Monday, August 15, 2011

Sound of Silence

To be honest: it was awesome.. It was breathtaking. It was phenomenal..

We had been looking into visiting a State Park in the Kissimmee area. Lana wanted to take pictures and train her photographic skills. She's particularly fond of making nice sunset shots.
caterpillar on flower
In the afternoon, we headed towards Clermont, Florida, a half hour ride from the apartment. I had googled the Lake Louise State Park and it sounded promising.  At the cost of only 5 dollars, we spent a wonderful afternoon and evening in the park. It was like we had entered a completely different world. This is the real Florida. This is so different from Disney and the parks, although they have a charm of their own.

A gopher tortoise - the state turtle of both Georgia and Florida - tried to cross the road while we just entered the park. Okay, that was worth a first snapshot. We knew not all wildlife would be that slow..
We stopped at three lakes: Dixie Lake, Hammond Lake and Lake Louisa. At the first stop, we saw this prehistorical looking alligator in the lake. It was really creepy! We intended to rent canoes but we kinda chickened out after we realized there were actually real gators in the lake. What if our canoe tipped over and we fell in? Or what if an alligator came up to our canoe? Would we have to hit it with our paddle? I'm not scared that easily, but I wasn't sure about this idea anymore..

gopher tortoise

alligator in Dixie Lake


There was another alligator prepared to pose for the camera, in Hammond Lake. It was just so surreal but then again it was more real than the rest of Florida we have seen so far. The lake was full of beautiful waterlilies and numerous fish.

We decided to follow the signs so the next stop was a hiking trail. We thought it was going to be a brisk walk through the woods, but in the end, we must have walked for over an hour. Supposedly there were bobcats, rattlesnakes, wild turkey, raccoons, opossums and squirrels around, but we didn't see any - except for a troop of turkeys and 1 squirrel. The walk took a bit longer than expected and my pace was slowing down. Stupid me.. I had not taken my purse.. meaning no glucose meter nor dextrose within reach. I didn't want to hold up the rest, so I kept going and I couldn't do much more than hope we would reach the end of the trail pretty soon. We had followed the blue track, but all at once, there were no more blue signs to follow. We only saw red signs, so we changed tracks. My blood sugar kept dropping and I knew I had to get out of these woods somehow. After at least another 20 min we arrived at the parking lot, where I tested and corrected that 42 mg/dl with half a tin of lukewarm ginger ale and about 8 animal crackers. Man, that felt so good..

hiking trail in the woods to Lake Louisa
mating butterflies

Those are moments I truly despise diabetes. You always have to consider what you bring and how long you will be gone. I know that, but see: every now and then, the excitement wins from the brain and that's when you get in trouble. I'm glad I didn't pass out.. There was nobody to be seen in that forest and we had left the cell phones in the car. We did not even have a clue where we were.. I'm glad that hypoglycaemia got fixed in an instant, because we were ready to visit the third and biggest lake: Lake Louisa. That was too much... so serene, so pure, so untouched.  Lana was over the moon. She said it was her best day in Florida.  And yes: she made extraordinary pictures. We even came back later that night to watch the sunset. We were all quiet... for once, the radio was not turned on while driving back to the apartment. I believe we were all moved by the beauty of this scenery..



Eva and Lana in Lake Louisa

sunset Lake Dixie


3 comments:

Jangeox said...

beautiful !

Stijn said...

Nice nice nice

www.kokenenhogehakken.blogspot.be said...

it was indeed...