Back on the Road, Noisy Kendall Wal-mart, Fairchild Tropical Garden, Big Cypress Preserve, Monument Lake, Moonlight bike ride, Airboat ride, Florida Panther Preserve, Bear Island campground with the turkey hunters, Fakahatchee Strand, ‘The Blocks’ in Picayune State Forest (whew!) (posted from Calistoga Bakery Café, Naples, FL)
(this post covers 28 February – 6 March)
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Tuesday, 6 March- (written in Picayune State Forest south campground)
This morning we drove to Everglades City and Chokoloskee. We checked out the Gulf Coast Visitor’s Center at the former and lunched there in the parking lot, then drove on the Chokoloskee to the Big House Coffee Shop for a mocha and to hook up to their wi-fi hotspot. For some reason I couldn’t get a reliable connection at the coffee shop. I finally gave up and we went to the library at Everglades City hoping for wi-fi but that was just another frustration. We had planned to spend the day in town but weren’t doing well at all with our plan to pick up email, send in the blog update, then tour the towns and get a nice meal at the end of the day.
We fled to the Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park. The visitor’s center was closed but we ran into a nice couple of volunteers who had some recommendations for hikes. We had learned from our buddy Tie-Dye at Lake Okochobee that the road into the Fakahatchee Strand (Jane’s Scenic Drive) continues on into the Picayune State Forest and ‘the Blocks’, the failed development where we could find cheap camping. But the Big Cypress map has an ominous notice: “Travel not recommended beyond this point. Get a local map from Oasis Visitor’s Center in Big Cypress Preserve”. And everyone we asked about it (other than Tie-Dye) said the roads were too bad in there and it was too easy to get lost. That of course made us curious. So we did Jane’s Scenic Drive and it was terrible—pot holes in the pot holes and then there are the pot holes beside each pot hole and a few on top of the pot holes (did I mention that there are pot holes?). We crept through at less than ten miles per hour—a LOT less. The good news is there’s nobody else back in there. We saw a pretty yellow rat-snake along the way and came upon a snake skeleton in the middle of the road and found it had been a poisonous one— we found a fang.
We waddled on through the potholes and finally came to the Picayune State Forest—where the roads don’t have ANY pot holes. In fact some of them are paved. This area is being re-habbed by the state. Historically it was a failed development of gigantic proportions. It was called ‘Golden Gate’ and is reported to have been a ripoff where banks of telemarketers sold Florida lots sight-unseen to suckers across the country. But their lots turned out to be underwater much of the year. Well, after seeing the area, I’ll be very curious to look into that. I don’t doubt it was a rip-off but there’s more to the story… this area is beautiful.
We were a bit nervous to drive out into this area of roads without road-signs. The roads are arrow-straight and laid off in very large blocks—but there aren’t any houses. The major blocks have paved roads and the roadway is in good condition (super-highway-like condition to one who just spent the afternoon easing through pot hole after pot hole). But when you come to an intersection there’s a stop sign but no road sign. So it feels like you are getting lost. But we counted the roads and canals and when we came to what we believed to be ‘Everglades Boulevard’, we saw our first and only sign—the word ‘Everglades’ painted on the road. I set that as a waypoint on the GPS and then each time we’d make a turn I’d take another waypoint. We realized that our map showed a campground only a few gi-huge-ic blocks away and the GPS also showed there were some geocaches in that area so we went for it. And sure enough we came to an intersection which indicated a geocache should be nearby and we found it—a film can wrapped in camo tape and placed at the base of a dead-end sign along the canal. We then set the GPS to the coordinates of a geocache which had a description indicating a campground was nearby and in that way found the campground which was closer than the map showed. And there we found there’s not only a campground and a boat-ramp but even a campground host. This one is part of the Picayune State Forest and costs $5 per night. We met hosts Ken and Norma from Ontario and checked in for the night by putting our $5 in an ‘iron ranger’ (a metal receptacle for our payment envelope). (Oh, yeah—and guess who they know—Tie-Dye. He was kicked out of this campground for failure to pay). Once settled in for the evening, we tracked down two more nearby geocaches—one a match-container painted green and hanging in a live-oak tree and the other a Rubbermaid sandwich-container wrapped in camo tape and sitting under palm fronds near the canal.
We spent the evening reading and blogging.
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Monday, 5 March –
Last night a cold front came in and we had a low of 42 degrees. That’s quite a change from lows in the Seventies but it felt great and we slept quite well. After breakfast we loaded up and drove the 20 miles of dirt road back to Route 29 and headed north for the Florida Panther Preserve. Along the way I turned on the GPS and noticed a nearby geocache called “© The Power” not far from I-75. We pulled into a small dirt road leading back to three or crystal-clear lakes and the GPS pointed to a power pole where we found a small canister with coordinates to the second stage of the cache a half-mile away. We followed the GPS to a palm tree along the I-75 fence where we found the ammo box. Success!
