Picayune State Forest, Naples art galleries, Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, Fakahatchee Strand slog, Fire Prairie Trail, Bear Island Grade Road, Ten Thousand Islands (again), Collier-Seminole State Park (posted from Naples Central Library, Naples, FL)

(this post covers 7 – 12 March, 2007)

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Monday, 12 March –

We’ve been reading a good book about the Everglades called ‘Liquid Land’ by Ted Levin. This morning Labashi told me about the chapter on a trip down the Wilderness Waterway from Everglades City to Flamingo. We decided we should go back to the park office at Everglades City and talk to the rangers about it. And while we were there we could pick up some needed supplies.
After a short re-supply stop at Everglades City we lunched in the parking lot and then spent the next two hours talking to rangers, poring over maps and checking out day-paddling guides to the Ten Thousand Islands. We also were very fortunate to have a long conversation with park volunteer Tommy Newell who is a fishing guide in Yellowstone in the summer and spends his winters in Florida as a volunteer at Everglades National Park. He has spent a lot of boat time in the Ten Thousand Islands (and just returned from a week out there) and even gave us his card to call him with any more questions we might have. We now believe we know what it would take and what we could expect to see out there. This would be a perfect trip for the new jonboat Maypo and I bought early last month. It would be a great trip to dream about and prepare for next winter.
After Everglades City we drove west across the Tamiami Trail to Collier-Seminole State Park. We were able to get a campsite this time and enjoyed the showers and riding our bikes through the park roads and down to the boat launch. On one of my rides through the campground I ran into Bob Bishop, the guy from Utah who built his own fiberglass truck camper. We had first met him at Monument Lake and later saw him at Bear Island. Bob has just returned from two nights in the Ten Thousand Islands by kayak and is taking a re-supply day before heading to the Keys for a couple of days.
We continue to have remarkably fine weather. Daytime temperatures are in the high Seventies to mid-Eighties, nights mid-Fifties to mid-Sixties. It’s quite hot in the sun but any little bit of shade brings instant relief and there’s nearly always a breeze. Good ol’ Mocha Joe gets way too hot if we park him in the sun with the windows and doors closed but we generally try to park away from everyone else (in the shade if possible) and open the doors when we return to let the breeze carry away the accumulated heat. If we can have the doors open and have a bit of a breeze, we’re very comfortable in Mocha Joe even in full sun on a Wal-mart parking lot. We’ve had only one day with rain so far and that one was the one we spent in Miami waiting for the van to be fixed. We’ve had very few bugs. In Flamingo we’d have an hour or so of no-see-ums at dusk and if we hung around outside too long in shorts, we’d pick up a bite or two around the ankles. I think I’ve seen a grand total of a dozen mosquitoes so far. Mosquitoes need water pools to breed and our weather has been very dry. The ranger-lady at Everglades City told us the mosquito population has been very low since Hurricane Wilma passed through in October 2005. She said she had only worn insect repellent twice through all of last summer—and she’s working in prime mosquito habitat.

