3/16 St. Lucie Lock & Dam

I'm here at one of my favorite Florida campgrounds for two weeks.  This is a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers facility, with a small campground that is very, very hard to get into.  One reason is that COE campgrounds are always very well kept up, and the other is that the cost for seniors is only $15 per night.

It was not easy and took several days of trying, but six months ago, I managed to score one of the three sites out of the nine in this campground that are along the river.  I'll be posting more photos, but here are a sampling of my first four days here.

Note the paved parking site and the gravel patio area with a covered picnic table overlooking the river. 

Looking from the rear of my site, you can see boats "camping" in the dock area.  They come and go, but most have been staying a few days.  It's fun to watch how they live on boats. There is a covered patio area and a grill and picnic tables for them. 

Just past the dock area is the dam and the lock.  The lock is just to the left of the row of pilings on the right.

The lock closes operation every day at 4:30 pm, so any boats that arrive after that time need to anchor in the river or tie up to the pilings, as this little tugboat has done.  This is a working boat, by the way, not a pleasure boat, so two scruffy-looking guys were sitting out on deck during the evening. 

This is the neighborhood gopher tortoise.   He/she has a burrow next to the fenced-in utility area, which I will photo tomorrow.  I suspect he/she is very old because of his size of about 12" long. 

Gopher tortoises do not like their picture being taken, so he glared at me for a while and munched his way off.  I left him alone after I got this photo. 

And here is his/her burrow.  Pretty big and goes down at least 4', probably longer.

The lock area is open to the public when it is open for traffic. 

I had taken this photo of the tour boat as it came past my campsite and raced down to the lock to catch it going through. 

And I saw this character on the way.  He is an African Redhead Agama, which is an invasive species, but of course I did not know that when I took this picture. 

And here is the tour boat in the lock.  They are headed east toward the ocean and must have come from Lake Okeechobee. 

They look like they are enjoying themselves. 

This is the lock gate I had just walked over. 

And away they go!

At first I thought the little raft was a police boat arresting some smugglers, but it was actually towing the larger boat, very very slowly.