After lunch next to the lake, we drove north to the Florida Panther Preserve only to find the large gate only open a few feet—much too small to drive through. We had a cell-phone signal so called the info number on the gate and learned they’ve been having problems with the gate and it’s apparently stuck but we were welcome to park outside and walk in to the preserve. Good deal! We had the place to ourselves. The Preserve trails consisted of a 1.3 mile loop trail but it was a beauty. About a third of the way in we saw five wild turkeys. Last night Bill had told us Osceola strain of turkeys in Florida are the wiliest of all turkeys but these five seemed relatively calm.
After the Preserve trail walk we decided we had to have ice and drinking water. We knew we could get it by driving 30 miles south and things didn’t look good to the north according to the map—just two tiny little cross-roads settlements which might or might not have a store. But we headed north anyway and got lucky at Sunniland; there were only two or three houses but there was a gas station with the supplies we needed and we avoided the long round-trip south.
As we drove the 20-mile dirt road back to Bear Island we came upon our first water moccasin ever—this one coiled in the middle of the wide, dusty road. We stopped and jumped out to look him over and he immediately displayed his (or her) cotton-mouth. I approached him with a stick (to move him off the road) and he began nervously twitching his tail like a rattler as the stick touched him. Poor little guy—he was scared to death. Once we moved him into the bushes, we drove on and came upon the Fire Prairie Trail and decided to give it a try. The trailhead area had large rookeries of white ibis black vultures—almost spookily-large numbers of them--- like something out of the Hitchcock movie ‘The Birds’. The trail led us through dense woods then opened up to a savannah with palms and cypress domes, a beautiful five mile round-trip on an old oil-well road. Along the way we saw what we believe was fresh otter scat—very fishy-smelling. As we approached the end of the walk we noticed three young guys with backpacks lounging at the trailhead, not far from our van. They had spent the last two days more or less lost in the backcountry as they followed various looping ATV trails after losing their way on the Florida Trail. But they seemed in good spirits—they had blundered upon the Fire Prairie trailhead and it gave them a waypoint on their map. This also had been close enough to I-75’s cell phone tower for them to call for someone to come pick them up so they were just lounging now until their ride came.
That evening we fired up the laptop and watched the movie ‘Cube’ from part of my nephew’s collection of DVDs he lent me for our trip. That one reminds us of ‘Lost’—a ‘what-if’ study with many plot twists and turns. Perhaps it’s more reminiscent of a Twilight Zone episode— somewhat unbelievable but interesting to see where the writers are going with the storyline.
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Sunday, 4 March-
This morning we did some chores at the campsite while we waited for 1300. Today is the second day of turkey season and the campground has twenty or so hunters who fire up their ATVs around 0500 and head off the ATV trails to their blinds. But since they have to quit hunting by 1300, there’s still plenty of time for us to hike in the area without disturbing them or being mistaken for game. We talked with Sandy, one of our camp-mates, and she advised walking the ‘yellow trail’ (one of the ATV trails) which had re-opened this year after being closed for several years. When her husband, Bill, returned from hunting, he came over and advised the same. Our walk was a pretty one for the scenery around us but the further back in we got, the muddier the track became. Our path was good through the palmetto and most of the grassy field areas but became wet in the cypress. It was an interesting mud—a very slick, almost greasy, marl covering a whitish sand. Where the marl was thick and wet, that was it for walking; you were either about to slip and fall if there were any slope to it, or you had to battle to keep the marl from sucking your shoes off. The key in these areas was to find any little bit of vegetation to keep your feet afloat. Where the marl was just a thin layer over sand, the underlying sand provided good traction. The mud was just fine with Labashi who wanted to look for tracks. We saw bobcat tracks and kicked up the first deer we’ve seen in Florida. This one was a large doe and bounded through the jungle-thick foliage of the palmettos with no apparent problem. We walked in for an hour-and-a-half and would have gone further except we came to a large cypress pool we could not get around. This one was about four school-buses long and not only covered the road but extended into the foliage around it. But that was fine—we were ready to go back anyway.
Back at camp we were invited over to Sandy and Bill’s for campfire. Bill is a former painter and sandblaster who has been retired for many years and has traveled extensively. We particularly enjoyed Bill’s encyclopedic knowledge of the Florida turkey, panther, and bobcat as well as his tales of traveling through Alaska in his Airstream travel trailer in 1989.
The campfire was an interesting one. Bill burns fatwood which he gathers from the surrounding forest on his ATV. This fatwood has a turpentine-like pitch which burns easily and throws off both a lot of heat and a lot of black smoke but neither sparks nor crackles as it burns. This wood lights very easily and burns evenly and strongly until the pitch is gone, then there’s only a shell of the log shape remaining.
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Saturday, 3 March – (written at Bear Island campground)
Today we took our time in the campground. Labashi washed her hair at the only shower available, an outdoor cold-water one—but it was fine. “Refreshing”, she says.
We then went in pursuit of an airboat ride. We had seen many airboat businesses along the Tamiami Trail yesterday but the first three we tried were closed this morning. We had a chance at what I call a ‘cattle boat’, i.e., a large airboat that carries 20-or-so people, but we kept going until we found a small one we’d have to ourselves (with the pilot, of course) on the reservation and operated by the Micosukee Indians. We had a great time on our 30-minute ride. Our pilot zoomed us out into the glades at top speed and we were soon side-slipping and heeling around corners and just having a heck of a good time; we felt like kids again. He took us to an ‘Indian village’ where we took a short break to tour the chickees and that’s when we learned why the other airboat services were closed today. There’s a native festival going on. We hoped to see it but the only public one happens between Christmas and New Year’s and the others are private. Our airboat ride back to the dock was again lots of fun and Labashi and I found ourselves ‘flying’, i.e., sticking our arms out like wings and leaning with the turns. That was lots of fun. Cost for our ride was $17 per person. You can get on a cattle boat ride for $10 a person but those rides are for cows.
