Acadia to Haleakalea: Gulf Islands

Navarre, FL

Had to include this pic... I scrambled to get this in time... just made it.

Well I thought it was gonna rain today... but we caught a break. Rained at like 6am, but with all the wind and the little tree cover it dried quickly. Nice change from all the foliage we've been dealing with.

Pretty interesting park here... actually caught another break because they just opened up one of their main roads to traffic again. They had to move the road north on the outer bank that it lies. The water table is so low out there that when it rains just a bit, the base of the road can get infiltrated. So they designed a better foundation and moved the road further from the gulf. I guess they just had the grand re-opening on the road on Tuesday and it was closed for 5 years... not too shabby.

Here's a map of the area that was just re-opened...

View Larger Map

As a result of all the new construction we also had do a little manual GPS collection (usually I just hit a button on the truck and magic... sub-meter GPS). We have other colleagues that prepare the parks for us before we arrive, assuring that all of the information the FHWA (Federal Highway Administration) has on file is accurate and up to date. However they couldn't get some of the parking areas since they weren't paved yet. We had to take out our GPS and take the information down.

This isn't your recreational GPS... costs a bit more as we demand a little higher accuracy and better transition into the data format we use. So I have a Trimble Ranger handheld along with a backpack that actually contains the GPS receiver and the antenna attached to the top of the backpack (2 ft above my head).

There's a lot of the beach in GUIS closed off because of the nesting of shorebirds. While I was collecting one of these new parking areas though... one of these shorebirds mistook my antenna for another bird because more than once I had to duck out of the way of their attack dives. There's a punchline here but I just can't think of a good one... anyone?

A buddy 0f mine asked for more pics of the van... I'll see what I can do... it's highly classified stuff in there... right...

Got to walk on the beach a bit too... here's a couple of pics... and one from my typical view.