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Sunday, 11 March –

Today we decided we’d take a morning walk up the Bear Island Grade, a nice little two-track hiking and biking trail into the backcountry. We first spoke with the wildlife check-station ranger and learned the local hunters here have scored five turkeys, about normal for the first week of the season.
We walked north up the two-track and it quickly opened to beautiful Florida savannah of sawgrass, palm trees (royal and sabal palms) and a few tall pines. Then our surroundings closed in to very thick palmetto, slash pine, cypress, and live oaks. The two-track is a raised road with culverts which allow water to flow between the glades on each side. Around these culverts we tended to see the most wildlife since they generally have tiny fish in the pools on each side. Some hosted egrets and ibises, some an alligator. About an hour into the walk we saw a family of raccoons nearby, about five yards away. We first saw one of the little ones in a grassy area and thought it might be a marsh bunny (we could only see its side at first) but we soon saw the others emerge. We thoroughly enjoyed watching them investigate every little thing in front of them.
We soon came to ‘the gator hole’ which consists of two sizable ponds, one on each side of the road. The west side one is muddy-looking, the east-side one an emerald green. Each held three or four gators, one about a twelve-footer, the others six or seven-footers. The emerald pond was hopping with feeding fish and it was comical to watch the water surface erupt in multiple places at once, often very close to a gator but with no effect on them. They were just there for some sun this morning.
After another twenty minutes of walking we decided we’d better turn back- the day was getting hot. As we neared the gator hole, we saw a deer emerge from the underbrush and pause on the road, looking our direction. Soon another joined it. Our binoculars revealed them to be button-bucks—very sleek and very healthy looking, each with two small lumps where their antlers were starting to grow. We watched them ease into the bushes and evaporate from view as if they were ghosts.
Five minutes later we saw a doe come onto the road from the east side. Soon two more joined it. They saw us but didn’t ‘throw the flag’ (their white tails) until the wind changed and carried our scent their direction. Even then they only went off the road ten yards and watched us slowly pass by.
Once back at Mocha Joe it was time for lunch and a well-deserved break. We drove back to our campsite and found it had the most wonderful breeze. We elected to spend the afternoon reading and listening to podcasts (‘Florida Stories’, a few ‘Explore Pennsylvania’ episodes, a ‘This American Life’ episode’, a ‘PopSci’ (Popular Science) episode, and two Minnesota Public Radio ‘Loopcasts’. The day was absolutely perfect. The thermometer said 83.4 degrees, the sky was blue, we were parked in a nice little slash-pine grove, and we had a gentle breeze blowing through the van…. just perfect for a lazy day of recovering from our walk.
By early evening we were ready to go out again. Today was the Spring Ahead time change so we knew we had an extra hour to play. We drove down Turner River Road to the Fire Prairie Trail we had walked a few days ago. We knew we’d at least see the large and noisy black-vulture and white-ibis roosts at the trailhead there and we could walk back the trail and perhaps see the otter we know is frequenting the area (from having seen his/her scat on our last walk there). The Fire Prairie Trail is a little spooky even in daylight since it’s very narrow, has heavy cypress swamp on both sides, and is overgrown. Going in we were very aware of the new sounds of the evening. We walked until the trail opened up to sawgrass prairie which was rapidly disappearing before our eyes as darkness fell. We then turned back and walked at what I’d call a ‘purposeful’ pace back toward the van. The purpose was to get back to the van before something ate us.
After the adrenalin rush of the trail back to the van we walked a bit down the Turner River Road to the larger part of the ibis roost to listen to the din of the birds settling in for the night. Then we retreated to the van and drove back to our roost—er, campsite -- for the night.

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Saturday, 10 March –

Today was an extra-GREAT day. We started off the morning by heading east in the Picayune State Forest to reach the Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve and the pot-holed Jane’s Scenic Drive. As we passed a sign telling us to slow down because this is panther habitat, Labashi said she’d like to have a picture of the sign. I stopped in the roadway and shifted into reverse. At that moment we both saw a large bobcat cross the forest road from left to right out ahead of us. The bobcat was a large one, dark and loping very purposefully across the open area to reach the treeline. FAN-TAS-TIC!!!! We’ve seen our first bobcat! And it’s only nine o’clock in the morning!
We strained to see the bobcat in the woods but it was much too thick. We then drove on into the Fakahatchee Strand, first stopping at a geocache. As we stepped out of the van we heard very distinctive splashing in a small canal-like area along the road. The splashing turned out to be fish feeding on smaller fish. As we watched, Labashi noticed a snake lazing on the tree branch and partially in the water. We believe it was a harmless black watersnake. Labashi took some pictures and told me she could see that the snake had tied itself into a loop—a loose knot-- on the branch and had stuck its head through the loop in order to support itself hanging from the branch.
We drove on to our goal for today—a trail known as ‘K2’. This one sits behind a small campsite where we met an older Florida couple preparing to have a picnic. The gentleman told us he has been living in the Everglades for some 60 years and bicycles this dirt road a couple of times a month and as far as he knows there is no trail behind the campground. But of course there was—and it was a doozy. To reach it, you first take the trail to the outhouse behind the campground but pass the outhouse and continue on a grassy path. This was apparently why the gentleman thought there’s no path—it just looks like an open area leading nowhere. But once you reach the edge of the woods, a small, single-board-width boardwalk begins. It crosses very swampy area and the weeds along the trail soon close in on the boardwalk. After a hundred yards, the boardwalk ends and you walk through heavily-overgrown trail with swampy-looking area on both sides, often brushing aside ferns to make your way. Another several hundred yards and the trail split multiple directions, all into cypress swamp. We went as far as we thought we could without getting forever lost but as we prepared to turn back, we heard voices ahead of us. It was a bromeliad and orchids club out on a slog through the cypress swamp. They had seen orchids north of where we were and showed us a rare bromeliad where we met. As we talked, I noticed in the distance a long measuring tape strung from the trees and leading the direction they had come. They had no idea why it’s there (and neither do we) but it allowed us to proceed with some hope of finding our way back. After leaving the club group we followed the tapeline for another few hundred feet before it ended and another started and then that one too ended and that’s where I took a GPS waypoint. We continued on and soon were up over our calves in water and occasionally losing a shoe in the muck. This was the slog we had been looking for. But we soon realized we could very easily become lost--- because now we WERE lost. We had a general idea of the direction we had come (only because we had nothing but water ahead of us and a little less water behind us) but we decided it would be a good time to figure out where the tape line end was. But because we were under a heavy canopy of trees, the GPS had lost its signal. We headed back the general way we had come and finally found an open enough spot for the GPS to pick up a signal and thus backtracked our way back to the end of the tape line and therefore back to the trail out to the campsite. We had only spent two hours slogging, but that was plenty for today. But I must say we enjoyed the slog immensely. The area looked like the swampiest swamp you’ve ever seen but the water was cool and clear. The mud was a very slippery and slimy mud and you had to be careful not to lose a shoe to it but it also somehow seemed clean or fresh. We saw many ibises and a few egrets and many anoles but no snakes. All in all our first slog was a great success.
Back at the van we took a break and then drove on out Jane’s Scenic Drive to the hard road. We drove down 29 to the Tamiami Trail and drove west to the Collier-Seminole State Park where we hoped to find a campsite for the night. The park turned out to be full but we knew it wasn’t far to Bear Island and a free campsite among this weekend’s turkey hunters. We therefore drove on down 29 to Everglades City and Chokoloskee again, this time looking for a nice restaurant. We finally settled on the ‘Seafood Depot’ where Labashi had a couple of margaritas and a gator-tail and crabcakes dinner while I had a couple of good ol’ Florida-style hi-test bushwhackers and a meal of broiled scallops. This was our first fancy dinner out of this trip and we did it up right.
After dinner we drove back up 29 to Bear Island and selected a different campsite, this one well away from the good-ol’-boys and their noisy generators (actually, they’re very good about shutting down the generators by 2100). We took a walk as the sun set and saw two barred owls in the open field across from us, one very close. We walked to the campsite where we had stayed last week and saw Bill and Sandy there so caught them up on our adventures since last seeing them.
We spent the evening blogging and reading.