After our airboat ride we had lunch in the parking lot of the Indian gift shop and then drove back the Loop Road, this time to the Tree Snail Nature Trail. Labashi loves looking for tree snails and we did well here. They are hard to find, even after you realize you should be looking in shady spots in the the wild tamarind trees. We found one or two here and there then hit the jackpot—two different trees with a cluster of six snails close together.
We then continued on the Loop Road to the Gator Hook Strand trail. Labashi wanted to look for panther and bobcat sign in the mud. The trail was an old cypress-log corduroy ‘road’, i.e., cypress logs laid every few inches across the mud to form a road. That must have been a rough one. We met a photographer coming out the trail and he said there were deer, panther, and dog tracks back in there. We saw the deer and dog tracks and some bobcat tracks but we don’t think we saw any panther tracks.
After our little hike in the 90-degree heat we were worn out so headed for civilization and an ice-cream. We drove to the turnoff for Everglades City so we could fill up with gas and have an ice cream before heading back out into the sticks. By that time it was 1600 and the light was really turning nice. We drove up the Birdon Road and Turner River Roads, both nice, wide and smooth (but very dusty) dirt roads with magnificent views across the prairies and palms. We drove some 25 miles back those roads to Bear Island campground, hoping we’d be able to find a spot since we’d been told today was the first day of Florida’s turkey season and the primitive campground was likely to be very busy. We thought we’d chance it and if nothing else, get a nice drive out of it. But there was plenty of room at Bear Lake and it’s a beautiful area. We’re in a grassy, open area with palms all around us. There are lots of campsites here, many filled with hunters with their ATVs for the big hunt tomorrow (hunting is also allowed on Sundays in Florida) but we had no problem finding a nice spot. Among the campers here is a guy we met this morning at Monument Lake. He built his own truck camper, this of lightweight plywood with a fiberglass covering--- like the old boat-construction method.
After a pleasant walk around the camping area, we retired to the van for an evening of blogging and reading.
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Friday, 2 March – (written at Bear Island campground, Big Cypress National Preserve)
After a blissfully-peaceful night at Mitchell Landing campsite in Big Cypress, we drove the Loop Road through the backcountry. This is a dirt road looping 23 miles from Shark Valley around to rejoin the Tamiami Trail near Monument Lake Campground. We did the loop at no more than 15 miles per hour, stopping often to look for wildlife in the canals and sloughs (“slews”). I bet we saw 500 alligators, no more than two or three at a time in any one pool of water but there were lots of pools. Actually, the south side of the road was nearly a continuous canal, heavily overgrown with fairly open sawgrass behind it while the north side had many stands of cypress trees (called ‘strands’), generally in a few inches of water. We also saw many egrets, herons, and ibises and a new one for us, an American swallow-tailed snail kite, a hawk-like bird with a widely-split vee tail, like a swallow. This was one of the more productive wildlife roads we’ve ever driven.
Once back on the Tamiami Trail we turned toward Miami and drove a few miles to the Oasis Visitor’s Center. After talking with the rangers we took a short walk on the Florida Trail. This visitor’s center is often considered the starting point of the 1400-mile Florida Trail but it actually starts seven miles south along the Loop Road in the middle of nowhere. The section between Loop Road and Oasis is notoriously wet. Hikers routinely plot through ankle-to-knee-deep water in this area and keep a sharp lookout for water moccasins.
After the visitor’s center we drove to Monument Lake campground and registered there for the night even though it was only 1400. We read and relaxed in the van and had a wonderful steady breeze across Monument Lake to keep us cool on this 90-degree day. A few hours later we drove to Shark Valley Visitor’s Center to join a full-moon bike ride we had read about yesterday. This ride was a treat. We left the visitor’s center at 1800 and rode the tram road, stopping to watch the sun dip below the horizon and for the ranger to have us get down on our bellies on the tram road to give us a snake’s-eye view of the Everglades. As our eyes adjusted to the darkness, we realized we could see our moon-shadow. We had no lights in order to preserve our night vision but we’d still see occasional great blue herons or vees of white ibises fly over. At the far end of the tram trail is a tower and that’s where the ranger handed out chemical light sticks. We each put one on our back so the person behind would not run into us. We spent a half hour on the tower platform, looking and intently listening. We could make out a rookery of ibises below and could just make out the gators in the pool below. Afterwards we remounted our bikes and headed for the parking lot with one stop, this one a sit-down on the tram road while the ranger talked to us about our fears in the night here in gator-paradise. The ride had been pretty much bug-free up to that point but they caught up with us during the stop so we were soon ready to roll again. The ride was a 15-miler and both Labashi and I had sore tushes by the end. Our little folding bikes did very well and it was a joy to ride in a group on this perfect night.
