I have spent most of the last several days preparing for a “medical tourist” trip to Costa Rica. The costs to me for various dental and routine tests will be great enough that I will save >60% by having the work done there rather than in Florida. That percentage includes air fare, lodging, food and taxi fare. The med work should be completed by the 4th day, so I’m planning to take a few more days after that and spend it in the Monteverde Reserve area.

But today I had to take a break, so took my mountain bike on a road loop to the SW of McIntosh:


It’s a tough route through those hills, wimp wimp, but they are getting easier with each passage, which is just what my quads need. The total trip was about 18.5 miles (29.8 km). I have a friend in Gainesville who road-bikes 20 miles (32.2 km) in town every morning before breakfast, and I tell myself she doesn’t have my hills to contend with. But Gainesville does have hills.

I saw a fox squirrel (Sciurus niger) off CR320 in the middle of horse pastures and remnant mixed forested wetlands. The fox squirrel is believed to require mature pines for their seed forage in addition to oaks for fall mast. This area, however, has very few pines in the wetlands and only a rare pine in the uplands. Pines are present in the mixed forest about 0.42 mile (0.68 km) to the west, but that forest’s canopy is much denser and ground cover consequently much sparser than their preferred habitat of open pine-oak sandhills. I suppose it could be a juvenile wandering around looking for an available territory.