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Friday, 9 March –

Today we drove into Naples for a ‘city day’. Labashi wanted to see some art so we drove into the city center, near upscale Fifth Avenue. On the way we stopped along the ocean for a short walk on their wonderful ‘sugar sand’ beach--- perfectly white as far as we could see.
After parking we each had an early lunch. We splurged on mimosas and then Labashi had the shrimp and spinach in phyllo and I had an excellent-plus crabcake sandwich. Naples would be easy to get used to.
We then walked the Fifth Avenue art galleries and then up to the Harmon-Meeker Gallery on Ninth Street to see the egg-tempura works by Robert Vickery (we had read about them on the web). Afterwards we passed the Naples Library on the way back to the van and stopped in to ask if they have free wi-fi (they do). Once we reached the van we then drove the few blocks to the library and parked outside where we picked up the wi-fi signal for our email and blogging connection. We then went into the library and spent a few hours reading in the newpapers and periodicals section. I happened upon an article about ‘the blocks’ of the Picayune State Forest in the local public television magazine. There I learned more about the plan to re-hab the South Blocks. The state spent $125 million buying up all the land in the South Blocks and has begun tearing up the roads and canals in order to restore the hydrology of the area. I was surprised to learn the project may take 30-50 years to restore an adequate water flow so the area can return to the Everglades ecology which was destroyed by the roads and canals of the Golden Gate housing project.
After a few hours at the library we departed for our campground in the Picayune State Forest and soon had Mocha Joe sitting in the slash-pines near the horse paddocks. That evening we listened to more Old Time Radio podcasts including two more special-edition programs telling the story of Joan of Arc plus a 1942 Motion Picture Industry promotional program for War Bonds.

