Day 3- 28/02/15 Disney Wilderness Preserve

Day 3 bought the long journey to Vester field station, so we where up at 6.30am for breakfast and packing. The weather still hadn't improved, in fact it had become worse. So it came to 8.00 and we all bundled into the mini buses and set off. The journey was about 4 hours, so we made a detour a stopped at the Disney Wilderness Preserve

8.13 - Grey squirrel (At the Best Western Space Shuttle Hotel) sitting on a fence
8.35- White tailed deer   (en route to the Disney Wilderness Preserve )
8.35- Turkey (en route to the Disney reserve)
8.38 Black cows (en route to the Disney Wilderness Preserve ) grazing
8.55 Black cows (en route to the Disney Wilderness Preserve ) grazing
9.00 Reddish egret (en route to the Disney Wilderness Preserve ) flying
9.20 Horses (en route to the Disney Wilderness Preserve ) grazing

Bit too neat. 

Upon arriving at Disney Wilderness Preserve , all we could see was pristine areas and neatly cut trees, I was thinking this a bit too neat and tidy to be a wildlife reserve.





The preserve is 11,500 acres located close to Kissimee. The preserve is home to over 1,000 species of animals and plants, the preserve is a very important area of the Everglades as it contains 3,500 acres of restored wetlands. These wetlands are essential as they catch the rain, replenish the ground water and filter the nutrients. The main area of the preserve is 8,500 acres of cattle ranching. The Disney wilderness preserve work alongside the Nature Conservancy and the State of Florida, the Walt Disney Company bought the land to help make up for loss of land and wetland lost to the creation of Walt Disney World. 3,000 extra acres were added in 1995 by the Orlando Aviation Authority to make up for the expansion of the airport. 

The lake where the alligator was observed

The preservation of the reserve has managed to remove invasive plants by controlled fires and manually removing the plants. This land was used for logging and ranching a lot in the past decades and it has now been lovingly restored to near perfection.  

10.00 Tropical sage

10.00 Carolina wild petuina

10.00 Florida paintbrush

10.00 Yellow jessamine 

10.00 Coontine

10.00 Spotted beebalm

10.00 Carolbean

10.00 Shiny blueberry 

10.00 Smallflower pawpaw

Very wet!

10.00 Chapmans goldenrod 

10.00 Adams needle 

10.00 Obiongleaf twinflower 

10.10 Waterlilies 

10.20 Alligator 

10.30 Bobcat scat - with hair 

11.16 Northern mockingbird and American crow

The weather suddenly went from light rain to really heavy rain, so we had to abandon and go back to the minivans. Everyone was soaked through. My jumper had turned me blue!

The rest of the day consisted of travelling down to Vester. We stopped on the way down for lunch, I had a Wendy's, it was like a nicer Burger King. I managed to accidentally through my drink all over Abbie, luckily it was a bit disaster.  

By the time we arrived at Vester the weather still wasn't brilliant but it was improving gradually. We unpacked the vans and headed straight to the supermarket, Publix. This reminded me of a Waitrose. It was a little more expensive than I remembered, so I stuck to the real basics and chose items that would keep me satisfied for the longest. 

The evening turned out to be great fun, we all stayed out on the veranda socializing, getting to know everyone, we ended up playing beer pong (without the beer), which was a real laugh, a great ice breaker. 

Nature.org,. 'The Disney Wilderness Preserve | The Nature Conservancy'. N.p., 2015. Web. 2015