The ride ended by 2100 and Labashi and I headed back to our campground but on the way decided we ought to see Loop Road at night. Labashi wants to see a Florida panther or (I should say ‘and’) a bobcat. This is prime habitat for both. But tonight wasn’t our night to see one. We cruised back the Loop Road for a half-hour but then turned around and headed for the campground to end a great evening.
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Thursday, 1 March – (written at Mitchell Landing campground, Big Cypress National Preserve)
We slept in until 0800 this morning at Wal-mart, then drove back across Miami to the Fairchild Tropical Gardens. This is one of the world’s premier tropical gardens and has won many awards for both the garden displays and the work they do in research and conservation of tropical plants with other countries as well as the training of graduate-level students in tropical plant specialties. The special event there now is a Dale Chihuly exhibition. Mr. Chihuly is an artist in blown glass. In this case, his exquisite glass creations are placed among the tropical plants and fountains throughout the Fairchild grounds. We were at first a bit put off by the $20 per person entrance fee but this garden and exhibition turned out to be well worth the price. One of the highlights of the day was our blundering around in a remote area of the garden and happening upon iguanas lounging in the sun. We were astounded by the tropical plants. From baobob and banana trees, to bird-of-paradise flowers to displays of fantastic orchids, a very active butterfly garden, a dense rainforest, a Madagascar desert garden, and surprise after surprise of Chihuly glasswork hidden among the plants, it was wonderful.
We left the Fairchild by 1500 and drove to a nearby Publix and shopped for groceries since last night’s Wal-mart was an old one and didn’t have a grocery section. We then headed west to the Shark Valley Visitor’s Center in the Everglades National Park along the Tamiami Trail. We only stopped there for info on two primitive campsites shown on the map. We drove on to the Mitchell Landing primitive campsite and set up for the night. We camped next to five young guys from Indiana who are passing through on spring break. We had fun chatting with them around the campfire before retiring to the van to blog and read.
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Wednesday, 28 February –
We spent today waiting for the van to be repaired at World Ford in Miami. This is one of those ‘I hope we did the right thing’ situations. I called the service guy from our hotel late this morning and learned the van had not failed any tests or had any repeat episodes of the problem. The only diagnostic codes were for an oxygen sensor and another emissions sensor. The good news is there are no codes for the electronic fuel injection or ignition module. The bad news is it’s a guess as to what caused yesterday’s mysterious problem. The best guess is fuel pump so I elected to have the sensors and fuel pump replaced and while we’re at it, change out the fuel filter again (in case the new one had gotten clogged). While the technician was doing that I spent the afternoon on the web on my laptop using the wi-fi connection in the customer waiting area. I found two web sites with forums about Ford trucks. The best one is Ford-trucks.com, which has a section dedicated to 1986-and-newer full-size Ford vans and also has a section with the text of the technical service bulletins and recalls. There were three very minor recalls for the ’94 Econoline 150 but none of them have to do with the engine. I searched some 500 messages about Econoline vans and found two reports of similar mysterious problems with the engine shutting down and starting just fine a few minutes later plus five or six other reports of running problems somewhat similar. While fuel pump was one of the possible causes, the others are throttle positioning sensor, a clogged fuel cap, an obstructed fuel-filler vent pipe, the ignition module, and the catalytic converter. Each possibility had its proponents. Well, we’re going with fuel pump and fuel filter and if that still doesn’t work then we’ll try something else.
The tech started what was estimated to be a four hour job after lunch and had to stay overtime in order to get it finished by 1800. The bill was just under $1000 (gulp!) plus the hotel room cost me $132 (with the 13% accommodations tax ripoff) so that made for a pricy day.
We left the dealer by 1830 and headed to the nearest Wal-mart where we thought we’d stock up and then head out the Tamiami Trail to a campsite. We figured this Wal-mart would not permit overnight parking and things didn’t look good in the parking lot—no RV’s in sight and it was well after dark. In the store we asked the greeter but she didn’t know and called for the manager. We waited 20 minutes or so but he didn’t show so we said we’d try the security guy we had seen cruising the parking lot. That was a trip in itself—he didn’t speak English. But two other employees were on break nearby and came to our rescue. We were indeed welcome to stay.
That turned out to be a mixed blessing. On the one hand we had a free camping spot for the night and it seemed like it would be a pretty good one. We found a row which didn’t have much traffic passing by and, after getting some ice, we settled in for the night. But this Wal-mart turned out to be a record-setter. It stands second only Staunton, VA for being the noisiest Wal-mart. After 2200 it was inundated by that special breed of Floridiots who love loud exhausts. To make matters worse, the loud exhausts kept setting off car alarms. You know those car alarms that have a series of sirens, honks, warbles, fire-engine BRACCKKKs, and whistles? Yep— they’d be set off and go through twenty or so cycles before silencing themselves. Nobody paid any attention to the alarms, they just wailed on and on for twenty minutes or so before falling silent only to start all over again after a loud exhaust or the parking lot cleaner would go by. I saw 0200 and hadn’t gotten to sleep yet. Then things settled down and we finally got some sleep. Sometimes the price of a free night at Wal-mart is pretty steep. Then again, we were awakened in our $60 per night campground in Key West at 0400, 0500, and 0600 by fishing boats roaring to life and chugging out.
