Hilton Ocala Silver Springs

... Sleezburg in its finest. October festival with Gina, Eric, Ethan, pregnant Jen and Mrs. Lea. Love this family dearly and I always have. There is cake walks, fishing, snocones, train rides, face painting, and corn dogs. Not in Cali anymore thats for sure. The good ol south. Lunch with the girls, Bekah, Katie and Sky. Good catching up with Veronica at mi casa. My dad and ...

... see the native bear but unfortunately (maybe fortunately) they were hiding. We did find loads of spiders which loved building webs across the track. Adrian went first! There were also loads of forest frogs on the tracks which I loved. Very cute!

Ocala National Forest is beautiful and would be a great place to camp and fish although we were glad to be on the move the next day.

... Express trip that takes us to Zermatt. One night in Zermatt in a hotel with a view of the Matterhorn - hopefully then on to Geneva. Just a couple days in Geneva. The agenda includes a lake tour ending at ...

... a range of birds including whooping cranes and American bald eagles. Also saw a black bear, bobcat and cougars. We could not travel back on the boat as there was thunder in the air! Shortly after leaving the park we were hit with a violent thunderstorm. The TV channel gives constant updates about the storms. Could be a little unsettled for the rest of the week. However, it remains very warm and humid.

Left Clearwater and travelled to Homosassa. Here we visited the state park. Homosassa is renowned for it's manatees. Six are resident but thousands gather in Jan/Feb. The manatees are wonderful, iconic and gentle mammals that do not eat meat. They have no predators (other than the actions of man) Travelled on an aluminium electric boat down a creek to the main entrance. The park also has alligators ...

Today we went to our final dive site to finish the check out dives to become fully certified. Unlike the other two sites, these dives were just to swim around and enjoy so the instructors could be satisfied and we get our 5 required dives to obtain a certification card. Just the opportunity I need to play around with my Olympus 1030 SW underwater digital camera [10 MP and waterproof up to 33 ft]. The Blue ...

Today we were supposed to go to Homosassa Springs Wildlife Center and then the beach to relax after a few days of fast paced activity. The original schedule had us diving with manataees today, however being late in the year the manataee are already moved out of the river to cooler locales, so we got the alternative. Homosassa Springs is a large nature preserve and wildlife rehabilitation center [aka a zoo] that has various creatures ...

... one of the sites w*ter systems by luring it into * net th*t h*d cheese crisps inside. We superm*ned it. It is re*lly h*rd to describe the experience of being underw*ter. Your mind tells you it shouldn't be working, but it is. I got to pl*y *round *nd get * few excellent pictures which I recommend checking out. Ag*in, like yesterd*y, the night ended with subw*y *nd *nother round.

... us on short notice. Many of the motor coach companies have gone out of business and Monaco has recently restructured. They have just started shipping parts to dealers after freezing shipments for the last couple of months. Smaller dealers are out of parts. Scary! This discussion used up most of our travel time for the day so we decided to ...

... home town of Ocala and other areas of Central Florida. This week my travel companion was my mom. We have instituted Girl's Day Out. In its honor, we decided to do something really girly and ...