Two Week Visit

We were lucky enough to be able to share our lifestyle with a visitor for two weeks. My sister left the cold and snowy north to stay with us in our Airstream while it was in Paradise Park in the middle of south Florida.

It was not all sun tanning by the pool and beach walks – although we did that too. 

In a trailer park full of seniors and golf nuts, there are other diversions. Sitting outside in the warm afternoon with wine and a book was a favourite.

So was scrutinizing each piece of a jig saw puzzle left out in the recreation center for anyone that could help put it together.

It was important to us to share the surprises we had previously found in the area, and being explorers, to seek out new ones, as well.

So, on one cool and rainy January day, we drove into Punta Gorda to check out the Fisherman’s Village. This is a pier on Charlotte Harbour just off the Gulf of Mexico that is lined with boutiques and restaurants and just roofed enough to keep out most of the rain.

I also shared my love of honey hunting. In the local Farmer’s Market that day, we found both peach and Brazilian Pepper honey. These have now been added to my collection at home. 

Brazilian Pepper is an invasive bush that was introduced to Florida as a decorative addition to someone’s garden, and has now spread over a large area. 

It also produces a great tasting honey! And Hubby is experimenting with the fruit to add to our pepper spices.

We waited for a warmer and sunny day to take our visitor to Shark Valley, which we had experienced earlier in our trip. A visit to Florida just isn't complete if you can't get up close and personal with an alligator.

And this big fellow decided the walkway was just the spot for a bit of sun bathing.

Together, we discovered the joys of Sanibel Island. Althought the island is a great place for hiking and biking, we decided to leave those things for another day and just drove through the Wildlife Refuge to see the flocks of white pelicans and sandpipers.

We also enjoyed a picnic lunch at the white sand beach that runs all along the Gulf Coast side of the island. The sand is white because it consists of shells - millions of ground shells and fragments of shells.

And many beautiful full shells, that people walk along the surf to find. It is known as one of the best places for shell collecting.

We couldn't resist taking my sister to see the Lippizanner stallions in training. We had been there a couple of years previously, but it is something that never grows old.

We even got to see them preparing the horses in their stall before they went to work.

A new trip for us was the drive to Fort Myers for the Medieval Faire. We saw a chess game with human players, involving Vikings and Englishmen.

And we couldn’t leave without watching the jousting match. Those horses were carrying big men dressed in armour, and yet still willingly ran toward each other down the field.

It was a great time and we loved having someone else learn the joys of living in a trailer with little to no privacy. My sister adapted well.

I just wish she and I could have finished the jig saw puzzle before she left.

W

Out of the Woods

We’re out of the woods, but not out of the woods.

As far as adventure goes.

Although we’ve come out of the Everglades and Big Cypress National Parks and relocated to a nice, quiet, civilized trailer park, our excursions into the wilder side of Florida have not ended.

Don’t forget, we pack our own entertainment.

We are still making use of the canoe on top of the truck, for more than just using it to see our truck in busy parking lots. Although, I can recommend that as a good trick during the Christmas shopping rush.

Our bicycles have also come out of the back seat. Myself, I prefer a flat and paved pathway to cycle on, however I don’t always get to choose. 

We found a mountain biking trail in a regional park nearby. I figured, it’s Florida. How “mountainy” can it be?

We followed a family group into the “Easy” trail. After that, they outpaced me and I never saw them again. I didn’t realize that “easy” meant sharp dips and hillocks along a narrow dirt path that may or may not have a drop off on one side. And where there isn’t a drop off, for sure there is a tree in the way.

I crawled along the path slowly, constantly riding my brakes while trying to keep hubby in my sight. He was patient enough to wait for me several times.

And good enough to point out the better ways around the bumpy parts.

There are very few hills in Florida, but the first part of the trail manages to wind up and down the one in that area. 

And when the creators of the trail ran out of hill, they had the trail run along a lovely flat field – and threw in a few man-made hills and bumps.

I may never be the same. It’s certain my hind parts won’t be.

But don’t be thinking that all our adventures are the sit down kind. We also have other equipment in our magic truck. Hiking boots and poles are standard wherever we go.

We went down one little trail several times over the course of our stay. It boasts unusual wildlife. Above and beyond the normal deer, squirrels, and birds, this park is home to wild hogs.

Wild hogs are skittish creatures, and hard to spot. It is easy to tell when they are in the area, though, because they make a mess of the ground. They dig huge holes into the sand of the trail and around the palm trees trying to find roots and grubs to eat.

My sharp-eyed hubby saw the first pig, under a low tree and camouflaged by his short stature and dark, coarse hair. When the beast noticed us, he took off like a shot from a standstill in a sprint that would make a Maserati jealous. I had no time to aim my camera or even get it out of my pocket.

We even managed to sneak up on another couple of them as they crossed the trail in front of us. This time I was prepared with the camera and grabbed a shot before they disappeared.

We have three more weeks in this area before we move to the urban sprawl of the east coast of Florida.