(this post covers 28 February – 6 March)
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Tuesday, 6 March- (written in Picayune State Forest south campground)
This morning we drove to Everglades City and Chokoloskee. We checked out the Gulf Coast Visitor’s Center at the former and lunched there in the parking lot, then drove on the Chokoloskee to the Big House Coffee Shop for a mocha and to hook up to their wi-fi hotspot. For some reason I couldn’t get a reliable connection at the coffee shop. I finally gave up and we went to the library at Everglades City hoping for wi-fi but that was just another frustration. We had planned to spend the day in town but weren’t doing well at all with our plan to pick up email, send in the blog update, then tour the towns and get a nice meal at the end of the day.
We fled to the Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park. The visitor’s center was closed but we ran into a nice couple of volunteers who had some recommendations for hikes. We had learned from our buddy Tie-Dye at Lake Okochobee that the road into the Fakahatchee Strand (Jane’s Scenic Drive) continues on into the Picayune State Forest and ‘the Blocks’, the failed development where we could find cheap camping. But the Big Cypress map has an ominous notice: “Travel not recommended beyond this point. Get a local map from Oasis Visitor’s Center in Big Cypress Preserve”. And everyone we asked about it (other than Tie-Dye) said the roads were too bad in there and it was too easy to get lost. That of course made us curious. So we did Jane’s Scenic Drive and it was terrible—pot holes in the pot holes and then there are the pot holes beside each pot hole and a few on top of the pot holes (did I mention that there are pot holes?). We crept through at less than ten miles per hour—a LOT less. The good news is there’s nobody else back in there. We saw a pretty yellow rat-snake along the way and came upon a snake skeleton in the middle of the road and found it had been a poisonous one— we found a fang.
We waddled on through the potholes and finally came to the Picayune State Forest—where the roads don’t have ANY pot holes. In fact some of them are paved. This area is being re-habbed by the state. Historically it was a failed development of gigantic proportions. It was called ‘Golden Gate’ and is reported to have been a ripoff where banks of telemarketers sold Florida lots sight-unseen to suckers across the country. But their lots turned out to be underwater much of the year. Well, after seeing the area, I’ll be very curious to look into that. I don’t doubt it was a rip-off but there’s more to the story… this area is beautiful.
We were a bit nervous to drive out into this area of roads without road-signs. The roads are arrow-straight and laid off in very large blocks—but there aren’t any houses. The major blocks have paved roads and the roadway is in good condition (super-highway-like condition to one who just spent the afternoon easing through pot hole after pot hole). But when you come to an intersection there’s a stop sign but no road sign. So it feels like you are getting lost. But we counted the roads and canals and when we came to what we believed to be ‘Everglades Boulevard’, we saw our first and only sign—the word ‘Everglades’ painted on the road. I set that as a waypoint on the GPS and then each time we’d make a turn I’d take another waypoint. We realized that our map showed a campground only a few gi-huge-ic blocks away and the GPS also showed there were some geocaches in that area so we went for it. And sure enough we came to an intersection which indicated a geocache should be nearby and we found it—a film can wrapped in camo tape and placed at the base of a dead-end sign along the canal. We then set the GPS to the coordinates of a geocache which had a description indicating a campground was nearby and in that way found the campground which was closer than the map showed. And there we found there’s not only a campground and a boat-ramp but even a campground host. This one is part of the Picayune State Forest and costs $5 per night. We met hosts Ken and Norma from Ontario and checked in for the night by putting our $5 in an ‘iron ranger’ (a metal receptacle for our payment envelope). (Oh, yeah—and guess who they know—Tie-Dye. He was kicked out of this campground for failure to pay). Once settled in for the evening, we tracked down two more nearby geocaches—one a match-container painted green and hanging in a live-oak tree and the other a Rubbermaid sandwich-container wrapped in camo tape and sitting under palm fronds near the canal.
We spent the evening reading and blogging.
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Monday, 5 March –
Last night a cold front came in and we had a low of 42 degrees. That’s quite a change from lows in the Seventies but it felt great and we slept quite well. After breakfast we loaded up and drove the 20 miles of dirt road back to Route 29 and headed north for the Florida Panther Preserve. Along the way I turned on the GPS and noticed a nearby geocache called “© The Power” not far from I-75. We pulled into a small dirt road leading back to three or crystal-clear lakes and the GPS pointed to a power pole where we found a small canister with coordinates to the second stage of the cache a half-mile away. We followed the GPS to a palm tree along the I-75 fence where we found the ammo box. Success!
After lunch next to the lake, we drove north to the Florida Panther Preserve only to find the large gate only open a few feet—much too small to drive through. We had a cell-phone signal so called the info number on the gate and learned they’ve been having problems with the gate and it’s apparently stuck but we were welcome to park outside and walk in to the preserve. Good deal! We had the place to ourselves. The Preserve trails consisted of a 1.3 mile loop trail but it was a beauty. About a third of the way in we saw five wild turkeys. Last night Bill had told us Osceola strain of turkeys in Florida are the wiliest of all turkeys but these five seemed relatively calm.
