QC01-05 A week dry camping

January 21, 2010 (Thu) Monument Lake CG (2) 66/82° - The "breeze" (that which we call wind in New Jersey) kicked up today. The TV fear mongers (weather forecasters) said that it was gusting to 40 mph. We'll take their word for it. Wouldn't you know the National Park Service chose today to resurface the road through the campground. By resurface I mean scrape the high parts of the dirt road into the low parts and into the pot holes - a dusty process -  then coat with a new layer of dust (pulverized coral) brought in by the truck load. Luckily the wind direction was parallel to Q so most of it passed us by. Even so our pledge to wash and wax Q was short lived. We did get a little done before the road work began.

January 22, 2010 (Fri) Monument Lake CG (3) 71/79° - Friday is usually the day when people begin to pile in here for the weekend. From our experience there are three type, in addition to the usual weekend campers. 1. Overnighters who stop here on there way to somewhere else. They come in late in the afternoon and early evening and leave early the next morning. 2. Overflow from Midway. Midway is a "resort" atmosphere campground down the road a way. Those wanting to get in there - reservations are not accepted - often find they have to wait at the gate for someone to leave. When all have left that are going to for the day, the wannabes often become overnighters here hoping for better luck the next day. 3. The day "campers". These are people, usually out of Miami, who come for the day on Saturday or Sunday. They will come in sometime in the morning, claim a campsite and set up as if they were going to spend a week, sometimes even setting up tents. Then pack it all up at the end of the day and go home. There hasn't been that kind of influx this year - at least so far. Several units came in this afternoon but there are several campsites still unoccupied. We'll see what tomorrow brings.

January 23, 2010 (Sat) Monument Lake CG (4) 69/82° - We had some sprinkles of rain during the night, not enough to do much to settle the dust from the road but enough to mottle the dust on Q and make him look as if he needs washing. It was a nice even coating before. Most of the campers that came in yesterday and some others as well left over the course of the morning and very soon the next wave began to arrive. There were no day campers that we were aware of, but in the early afternoon a group of young men arrived at the picnic area - our site is next to the picnic area - in three cars. Three of the four fellows in the first car got out, two put on long pants over the shorts they were wearing and wandered out toward the lake. One of them sat on one of the picnic tables, another stood looking out at the lake, the third just stood by the road across from where the cars were parked. No one from the other two cars got out. This still-life lasted at least five minutes, maybe more, then they came back to the cars and the others began to join them. Those not already wearing long pants, put them on over their shorts as the first two had done. Most of the pants were khaki, though some were dark, but all of them wore white polo shirts.

They moved the only three picnic tables into a rough grouping on the far side of the picnic area and began to bring snack type things, sodas in coolers,and big bags of chips(?), from their cars. Suddenly all motion stopped. Most of the fellows were in a shaggy circle around the tables but others were scattered around. They all stopped. Even the one near the cars. Praying came to mind and that was probably it. After that they sat at the tables as if in a meeting, although one seemed to be reading and another was lying on the bench as if sleeping.They seemed to be having a good time because there seemed to be much laughter. After fifteen or twenty minutes they all disbursed and began to privately read or study what, from where we sat, looked to be bibles of prayer books. This went on for a couple of hours then after another rough prayer(?) circle they returned the picnic tables to their original positions, loaded into their cars and left. We came to the conclusion that it must have been a class outing.

January 24, 2010 (Sun) Monument Lake CG (5) 69/83° - It rained during the night - not hard, but enough for water to find its way into the motor home were the antenna wire comes in. We put a dish under the drip and collected a thimbleful of water - just enough to be annoying. Again no real influx of campers came in for the night and those that did come in left over the course of the morning.

We've named the alligator that comes around every day "Willie" because he seems to show up as Mark is playing his guitar. This afternoon he was sunning in the shallows right next to our campsite. When Joy approached to take his picture, he turned and started toward her as if wanting to say hello. She decided not to stay around.

January 25, 2010 (Mon) Monument Lake CG (6) 75/73° - Woke up in the middle of the night (3:00) to the sound of the awning and flags flapping madly. Obviously the wind ...er breeze had come up with a vengeance. We got up and closed the awning and brought the flags in. Everything else we'd packed up last night in preparation for our outing today. The morning news said that the area had been under tornado watch.

We were going to take our bicycles over to bike trail in Shark Valley today but the weather forecasts made it highly probable that a storm would hit just about the time we got there - or more likely when we got 7 miles away from shelter. It's good we decided to wait till tomorrow because we had a downpour mid morning. The temperature has dropped and the breeze has swung around to the West. There is no shelter from it (or the sun which came out after the rain) without sitting right on the road so we spent most of the day inside.

A 30' or so coachman class C motor home pulled in just behind us in the mid afternoon and immediately started up his generator. We thought he either doesn't know that his batteries were charging as he drives, doesn't know that virtually everything in the motor home runs on 12 volts (battery), there is a problem with his charging circuits, doesn't have a house battery or enjoys the sound of a generator like some people enjoy a radio playing all the time. It was still on when we went to bed.

January 26, 2010 (Tue) Monument Lake CG (7) 47/68° (50/1856 miles) - Shark Valley is a 15 mile walking/biking trail deep into the Everglades National Park. It was our destination today. We took off at about 9:00 and got to the visitors at about 10:30 with a stop at Midway campground to dump and take on fresh water. That took longer than we expected because it turned out to be a busy time at the dump station - and the fellow ahead of us took his time not caring that the line was getting longer behind him.

The first part of the Shark Valley trail follows a small waterway filled with wildlife, the most spectacular of which were the alligators. We counted 60 of them between the visitors center and the observation tower 7 miles into the Everglades. Most of them were sunning themselves on the bank next to the trail - in a few cases on the trail itself. It would have been easy to get into trouble if we didn't watch where we were going. We passed up climbing the tower because it was crowded with people from one of the "trams" that carry less energetically inclined sightseers. The return loop meandered through the saw grass and dwarf cypress tree swamp and yielded another 24 alligators - these at slightly greater distances. In addition to the alligators there were hundreds of birds along the entire loop - heron, anhingas, ibis, egrets, hawks, storks and many others. Photographers with huge lensed cameras were everywhere and they had plenty of subjects. It was a beautiful ride, even having to beat against the wind on the way back, and well worth doing.

Q057780 Monument Lake CG, Big Cypress National Preserve #5 dry $8.00 (x7)