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Thursday, 8 March –

Today we drove to the north side of Naples to the Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary. This is an Audubon facility which has been voted best nature center in Florida but perhaps more importantly, it’s the home of the last remaining stand of old-growth cypress trees. It has a 2.25 mile boardwalk through the cypress.
When we learned we could walk the boardwalk for $20 or join the Audubon Society for $25 and be admitted to the facility for free, that was an easy decision—we joined the Society.
The walk was wonderful. We spent two and a half hours dawdling along the boardwalk and we were busy the whole time. We saw red-shouldered hawks, yellow-rumped warblers, catbirds, woodpeckers, ibises, egrets, swallow-tailed kites, grackles, a cardinal, a raccoon, yellow-crowned night herons, cooters, box turtles, common moorhens, black and red vultures, bitterns, and a Carolina wren. And the old cypress trees are huge—600 years old and eight feet thick.
After our Corkscrew Sanctuary walk we headed back to our horse-trail campsite in the state forest ($5 a night!) and spent an hour chatting with ‘Indiana’ and ‘Florida’, the two turkey hunters (they call us “Pennsylvania”) sharing our campground. They are two very interesting good ol’ boys. We learned how best to cook an Osceola wild turkey (throw away everything but the breast, cut the breast into small strips, soak them overnight in buttermilk, roll them in breading, deep-fry them in peanut oil until they just start to float and then have a “two-fork” meal, i.e., use one fork to eat the best turkey you’ve ever had and the other to keep the other guys away--- and if you are eating a ‘jenny’ turkey, you’re going to need three forks, it’s THAT good). We also learned about flintlock and cap-and-ball percussion gun Rendezvous get-togethers these guys attend (a pre-1830 rendezvous means flintlock only, the pre-1840 rendezvous will include percussion guns), about the snake-proof boots and/or gaiters worn by (some) turkey hunters, when to shoot a cottonmouth (“if the cottonmouth is as thick as your forearm and it’s head is as big as your fist, don’t hesitate to shoot it; those will attack you”) and lots and lots of stories. It’s amazing what you can learn just by asking a turkey hunter how it went today.
After a supper of baby-back ribs from the local country store and some Idahoan Four-Cheese mashed potatoes (WOW, those are good!) we listened to ‘This Week in Newfoundland and Labrador’ podcasts from CBC Radio One and then did some blogging and reading about these ever-fascinating Everglades.

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Wednesday, 7 March –

Today we drove into Naples to re-supply and to connect to the web for our email and blog update. We noticed there was a nearby Wal-Mart according to our Wal-Mart Atlas (the Wal-mart Atlas is a special version of the Rand-McNally Road Atlas we bought at a Wal-mart for $5. It has tables listing the Wal-Marts in the US and Canada. For many it provides basic directions, such as ‘Near I-75 and Collier Blvd’ and provides a phone number as well as an indication of whether the Wal-mart is a 24-hour Wal-mart or not. It has proven easier to use and more helpful than looking them up on the Delorme Street Atlas software on the laptop.)
We spent the better part of two hours shopping there and then went in search of a free wi-fi hotspot. I brought along the Florida portion of the listings at wifi-freespot.com and selected a Calistoga Bakery Café. That turned out to be very much like the Paneras we like to frequent for this—a nice little upscale bakery and coffee shop which doesn’t mind if you plug in your laptop’s power brick while sipping a coffee and surfing the web.
We were thankful to learn that our problems connecting up at Chokoloskee were apparently a problem at the coffee shop rather than with our laptop since the connection here came up quickly and at full available bandwidth. We needed only a few minutes to pick up and respond to emails and ten minutes or so to upload the blog entry. But I am going to have to figure out what to do about podcast downloads from iTunes. There were 25 of them waiting and we now have 535 podcasts on the iPod, some two-thirds of the iPod’s capacity at this point. Sometime soon I’m going to have to start deleting--- we’re getting many more in than we’re listening to at this point. But I can’t bear to delete any I’ve not heard yet!
After the coffee shop we headed back out to the Picayune State Forest campground. We’ve stayed the last two days at Belle Meade Horse Trails, a very pretty little campground with paddocks for horses and a series of horse trails. We’re in the campground with two turkey hunters camping by tent and an RV parked way off in a corner plus some day-riders, i.e., some local folks who bring their horses in to ride for a few hours but leave before dark.
Tonight we listened to several Old Time Radio podcasts. We first listened to a 1934 drama with Don Ameche but abandoned it out of boredom after a while. Then we listened to two 1948 radio shows paired up by their common subject, Joan of Arc. The first was a CBS radio show called “You Were There” and the second an NBC program called “We Came This Way”. The former pretended to have radio announcers following the unfolding events of May 31, 1431 when Joan of Arc was burned at the stake. The latter was an NBC University of the Air program (good for college credit at the time) which began the story as two WW I doughboys approached Rouen, France. The characters told some of the story and some parts of it were re-enacted. We loved hearing the story in the two very different styles. The program reminds us of television in the 50’s and 60’s when we were growing up and its occasional attempts at serious programming.