After the Preserve trail walk we decided we had to have ice and drinking water. We knew we could get it by driving 30 miles south and things didn’t look good to the north according to the map—just two tiny little cross-roads settlements which might or might not have a store. But we headed north anyway and got lucky at Sunniland; there were only two or three houses but there was a gas station with the supplies we needed and we avoided the long round-trip south.
As we drove the 20-mile dirt road back to Bear Island we came upon our first water moccasin ever—this one coiled in the middle of the wide, dusty road. We stopped and jumped out to look him over and he immediately displayed his (or her) cotton-mouth. I approached him with a stick (to move him off the road) and he began nervously twitching his tail like a rattler as the stick touched him. Poor little guy—he was scared to death. Once we moved him into the bushes, we drove on and came upon the Fire Prairie Trail and decided to give it a try. The trailhead area had large rookeries of white ibis black vultures—almost spookily-large numbers of them--- like something out of the Hitchcock movie ‘The Birds’. The trail led us through dense woods then opened up to a savannah with palms and cypress domes, a beautiful five mile round-trip on an old oil-well road. Along the way we saw what we believe was fresh otter scat—very fishy-smelling. As we approached the end of the walk we noticed three young guys with backpacks lounging at the trailhead, not far from our van. They had spent the last two days more or less lost in the backcountry as they followed various looping ATV trails after losing their way on the Florida Trail. But they seemed in good spirits—they had blundered upon the Fire Prairie trailhead and it gave them a waypoint on their map. This also had been close enough to I-75’s cell phone tower for them to call for someone to come pick them up so they were just lounging now until their ride came.
That evening we fired up the laptop and watched the movie ‘Cube’ from part of my nephew’s collection of DVDs he lent me for our trip. That one reminds us of ‘Lost’—a ‘what-if’ study with many plot twists and turns. Perhaps it’s more reminiscent of a Twilight Zone episode— somewhat unbelievable but interesting to see where the writers are going with the storyline.
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Sunday, 4 March-
This morning we did some chores at the campsite while we waited for 1300. Today is the second day of turkey season and the campground has twenty or so hunters who fire up their ATVs around 0500 and head off the ATV trails to their blinds. But since they have to quit hunting by 1300, there’s still plenty of time for us to hike in the area without disturbing them or being mistaken for game. We talked with Sandy, one of our camp-mates, and she advised walking the ‘yellow trail’ (one of the ATV trails) which had re-opened this year after being closed for several years. When her husband, Bill, returned from hunting, he came over and advised the same. Our walk was a pretty one for the scenery around us but the further back in we got, the muddier the track became. Our path was good through the palmetto and most of the grassy field areas but became wet in the cypress. It was an interesting mud—a very slick, almost greasy, marl covering a whitish sand. Where the marl was thick and wet, that was it for walking; you were either about to slip and fall if there were any slope to it, or you had to battle to keep the marl from sucking your shoes off. The key in these areas was to find any little bit of vegetation to keep your feet afloat. Where the marl was just a thin layer over sand, the underlying sand provided good traction. The mud was just fine with Labashi who wanted to look for tracks. We saw bobcat tracks and kicked up the first deer we’ve seen in Florida. This one was a large doe and bounded through the jungle-thick foliage of the palmettos with no apparent problem. We walked in for an hour-and-a-half and would have gone further except we came to a large cypress pool we could not get around. This one was about four school-buses long and not only covered the road but extended into the foliage around it. But that was fine—we were ready to go back anyway.
Back at camp we were invited over to Sandy and Bill’s for campfire. Bill is a former painter and sandblaster who has been retired for many years and has traveled extensively. We particularly enjoyed Bill’s encyclopedic knowledge of the Florida turkey, panther, and bobcat as well as his tales of traveling through Alaska in his Airstream travel trailer in 1989.
The campfire was an interesting one. Bill burns fatwood which he gathers from the surrounding forest on his ATV. This fatwood has a turpentine-like pitch which burns easily and throws off both a lot of heat and a lot of black smoke but neither sparks nor crackles as it burns. This wood lights very easily and burns evenly and strongly until the pitch is gone, then there’s only a shell of the log shape remaining.
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Saturday, 3 March – (written at Bear Island campground)
Today we took our time in the campground. Labashi washed her hair at the only shower available, an outdoor cold-water one—but it was fine. “Refreshing”, she says.
We then went in pursuit of an airboat ride. We had seen many airboat businesses along the Tamiami Trail yesterday but the first three we tried were closed this morning. We had a chance at what I call a ‘cattle boat’, i.e., a large airboat that carries 20-or-so people, but we kept going until we found a small one we’d have to ourselves (with the pilot, of course) on the reservation and operated by the Micosukee Indians. We had a great time on our 30-minute ride. Our pilot zoomed us out into the glades at top speed and we were soon side-slipping and heeling around corners and just having a heck of a good time; we felt like kids again. He took us to an ‘Indian village’ where we took a short break to tour the chickees and that’s when we learned why the other airboat services were closed today. There’s a native festival going on. We hoped to see it but the only public one happens between Christmas and New Year’s and the others are private. Our airboat ride back to the dock was again lots of fun and Labashi and I found ourselves ‘flying’, i.e., sticking our arms out like wings and leaning with the turns. That was lots of fun. Cost for our ride was $17 per person. You can get on a cattle boat ride for $10 a person but those rides are for cows.
