Blogs from Gainesville, Florida, United States, North America - page 2

Friday, January 6—Paynes Prairie State Park, Florida This morning we took a three mile bird walk along the Bolen’s Bluff area looking for birds. The tour leader was quite knowledgeable about birds and we saw several different species. She knew what level in the trees to look for a particular bird and knew them by their call. We decided we would never be that sophisticated in our birding, especially with our hearing problems and poor ability to mimic. She was disappointed in the lack of sightings as she has guided this group several years before and had seen many more species. She also attributed it to the drought and the cold. After walking along the bluff for awhile, we dropped down onto the prairie where we saw some of the wild horses on the Preserve and ... read more

This Blog is just a rough text blog, to see photos please check out my main blog at http://scubasteve-ultimatedives.blogspot.com/ Florida is home to many amazing things. Amazing beaches, amazing cities, amazing theme parks, and some pretty amazing dive sites. For a diver you have an abundance of choices. The corals and wrecks of the Keys, the Gulf of Mexico, endless rivers and inland lakes, or one of my all time favorites the caves. There are several major cave systems in central Florida that are available to divers. I had the pleasure to visit a great spot called Ginnie Springs. Ginnie Springs is located in a Town called High Springs that is located West of Jacksonville and North of Gainsville. It is almost between the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. The street address is 7300 ... read more

Getting out of Florida was almost a 2 day affair. For most of those 2 days we were on the road, except for a night spent in Gainesville and brief stopover in Dunedin (Jono wanted to stop there because he is from Dunedin, New Zealand). As such, to stave off boredom we played a lot of car games, including two I hadn’t played before: Minister’s Cat, and Contact. We stopped to take a picture of the Dunedin sign, and came back to the van to find it wouldn’t start. It wasn’t even ticking over. After a long phone call to the car hire company we found out that the van had ‘security locked’ because we had parked too close to the curb. Suggestions to rectify the situation included rocking the van, trying to push the steering ... read more

We left the villa, to head to Gainsville in the afternoon after a pool morning sesh. The trip took 2 hours. We arrived at Geraldine and Jacques house at about 4pm, and had a look around the house and gardens, its lovely. Geraldine then took us on a tour around the area, which is a big university town, so it had all the sorority and fraternity houses, it looked lovely, i could see myself there. All the students were either running (lots of bodies) or strolling looking cool around. Geraldine and Jacques then cooked us dinner which was really tasty, we met their children Catherine and Ralph they are very pleasent. Then eventually we all headed to bed. In the morning we headed to ichetucknee River, for tubing, which turned out to be the most ... read more

Hey! Wat een leven heb ik. Een 'normale' doordeweekse dag ziet er als volgt uit: rond 10.00 uur maar eens mijn bed uit komen, bikini aan, richting het zwembad, op een ligstoel neerploffen, de studieboeken toch maar wel even tevoorschijn halen, af en toe mijn gezicht in de fitnesszaal laten zien (al is dat met gebroken voet natuurlijk niet te doen), 20 minuten voordat ik richting de universiteit moet snel even douchen en omkleden om vervolgens rond 14.00 uur/15.00 uur de bus naar de universiteit te nemen. En het leuke is: hooguit (!) 2 uur later is de les alweer voorbij en kan ik weer doen en laten wat ik wil. WAUW, waarom is dit in Maastricht niet zo? Wat ik hier in een week moet lezen aan lesmateriaal is nog niet eens de helft van ... read more