Trip16

Monday.

Everglades day. Did the usual oatmeal, coffee, food bar, and headed off for the rental shack. Didn’t rent a kayak where we expected to. Reserved a canoe out at Nine Mile Pond instead. It sounded like a better place to paddle. Took a four hour self guided canoe tour across a lake, then through mangrove swamp and sawgrass swamp. Wow! It was wonderful. It’s buggy in the campground, even in January. It wasn’t buggy on the canoe trail at all. Passed a couple gators on the way across the lake. Disappeared into the narrow winding passages of the red mangrove swamp. Some passages were so tight we didn’t even use paddles, we just pulled ourselves through by the surrounding branches. There were a total of maybe six other canoes out on ten miles or so of trail. Nice density for Judy and I who like to be out by ourselves. There were times we got total swamp isolation. We could just glide and listen to the creaks and croaks, splashes, sudden squawking complaints, and flapping wings. About halfway through, we burst out of the mangrove and spike rush swamp and into the sawgrass swamp. We could see farther now, but with our heads lower than all the clumps of stuff growing around us, we were still in wilderness. We saw great big turtles underwater. We saw lots of fish. Lots of birds. We saw an underwater plant called a bladder wort that sends up pretty little yellow flowers, while below the surface, its other parts are eating tiny animals. Saw a three-foot Florida Gar. Saw a couple more frigate birds.

On the way back, to close the loop, we passed within a few feet of a seven-foot gator. Oops. Didn’t mean to get quite that close. Almost ran over one on the bank when we returned the canoe to shore at the start/finish.

Spent the evening hanging around the visitor center and marina. Watched a couple crocodiles doing some serious dating. That involved some close contact with heads held perfectly vertical out of the water, then some chases and mock chases. Crocodiles, not alligators. They have them both here. A manatee surfaced. Saw a roseate spoonbill fly over. I left to go for a run, and was only gone for a few minutes when Judy came to get me in the car. She picked me up and took me back to show me the white crowned pigeons she had spotted. We thought we were too far north, but we weren’t. White crowned pigeons. They are not very common. They are not even listed in my Stokes Eastern Bird Book at all. We got the white crowned pigeon! But then it got even better. We stopped at the swamp pond on our way back to the campground, as it was getting dark, and guess what popped out of the reeds. A purple gallinule! Right there in the middle of all the moorhens, ibises, and herons, there was a purple gallinule muttering its way through the marsh. Then it got too dark and buggy.

While we were in the RV Park, back in the Keys, we watched some football, and flipped around to the local channel to see what was on. There was a guy describing the indigenous plants. He was explaining that when he referred to a tree as deciduous, that meant that there was a two week period in January when the tree had no leaves at all, then it grew them all back. That’s pretty funny considering how tight all the deciduous trees are locked up in Colorado for six months.

Tonight we’re sitting here listening to light rain on the roof.

Zero miles on the motorhome. Alligators. Crocodiles. Mosquitos. Manatees. Two new birds.

Tomorrow, the Big Cypress Swamp Preserve.

Oh Yeah. A picture. What's that saying? A bird in the tent....