First, let me wish all a very happy holiday season! Until this year, the weather question for Christmas Day was ‘will it snow’? This year it was ‘do I need long sleeves or short’? I got away with short. We had Christmas dinner sitting by the pool. Dinner was either salmon or prime rib. I had the prime rib and it was prepared by one of our host’s guests – a professional chef. It was superb! between that and the appetizers, we needed to hit the trails again, so we hiked at both Ochlockonee State Park yesterday and St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge today. I knew that when we arrived at the east coast, we would be in alligator country for a few months, but down here along the panhandle, there are signs all along the main roads warning of bears in the area. Thanks to the season, we were able to find some jingle bells to carry on us to warn the bears to relocate. but that does not work for any other species. Do you know that there are six types of venomous snakes here including the cottonmouth, copperhead, and the diamondback rattler? But that is offset by the tremendous amount of wildlife here, including some bald eagles that travel down to this coastline in winter to have babies, then return back north. Coming back from St Marks, we stopped for lunch at rather plain looking storefront seafood restaurant that we would have passed except for the parking lot was jammed. We stopped to see why – glad we did.