After our airboat ride we had lunch in the parking lot of the Indian gift shop and then drove back the Loop Road, this time to the Tree Snail Nature Trail. Labashi loves looking for tree snails and we did well here. They are hard to find, even after you realize you should be looking in shady spots in the the wild tamarind trees. We found one or two here and there then hit the jackpot—two different trees with a cluster of six snails close together.
We then continued on the Loop Road to the Gator Hook Strand trail. Labashi wanted to look for panther and bobcat sign in the mud. The trail was an old cypress-log corduroy ‘road’, i.e., cypress logs laid every few inches across the mud to form a road. That must have been a rough one. We met a photographer coming out the trail and he said there were deer, panther, and dog tracks back in there. We saw the deer and dog tracks and some bobcat tracks but we don’t think we saw any panther tracks.
After our little hike in the 90-degree heat we were worn out so headed for civilization and an ice-cream. We drove to the turnoff for Everglades City so we could fill up with gas and have an ice cream before heading back out into the sticks. By that time it was 1600 and the light was really turning nice. We drove up the Birdon Road and Turner River Roads, both nice, wide and smooth (but very dusty) dirt roads with magnificent views across the prairies and palms. We drove some 25 miles back those roads to Bear Island campground, hoping we’d be able to find a spot since we’d been told today was the first day of Florida’s turkey season and the primitive campground was likely to be very busy. We thought we’d chance it and if nothing else, get a nice drive out of it. But there was plenty of room at Bear Lake and it’s a beautiful area. We’re in a grassy, open area with palms all around us. There are lots of campsites here, many filled with hunters with their ATVs for the big hunt tomorrow (hunting is also allowed on Sundays in Florida) but we had no problem finding a nice spot. Among the campers here is a guy we met this morning at Monument Lake. He built his own truck camper, this of lightweight plywood with a fiberglass covering--- like the old boat-construction method.
After a pleasant walk around the camping area, we retired to the van for an evening of blogging and reading.
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Friday, 2 March – (written at Bear Island campground, Big Cypress National Preserve)
After a blissfully-peaceful night at Mitchell Landing campsite in Big Cypress, we drove the Loop Road through the backcountry. This is a dirt road looping 23 miles from Shark Valley around to rejoin the Tamiami Trail near Monument Lake Campground. We did the loop at no more than 15 miles per hour, stopping often to look for wildlife in the canals and sloughs (“slews”). I bet we saw 500 alligators, no more than two or three at a time in any one pool of water but there were lots of pools. Actually, the south side of the road was nearly a continuous canal, heavily overgrown with fairly open sawgrass behind it while the north side had many stands of cypress trees (called ‘strands’), generally in a few inches of water. We also saw many egrets, herons, and ibises and a new one for us, an American swallow-tailed snail kite, a hawk-like bird with a widely-split vee tail, like a swallow. This was one of the more productive wildlife roads we’ve ever driven.
Once back on the Tamiami Trail we turned toward Miami and drove a few miles to the Oasis Visitor’s Center. After talking with the rangers we took a short walk on the Florida Trail. This visitor’s center is often considered the starting point of the 1400-mile Florida Trail but it actually starts seven miles south along the Loop Road in the middle of nowhere. The section between Loop Road and Oasis is notoriously wet. Hikers routinely plot through ankle-to-knee-deep water in this area and keep a sharp lookout for water moccasins.
After the visitor’s center we drove to Monument Lake campground and registered there for the night even though it was only 1400. We read and relaxed in the van and had a wonderful steady breeze across Monument Lake to keep us cool on this 90-degree day. A few hours later we drove to Shark Valley Visitor’s Center to join a full-moon bike ride we had read about yesterday. This ride was a treat. We left the visitor’s center at 1800 and rode the tram road, stopping to watch the sun dip below the horizon and for the ranger to have us get down on our bellies on the tram road to give us a snake’s-eye view of the Everglades. As our eyes adjusted to the darkness, we realized we could see our moon-shadow. We had no lights in order to preserve our night vision but we’d still see occasional great blue herons or vees of white ibises fly over. At the far end of the tram trail is a tower and that’s where the ranger handed out chemical light sticks. We each put one on our back so the person behind would not run into us. We spent a half hour on the tower platform, looking and intently listening. We could make out a rookery of ibises below and could just make out the gators in the pool below. Afterwards we remounted our bikes and headed for the parking lot with one stop, this one a sit-down on the tram road while the ranger talked to us about our fears in the night here in gator-paradise. The ride had been pretty much bug-free up to that point but they caught up with us during the stop so we were soon ready to roll again. The ride was a 15-miler and both Labashi and I had sore tushes by the end. Our little folding bikes did very well and it was a joy to ride in a group on this perfect night.
