Flamingo Visitor Center, Everglades

Tuesday, June 28 - Today we finished the Everglades.  It was a 12-hour day, and we're tired, but we felt like we saw everything we needed to see, we went for a back country boat ride, and we walked several of the boardwalk trails to see the prairie, cypress domes, hardwood hammocks, campgrounds, ponds, birds and wildlife.

Here are some of the birds we saw:

In addition, we saw at least one osprey.  Most of these birds we were unable to identify, but there are lots and lots of birds here, and some are very pretty.  Our boat guide identified some, but we didn't try to keep up with that.

The Everglades is the only place in the world one can see both crocodiles and alligators.  And we saw both today, but not in the same body of water.  Our back country boat ride took us through the Buttonwood canal, and that's where we saw the crocs.  I think we saw 4 in total.  Here's a few pictures.  The last one was the only big one we saw.

 

This is the boat, and the canal.

He took us out to Whitewater Bay, where the saltwater and freshwater come together.  

We got lucky on the weather today.  It rained on us on the way to the Flamingo Visitor Center, but by the time the boat ride started, it had stopped, and the temperature probably stayed below 90.  Which was good, because Joe and I were in full safari regalia.

It has taken us all this time to get our full wardrobe, and we still need light-weight, long-sleeve shirts, but we finally did get mosquite nets for our heads.  We are both totally riddled with mosquito bites, and here's one of the havens for these little critters.

But today Joe came up with a new strategy.  Since supposedly mosquitoes can only travel up to 3 mph, he decided he would drive at least that, and I would steer, and he would take photos out his window.  We had some success with this, but we need to work on it more, since he got the front of the car in the photo.

This is one of the roads we traveled -- our kind of road.  Since he was safely in his full garb, he braved the elements and actually got out of the car to take these pictures.

We saved the side trips for the drive out, and we walked several boardwalks.  Here is a picture of the prairie here -- which has water flowing through it.  Also, the Everglades is not a swamp, because it does have moving water flowing through it. We learned that today. 

 

We have seen lots of huge grasshoppers in the last few days, and Joe got up close to one on the boardwalk.  He later found a different species of grasshopper, so that adds to today's wildlife.  The big one is the lubber grasshopper.

Our last hike was at the Royal Palm, which had lots of gators and turtles.  The gators here were a little aggressive, and we even heard one "growl" at another one.

 We saw several turtles grazing right next to the bank, and we also saw at least 3 different species of fish in these waters.  But the best was this soft-shelled turtle who decided to cross the sidewalk.

Finally, we left here and headed back to town, stopping on the way at a great fruit stand where we sampled lychee for the first time.  After a quick dinner at Panda Express, we drove out to the Miami-Homestead Motor Speedway (after getting on the wrong road first, heading 20 miles to Key Largo -- Joe made an illegal turnaround in the road construction so we didn't have to make the 20-mile trip just to turn around, since the racetrack was only 4 miles from where we started). 

AND THEN (see, Bridgette and John rubbed off on us), since we were close, we drove over to Biscayne National Park, but it was closed (since it was 8:00 p.m.), so we'll probably go back there tomorrow.  We finally got back to the RV, itching from mosquitoes, hot and tired.  And ready to do it all again tomorrow, just in a different place.  It was another good day.

Into the Everglades

Monday, June 27 - We braved the mosquitoes this morning and got unhooked, and got on the road about 10:00 (after I spent a couple hours on the blog).  We headed across Hwy 41 into the Big Cypress National Preserve on the north side of the road, and the Everglades National Park on the south side. 

We pulled into a picnic area across the road from a viewing center, and crossing the dirt road at the viewing center was this big, old gator.  He got tired and laid down about the time I got ready with the camera, but he was cooperative otherwise.  When we first spotted him, he was up on all 4 legs walking.

We drove down to Everglade City and stopped at the National Park Visitor Center there, and at a hardware store looking for mosquito nets for our heads (they were out, of course).  It was a nice little town with lots of airboats just waiting to take us for a ride, but we decided not to go out there (we may still have to do this).  Then we drove back up to Hwy 41 and continued on our way.  Our next stop was the HP Williams Viewing Center, which had a boardwalk area, but also there was a 15-mile loop road here that followed a river or canal.  So we unhooked the car and went exploring in the Explorer.  We saw lots of gators on this drive, probably about 20, but the most impressive was our second stop where there were 6 gators lying in the water.

We actually came back here and ate our lunch in the car while we watched them.  But along this drive we saw at least 3 gators up on the bank, and one slithered into the water as we watched.

We saw turtles on this drive, and lots of different kinds of birds.  We are not "birders" but it is easy to be interested in the wide variety of birds we've seen during the last two years. 