And hopefully, we’ll be out of the woods by then.

W

Adventure

If you’re not quite sure that it is safe to be doing something that you are doing, then you are on an adventure.

I had two such adventures in Big Cypress National Preserve.

Big Cypress is a sister to the Everglades National Park. They share a border along the northern part of the national park and many of the same features. 

Like alligators.

We hadn’t planned to go to Big Cypress. We were supposed to relocate to a nice, safe trailer park right after the Everglades trip. But we were nearby, there was a place to park, and it was someplace we had never seen before. What better reason to stop and see it?

 My first adventure blindsided me. I didn’t see it coming. We had planned on going on a tram tour of Shark Valley. That sounded nice and safe to me, so I was all for it. Except when we got there, we discovered that the route could be biked or walked.

Normally, biking is not a particularly dangerous sport, unless it’s on the streets of Ottawa. But the signs posted at the tram center indicated the length of ride, 15 miles or so, and the lack of shade. We hadn’t planned for this activity, but we did have drinking water and bikes with us. I mean, honestly, who doesn’t always carry their bikes and their canoe everywhere they go? But I had no sunscreen as the signs advised. This was dangerous in my mind, and I wasn’t entirely sure we should be doing it.

But we were on an adventure.

So off we biked, on a paved trail along a deep canal. We saw lots of big fish (but had left the fishing pole back at the truck, much to hubbys’s chagrin) and quite a few wading birds in the water. 













And many, many alligators sunning themselves on the grass verge between the canal and the pavement. Seemingly totally unconcerned by the people, bicycles and trams whizzing by their noses or tails.

We had a break 7 miles in, at an observation tower, where you rest your legs by walking up a ramp to an elevation of about 100 feet. I wasn’t sure I should do that, either, because I might not have the muscles left to peddle my way back to the tram station.

But we were on an adventure.

I did make it to the top, and I even survived the bike ride back just a little more sun tanned than when I started. A successful adventure!

I could see the second adventure coming. It gave me something to fret over for a full day.

Hubby wanted to paddle the Turner River canoe trail. 

Rivers down here are nothing like the rivers in Canada. They don’t meander alongside fields and through pretty forests with defined landmarks so you know where you are. 

No, they twist and turn around confusing clumps of tall sawgrass and through low tunnels of mangrove roots.

I wasn’t sure I should be doing this. This particular canoe trail did not even have the markers every few feet like the last one we were on, when we still managed to get lost a couple of times!

But we were on an adventure.

So we took the canoe off the truck and locked the bikes inside. I mean, really, who doesn’t travel like this?

We paddled down the first part of the river, strewn with alligators basking on top of the river grass. 














We played pinball machine with the canoe in the mangroves, bouncing the boat off the roots during the turns, and bending low to be able to pass by the branches that were only 2 feet off the surface of the water. 

In some spots, there was very little place to put the paddle in the water. It was easier to use the branches and roots around us to pull us through the obstacles.

It wasn’t comfortable, but it was an adventure.

And when we had made it safely back to the trailhead and the truck, I realized that it had been a lot of fun.

For an adventure.

W

Bottom Up

We believe in working our way up in the world. Or at least it seems that way this year.  

We started out on the first of December at the bottom of the Everglades, had some adventures, and after enjoying the full length of its paved road over 2 weeks, spent a day along its northern border.

Why change a good plan? So that’s how we approached the Florida Keys. Go straight to the bottom and work our way up.

Many people have told us that you can “do the Keys in a day”. A couple of hours down, a couple back. 
I don’t think they have been there in a while.

Out of the 126 miles length of the Keys, it took us over 2 hours to do only the first 96 miles. No stopping. The traffic was steady, and the speed limit was 45 for most of the way. And boy, was there traffic. This is like a really, really, long town with only one main street. 




It certainly wasn’t all ocean vistas all the way along, like I had thought. There are a lot of residential and business areas interspersed with bridges with good views.

We took a chance on a campsite at the most southern state park, thinking that since we only had a tent they could fit us in somewhere. Previous research had told us that RV spots were hard to come by in the Keys without reserving a year in advance, so we did not bring the trailer. It turned out that we were able to come in without a reservation for just one night, but they did not have tent specific sites. We had to put up our tent on RV sites. On gravel.  On hard, sharp gravel. Coral gravel, to be specific. That’s what they have in the Keys.

It took us an hour to drive the last 30 miles to get to Key West. Then we got the bikes out.

Key West is a very bike friendly town. It doesn’t have any bike lanes, but it does have bicycles and scooters and pedestrians everywhere. 

And chickens, too, for some reason. So drivers, by necessity, have to go slow.

It’s also very much a party town.

The main street is lined with pubs and bars and restaurants. Mallory Square, beside the western pier, is party central at sunset. 










We moved along with the crowd, passing vendors and buskers, and got to the waterfront just in time. 

As a group, we watched the sun go down over the Gulf of Mexico, and then the buskers and noisemakers started up again.