The ride ended by 2100 and Labashi and I headed back to our campground but on the way decided we ought to see Loop Road at night. Labashi wants to see a Florida panther or (I should say ‘and’) a bobcat. This is prime habitat for both. But tonight wasn’t our night to see one. We cruised back the Loop Road for a half-hour but then turned around and headed for the campground to end a great evening.
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Thursday, 1 March – (written at Mitchell Landing campground, Big Cypress National Preserve)
We slept in until 0800 this morning at Wal-mart, then drove back across Miami to the Fairchild Tropical Gardens. This is one of the world’s premier tropical gardens and has won many awards for both the garden displays and the work they do in research and conservation of tropical plants with other countries as well as the training of graduate-level students in tropical plant specialties. The special event there now is a Dale Chihuly exhibition. Mr. Chihuly is an artist in blown glass. In this case, his exquisite glass creations are placed among the tropical plants and fountains throughout the Fairchild grounds. We were at first a bit put off by the $20 per person entrance fee but this garden and exhibition turned out to be well worth the price. One of the highlights of the day was our blundering around in a remote area of the garden and happening upon iguanas lounging in the sun. We were astounded by the tropical plants. From baobob and banana trees, to bird-of-paradise flowers to displays of fantastic orchids, a very active butterfly garden, a dense rainforest, a Madagascar desert garden, and surprise after surprise of Chihuly glasswork hidden among the plants, it was wonderful.
We left the Fairchild by 1500 and drove to a nearby Publix and shopped for groceries since last night’s Wal-mart was an old one and didn’t have a grocery section. We then headed west to the Shark Valley Visitor’s Center in the Everglades National Park along the Tamiami Trail. We only stopped there for info on two primitive campsites shown on the map. We drove on to the Mitchell Landing primitive campsite and set up for the night. We camped next to five young guys from Indiana who are passing through on spring break. We had fun chatting with them around the campfire before retiring to the van to blog and read.
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Wednesday, 28 February –
We spent today waiting for the van to be repaired at World Ford in Miami. This is one of those ‘I hope we did the right thing’ situations. I called the service guy from our hotel late this morning and learned the van had not failed any tests or had any repeat episodes of the problem. The only diagnostic codes were for an oxygen sensor and another emissions sensor. The good news is there are no codes for the electronic fuel injection or ignition module. The bad news is it’s a guess as to what caused yesterday’s mysterious problem. The best guess is fuel pump so I elected to have the sensors and fuel pump replaced and while we’re at it, change out the fuel filter again (in case the new one had gotten clogged). While the technician was doing that I spent the afternoon on the web on my laptop using the wi-fi connection in the customer waiting area. I found two web sites with forums about Ford trucks. The best one is Ford-trucks.com, which has a section dedicated to 1986-and-newer full-size Ford vans and also has a section with the text of the technical service bulletins and recalls. There were three very minor recalls for the ’94 Econoline 150 but none of them have to do with the engine. I searched some 500 messages about Econoline vans and found two reports of similar mysterious problems with the engine shutting down and starting just fine a few minutes later plus five or six other reports of running problems somewhat similar. While fuel pump was one of the possible causes, the others are throttle positioning sensor, a clogged fuel cap, an obstructed fuel-filler vent pipe, the ignition module, and the catalytic converter. Each possibility had its proponents. Well, we’re going with fuel pump and fuel filter and if that still doesn’t work then we’ll try something else.
The tech started what was estimated to be a four hour job after lunch and had to stay overtime in order to get it finished by 1800. The bill was just under $1000 (gulp!) plus the hotel room cost me $132 (with the 13% accommodations tax ripoff) so that made for a pricy day.
We left the dealer by 1830 and headed to the nearest Wal-mart where we thought we’d stock up and then head out the Tamiami Trail to a campsite. We figured this Wal-mart would not permit overnight parking and things didn’t look good in the parking lot—no RV’s in sight and it was well after dark. In the store we asked the greeter but she didn’t know and called for the manager. We waited 20 minutes or so but he didn’t show so we said we’d try the security guy we had seen cruising the parking lot. That was a trip in itself—he didn’t speak English. But two other employees were on break nearby and came to our rescue. We were indeed welcome to stay.
That turned out to be a mixed blessing. On the one hand we had a free camping spot for the night and it seemed like it would be a pretty good one. We found a row which didn’t have much traffic passing by and, after getting some ice, we settled in for the night. But this Wal-mart turned out to be a record-setter. It stands second only Staunton, VA for being the noisiest Wal-mart. After 2200 it was inundated by that special breed of Floridiots who love loud exhausts. To make matters worse, the loud exhausts kept setting off car alarms. You know those car alarms that have a series of sirens, honks, warbles, fire-engine BRACCKKKs, and whistles? Yep— they’d be set off and go through twenty or so cycles before silencing themselves. Nobody paid any attention to the alarms, they just wailed on and on for twenty minutes or so before falling silent only to start all over again after a loud exhaust or the parking lot cleaner would go by. I saw 0200 and hadn’t gotten to sleep yet. Then things settled down and we finally got some sleep. Sometimes the price of a free night at Wal-mart is pretty steep. Then again, we were awakened in our $60 per night campground in Key West at 0400, 0500, and 0600 by fishing boats roaring to life and chugging out.
posted by Bezabor&Labashi | 23:59
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