Our other interesting wildlife find was a raccoon.  He even stood up and looked at us, but the camera wasn't quite ready for his pose. This was our second raccoon today, and for the trip.

The everglades has many faces, and we think of it as a jungle with all the swamp growth and mangrove trees, but it also has huge clearings, that are very marshy.

 We passed what must be the smallest free-standing post office in the world here.  Didn't stop for literature but it would be interesting to know what year it was built.  Can't have too many people working here, I would think.

We finally left this area and headed on to Homestead (Florida City) where we will be spending the next two nights.  We drove 105 miles today, and it was all very interesting.  We continued to see alligators all day in the waterways along the highway, but we are still waiting to see our first panther.  The campground where we stayed last night had both panthers and bears in the area, but all we saw was a raccoon, several squirrels, and that alligator in the river there.  The campground we are now at is not too wonderful -- has lots of full-time residents which usually means a lot of junk around the trailers, but it will serve our purpose for the next two days while we explore the Everglades.  I made Joe take me back to the crossroads (18 miles) to the casino tonight, but we are now back from that trip, a little lighter in the wallet, unfortunately, and ready to go to bed.  Today was a good day!
 

Saturday - June 25 -- We got started on our busy day right after breakfast.  John and Joe loaded up Barbara's spare bed and hauled it back to their house, and Joe brought the RV back to John's.  I started my room-to-room search for everything we had brought in, and we started loading when they got back.  Although we made several trips, we will still have a lot to load in the morning.  Next up, we took the Explorer to the car wash, mostly to get the beach sand vacuumed out of the back, since the outside had been rained on and wasn't too bad.  But they ran it through the wash while we ate lunch next door, then off we went to University of Tampa so Bridgette could feed the seahorses.  We picked up Barbara on the way, and got to see where Bridgette is currently working while they get her new office ready for her.  This really is a beautiful campus, and it's nice that Bridgette gets to work at a school with such modern equipment and wonderful classrooms.

 It really is a beautiful campus, and it sits right on the Hillsborough River.

Bridgette took us into her building and showed us her temporary desk, and the office they are fixing up for her (which was a storage room).

Then we went into the lab, and she demonstrated a piece of equipment they use for DNA testing.  She also showed us a package of frogs in formaldahyde (yuk).  Some of her classy UT students really don't like to get their hands dirty, so that should be interesting experiments. 

Next we went into the lab where her boss is raising the baby seahorses, and Bridgette mixed up the food for them (shrimp eggs).  The babies are hard to see, but they are clinging to the seagrass in this . photo below.

We have seen lots of mailbox posts out here that are fish -- dolphins and manatees mostly, and also some birds (pelicans), but we found one of a seahorse that we thought Bridgette might want to get for her boss.  (This was in Marco Island on Monday).

Then we walked down to their dock on the river, and she caught a ctenophora (pronounced "tenafore) to show us, which looks like a form of jellyfish but is a different family and is not harmful.  John and Joe walked down through the rocks and found some oyster beds.  All pretty cool stuff.

We came back through the building and Dr. Bridgette showed us one the classrooms she will be teaching in.  We all sat down like students, but she didn't have her lecture notes with her, so we got off without any homework.

Finally, we finished up here and headed for Costco, in our efforts to get ready to leave tomorrow.  We got home and put those purchases away, then had a hot game of dominoes to finish out the evening. 

Sunday morning, we finished loading (which was much more than one would think).  We went to Village Inn for our last breakfast with the doctors, and then Joe and I went off to Publix to finish our grocery shopping, since we (I) got too tired on Saturday.  We finished up with everything (with help from J and B, and got on the road at 11:10.  We did get invited back, but John intends to put a lockbox on the thermostat before we are allowed to stay, since he thinks we messed up his temperature programming (we denied it).

We only went 155, to the Collier-Seminole State Park outside of Naples.  But the mosquitoes here about carried us off.  We were the only ones in this campground, so we had our choice of all 120 spots, and we tried out 3 different ones before we settled in (getting eaten alive by mosquitoes throughout this process).  After we rested for an hour, we decided to drive around this park and head to Marco Island, about 10 miles away. The Black River (which was black) flows through this park, and has a boat ramp, and allows access to "10,000 Islands" and the Gulf of Mexico. This water is definitely brackish but it would be a nice river float if you could stand the mosquitoes.  We stopped by the water, and there was an alligator watching us.  It was a decision on even to roll down the car window to get a picture, but I did attempt it.  He's in the reflection of the trees, though so he is hard to see.

