Venice, Fl

We made our final push south and landed at Florida Pines RV Park in Venice which will be our winter home this year.

Neat rows of seasonal residents.

When we made the reservations this spring it was already too late to book any of Florida’s State Parks and we were not sure how long of a break we needed from touring.  So we decided to stay put and catch up with all our cruising friends who swallowed the anchor and bought homes here.

The park does have gorgeous pines.

This was the only RV park in the area that wasn’t pushing monthly prices of over $1500 so we booked it without having seen the park, a bit dicey if you are staying for the season. It turns out it is a smaller park, mostly consisting of seasonal manufactured homes, all kept very neatly and without any of the hodge podge fences and outdoor junk.

Unfortunately our site is right on this busy, busy highway.

That’s the good side.  The bad side is it situated on a little triangular island bordered by 3 busy 4 lane highways. It turned out that the berm of pine trees we spotted on the Google satellite map that we thought would shelter us from the highway was actually a row of live oaks.  So we have soothing shade but plenty of noise.

When we first arrived their were about 10 birds already roosting.

The temps and humidity are still at summer levels here so I’ve moved my daily walk to late in the afternoon.

The heron put on quite a show getting all his feathers settled into place.

I soon noticed during these walks that all the shore birds would be flying to their nightly roosting spots which seemed to be in a little pond located right behind Florida Pines.

Incoming!

More Google map surveillance showed the local Audubon Society had a park behind us and the nightly “rook-up” was actually quite famous.  So we headed over there the next evening at sunset and watched the fly-in.

By the time we were forced out by no-see-ums, the island was full of squawking birds jockeying for position.

Both the birds and the birdwatchers were very entertaining! Instead of the usual binoculars, scopes and bazooka-like cameras, these laid-back watchers came with armchairs and large glasses of wine, a splendid idea!

Venice, FL