To The Everglades NP - #41-07

January 18, 2004 (Sun) - Up @ 7:00 off @ 9:30 after on board showers. 65° windy, cloudy, and spitting rain. 4 white ibis came wandering through our side yard as we ate breakfast. Beautiful birds and so interesting to watch as they poked their long bills deeply into the earth to retrieve tasty morsels. Once on the road we headed south along the East side of Lake Okeechobe on US98 and SR15A through field after field of sugar cane. This is apparently sugar cane season because large machines, looking for all the world like angry Tyrannosaurus Rex, were scattered around in the fields. Some were even hard at work chopping up the cane and spitting it into large trucks. The heavy smoke we saw in the distance invariably turned out to be from fires burning the fields in preparation for the new crops.

The road from about half way down the lake to the bottom, Belle Glade, was unbelievably rough. It was as if it had been paved 30 years ago and been left to deteriorate. The road south from Okeelanta, US27, was much better and absolutely straight for such long stretches that signs announcing "curve ahead" were posted a quarter mile or so before each curve. The bright red, white and blue vehicle up ahead turned out to be a parade float. At sixty miles an hour there wasn't much left of the "flowers".

When we came down here last year we regretted not stopping at Robert's roadside stand for a key lime milk shake. This time we stopped. We stored them in our freezer until we'd eaten lunch in the National Park visitor's center parking lot. Delicious! but so filling we were forced to save half for another time - maybe when I finish this.

Everglades National Park mosquito ratings:
Care free
Tolerable
Annoying
Aggravating
Blood Sponge
Total Bedlam

The campground host came around as we were visiting Bob and Pat, who'd gotten here Friday, at their site and told us that heavy rain and wind were coming during the night. The sky was indeed very dark off to the West so we hurried home to pull in our awning in case it got here sooner. It did. We just make it! We got thunder, lightning, and heavy, heavy rain. But little wind. It lasted about a half hour but it produced a 2 inch puddle outside our door. And our door mat floated away!

Q057350 (162 mi) Flamingo, FL - Everglades National Park, Flamingo Campground #A14 Dry $7.00s (x6)

January 19, 2004 (Mon) Flamingo, FL - This has been a decompression day. After several days filled with travel (as exciting as it was), meeting schedules (such as they were), and socializing (as fun as it was), we needed some time to just be and do what we wanted when we wanted to do it. As it began to get light we lay in bed and talked about getting up to see the sunrise over Florida Bay but we didn't. After a leisurely breakfast, we took a short bicycle ride around the campground and over to the marina. This afternoon we played a rousing game of dominos with Bob and Pat (Mark came from last place to win the last four games and the match) and shared dinner in their motor home. The rain predicted for this afternoon never materialized confirming our belief that Florida weather forecasters are no better than those in New Jersey. This evening we're just sitting around winding down from our non busy day. Outside the temperature is 70, the sky is perfectly clear and the display of stars is spectacular!

January 20, 2004 (Tue) Flamingo, FL - The canoe rental window opens at 7:00 but we didn't get there until a few minutes after 8. For $22 we had the use of a canoe for 4 hours - which turned out to be more than enough time to completely exhaust aging, out of shape paddling muscles. We paddled up (down?) the Wilderness Waterway hoping to see much flora and fauna. We saw lots of flora, mostly mangrove and bromeliads but not much fauna. The waterway was a 3 mile long channel through the mangrove, averaging about 25 feet wide, to Coot Bay. We saw only some circling hawks and a few unidentified shore birds on the way out but on the bay there were hundreds of coots. We tried to paddle up close to them (against a very stiff wind!) but they would have none of it. They flew off every time we got close! On the way back, there were anhingas, egrets, white ibis, and a 15 foot (more or less, we didn't try to measure it) long alligator. And there was also a kingfisher on a pylon in the marina as we turned in our canoes.

There is a telephone line down in the marina area that will accept a computer connection (if you take the regular phone off the wall and disconnect it) so we'll try to get our email and send this off to you tomorrow. We are talking about staying here until Sunday so if those of you who might expect to hear from us sooner don't, that's why..