ruby-throated Hummingbird