The next two days were spent working our way slowly north. 

We went looking for the petite Key deer, about half the size of our northern species. Somehow they manage to survive in a residential area just off the main road.

There is not a lot of wilderness on this narrow series of coral islands, but we found colourful iguanas in the trees and enjoyed a visit to a dolphin research center.

We also enjoyed watching parrotfish with their bright blue mouth picking algae off the rocks along the coast.

We woke up early on the last morning, bothered by the little sand gnats that had gotten into our tent, and decided to leave the bugs behind and go for a paddle. So, within a day and a half, we went from watching the sun set over the Gulf of Mexico, to watching the sun rise while paddling our canoe over the Atlantic.

It’s easier to travel sideways on the Keys than from bottom to top.

W

River of Grass

Fresh Water. It is everywhere here. It is not only the life blood of the Everglades, it IS the Everglades.

We were expecting a swamp, with still, dark waters and alligators.

We found a river, 50 miles wide and about 6 inches deep, of clear, fresh water and full of grass. And the occasional alligator.

The river has small islands, sometimes barely inches out of the water, surrounded by mangroves and covered in trees. But the river and its grass and its ever-present wading birds, is all around.






 It flows softly towards the Gulf of Mexico and into Florida Bay, a saltwater body of water that is almost as shallow as the river itself. 

At low tide, much of the bay is a mudflat.

There really is very little in the way of elevation change in the entire area. Even the tallest islands in the river are only 4 feet over sea level.

We started our Everglades adventure in the far south part of the park. We even paddled Florida Bay, fishing along the mangroves that mark the shoreline, and almost got stuck in the rising mud flat when the tide lowered.

Inland, – a nebulous term here indeed – the river has a few deeper spots, called ponds. A few of the fish from one pond were unlucky enough to catch the bait my hubby dangled for them. As soon as we noticed the “floating log” nearby that was drifting closer with eyes intent on our stringer catch, we hauled them in and relocated ourselves.

There are marked paddling trails through some of the larger mangrove stands. It was a lure we couldn’t resist.  The trails are marked with white PVC pipes sticking out of the water. But when you navigate the mangrove tunnels to looking for those pipes, some of them are not immediately obvious. In fact, we managed to get lost at least twice on our first trail. The key is to go back to the last marker you saw, and paddle in circles around the area until you find the next. It takes about an hour to paddle one mile in those conditions.

It was much easier canoeing on the river portion of the paddling trails. Pretty much a straight line from one pole to the next. Easy!

The mangrove mazes and the alligators are not the only hazard in this park. Black vultures sit in the parking lots, waiting for victims to leave their car alone while they paddle or go inside visitor centers. The birds walk around, atop the lonely vehicle, terrorizing it by pecking at the tires or worse, they perch on the roof and destroy the rubber seals of the doors or wiper blades.

At least they warn you. Sometimes they even supply tarps to put over your car.

The vultures, alligators, mudflats and the occasional encounter with a snake we found tolerable. The mosquitoes we didn’t. The first campground we stayed in, at the bottom of the park, was barely occupied. Now we understand why. We only lasted 5 days there before we moved to the more northern campground. It is closer to the Miami sprawl, but farther from the bugs.

That’s okay. Miami is just another jungle to explore.

W

Swamp Angels

We met the most hated and feared creature in the Florida Everglades soon after we arrived.

And we naively thought that we could enter its environment without caution or protective gear.

We were wrong.  And it cost us in blood.

So now we leave our trailer swathed in mosquito netting and bug jackets.

Raid and Off, once despised, are our new best friends.

We dash back into the sanctuary of our trailer, quickly closing the door, and then watch the black “swamp angels” that rode in on our backs dance along the ceiling. Once you hit them, they leave a splat of red blood on our white vinyl.

But it was our choice to go right to the bottom of the Everglades. We chose the farthest point on the road, the most southern spot on the country’s mainland, overlooking Florida Bay on the Gulf of Mexico. Why do anything halfway?

Indeed, we could have stayed at the first campground we passed. Just inside the boundaries of the park, we did stop there to fill up on clean water. That was where hubby struggled to close the drain on the fresh water tank which was left open when we winterized in Canada. No bugs of any kind bothered us at that campground.

But we wanted to see the real Everglades, so we drove on to the Flamingo Campground, deep inside the national park.

The swamp mosquitoes, or “angels” – not my choice of name, believe me – have smaller wings that are not bothered by the stiff bay breezes. These creatures influence every activity we do. Cooking is no longer comfortably done outside. Most hiking is not recommended at this time of year, and paddling is only bug free when you are on the bay. We did take a couple of bike rides along the park road, but boy! You had to boogie to outrace those monsters.

They say the mosquitoes are less (but never absent) in February.  That’s one of the reasons that the first 3 months of the year are the busiest down here. But we will be gone by then. And for once, I’m glad this particular side trip has an ending.

I know I’m being a wimp, but I’m tired of hearing the angels singing in my ears.

W