We then drove through the every exclusive area of Marco Island.  We couldn't get to the water without paying for parking, so we gave up on that and headed back to the park, and got caught in a pretty significant rainstorm.  We decided to stop at a bar and grill right outside the park, but we sat in our car 15 minutes waiting for the rain to let up.  As we came back in the park, we checked on our alligator again, and he was on the further side of the river (must have gotten under the trees during the rain).  We also saw some kind of hawk here.  And this park is full of squirrels, birds, and Tuesday morning, a raccoon was visiting the campsite in front of us.  Guess we'll have to add a raccoon to the traveling zoo now.  My web site was really slow here and it took a long time to get this blog done, but now it's time to get the car hooked up (as soon as I douse myself with mosquito spray), and hit the road, heading to Florida City, right outside the Everglades. 

tire

Final Days in Tampa

Wednesday - Saturday.  We are getting down to the wire for our visit with J and B.  We contemplated going to one of the beaches on Wednesday or Thursday but, instead, pretty much stayed home.  On Wednesday we did a little shopping, then I decided to pay for our keep by cleaning the window blinds in their house.  And they have lots of windows.  It was a two-day job, but I got all of them, including washing the inside of the windows, except for the two big windows. I left those two for them.  Joe rigged me up a pole in the shower, and I washed and dried each blind, slat by slat.  John told me I was hired and that I could come back next year and do it again.  So instead of sunbathing at the beach, we worked.  Got that out of our system, believe me.  The Florida summer rains finally started today, so we had a little shower about 9:00 p.m.

John got back from Puerto Rico on Thursday afternoon -- he wasn't too impressed with that country, especially the traffic.  Doug and Barbara came over for dinner for Bridgette's tacos, and John was happy to be able to eat food that he recognized.  We had another rain storm tonight, and it looks like we should be getting them every day for the next week or so.

Bridgette had to get blood drawn first thing Friday morning -- she is beginning the process of a physical, so she has lots of doctor appointments coming up.  She's really wanting to get her knee taken care of, even if it requires surgery, so she can get back to her marathon running.  So when she finished at the lab, we picked up Barbara and went to breakfast, then shopping at Beall's (Barbara's request), then came home for a while.  It rained off an on most of the day.  Bridgette took us to UT's marine science lab this evening, which is right on Tampa Bay -- a very nice facility.

Bridgette's boss, Heather, who is the Chair of Biology at UT, has a clear-bottomed kayak here, as well as a canoe, and has offered Bridgette free access to both.   I think that would be pretty cool to float around and be able to see what's underneath the boat.

This is also where UT's boats are docked -- the smaller one in dry dock (which they just pick up the phone and ask that it be put in the water -- my kind of deal), as well as the 50 foot one she went out on this week.  Both Bridgette and John have been around lots of marine labs and university boats, but UT is in a class of its own.

They use huge forklifts here to pick these boats up out of the water and store them in the 3-story drydock building.  I am thinking I should write a grant proposal to get one of these at Roosevelt Lake so I can retire from my job of backing the boat trailer down the boat ramp and into the water, not to mention finding a parking space for my truck and trailer in the skinny parking lot. 

Although it had rained off an on all day, we could see a bigger storm was probably going to land on us in the next few hours.  We were on our way to dinner and the dog tracks, but we knew we were probably on borrowed time.

We got to the race track just two minutes before the first race, and Joe and I actually won $27.40 on it (on a $6 bet).

We thought we would make our fortune here, but unfortunately, that was the only race we won.  John and Bridgette won the 8th race, and it started pouring during the 9th race, so John "manned up" and ran out to get the car, and picked us up under the valet parking roof.  We were in St. Petersburg, so we had to drive back across the bay bridge in heavy rain.  After we got into Tampa, it stopped raining.  And started again.  And stopped.  And started again.  Just like Arizona, we were in and out of the rainy areas all the way home.

Today, Saturday, is packing day.  I got up at 8:10 and went downstairs to find our two nerds e-mailing each other at the kitchen table.  They are getting ready for presentations they will be making at a conference in Minneapolis in 2 weeks.

I tried to get Joe on the move, unsuccessfully, so John sent up the 4-alarm final wake-up call.
Needless to say, they had more success than I did.

John fixed breakfast for all of us, and now they are on their way over to Doug and Barbara's to return the bed that Tyler slept in, and to bring the motorhome over so we can start loading.  We've carried in lots of stuff during the month we've been here, so I hope it all fits again.  We will have to go to the grocery store today too, but Bridgette has to stop by her work to feed the baby seahorses that were born in captivity at UT, and we certainly don't want to miss out on that trip!

AND A YEAR AGO TODAY, JUNE 25, WE WERE FLYING TO PRUDHOE BAY, ALASKA!  What a year we have had!