Key West, Everglades City and Chokoloskee, Blackwater River, Bear Island, Fakahatchee slough-slog, Picayune Strand, Okaloacoochee Slough, Daytona, Ocala National Forest

(posted from Dunkin Donuts, Deland, FL)
(This post covers 27 February to 4 March, 2009)

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Wednesday, 4 March –

This morning we headed out into the sand roads of the Ocala National Forest. We were just hitting a few things while still within easy striking distance of Orlando Airport for Orat’s flight late in the day.
We first drove west to Big Scrub campground. This one is an ATV rider’s paradise but because of the cold weather there was only one camper there this morning. I spoke with the campground host volunteer and learned from her that the Farles’ Prairie campground had been closed because there are two bears in the area. She knows this because a Boy Scout troop had come in to Big Scrub unannounced after the bears had come into their camp and the next day the signs went up closing the campground for the season.
She asked if I needed a hunting dog and nodded toward five skinny hounds on the back of the property. These are strays which hunters have lost or abandoned. When I expressed surprise that hunters wouldn’t have come by to look for their dogs, she said these didn’t have radio collars so they probably weren’t good hunters and had been abandoned by their owners. She and another volunteer care for them both here and at another site a few miles up the road. She said she has seen two bears in that area too.
We then drove up the forest road to the public shooting range where we met two old-timers wailing away with assault rifles, an M16 and an AK47. The new range rules now prohibit rapid fire (which to some guys is the point of having an assault rifle) and require two seconds between shots.
The old-timer we talked with most was wearing camo fatigues and a camo hat with VIET NAM in large letters with a sharp-shooter’s badge sewed on. He joked about our having the kayak, saying we couldn’t launch it there. I replied, saying it wasn’t for paddling, it was our target for the day. Could he hit that?
I’m probably lucky that he didn’t fire on the kayak but he laughed and said he could hit a clay pigeon on the far embankment (about 150 yards away) with iron sights. He was obviously proud of his shooting ability and he wasn’t shy about telling us about it. Good for him!
He also made a point of telling us he’s a Christian. When he learned where Orat was from, he told a long story about his missionary work in New York--- building a church in Brooklyn (which is, of course, nowhere near Orat’s place in upstate New York). Anyway, he was yet another Florida backcountry character and we enjoyed meeting him. (I should have asked his name. It was probably “Killer” or “Crack(er)Shot” or something like that.
Before leaving, Orat used the pit toilet and then pointed out the four bullet holes in the door and back wall. And I pointed out the two-dozen bullet holes in the Handicapped Parking sign. Some of these boys seem to have a problem with muzzle control!
We then drove north and checked out the Moorehead launch ramp (I’ve got to go back there) and then Salt Springs and the north-end visitor’s center, campground, and launch ramp.
After lunch, our impending appointment at Orlando began drawing us south. We took a short tour of Juniper Springs and I showed Orat the spectacular spring and canoe launch area.
We then headed for Orlando in earnest. We made the airport in plenty of time and as I dropped him off we chatted a bit about what a great trip we had had together. From the get-go we were lucky. Among the highlights:
- the spur-wearing cowboys (and cowgirl) at lunch at Yeehaw Junction
- the cow country ranches between Orlando and Okeechobee
- the views of Lake Okeechobee (bending with the curvature of the earth) from our viewpoint on the 441 bridge
- the sugar-cane country from Belle Glade to Florida City
- our night-time interaction with the mating-season gators at the Anhinga Trail in the Everglades
- our afternoon boat exploration of the southern end of the Wilderness Waterway from Flamingo, across Whitewater Bay to Shark River
- sunset and bike-riding through the streets of Key West near Mallory Square
- three successive days of very good key-lime pie for dessert in the Keys and Everglades
- Alligators and camping at the freebie campsite (Mitchell Landing) on the Loop Road in the Everglades
- Tree snails on the walk on Loop Road
- Everglades City (and a vist to the Rod and Gun Club) and lunch in Chokoloskee at the Havana Café (where we split flan and key-lime pie for dessert)
- A spectacular afternoon boating trip through the mangroves of the Blackwater River and the dolphins we saw in the Gulf of Mexico in the late-day sun.
- Our high-speed drive up the Turner River Road, dodging a raccoon, a great blue heron, and a bobcat and our night at Bear Island.
- Our slough-slog in the Fakahatchee Strand (where we lost the trail and had to follow the GPS across the swamp to get out)
- Our visits to the Picayune Strand State Forest camps (which we somehow found even though the GPS seemed to be malfunctioning)
- Our evening in the Okaloacoochee Slough State Forest, looking for panther tracks and seeing feral hogs the next morning
- the orange-groves country around Lake Wales and Avon Park (and my first visit to a Checkers)
- Farles Prairie and running into Erie Joe (Orat calls him “Eerie Joe”) at Lake Dorr
- A day at Daytona Bike Week
- A day cruising the Ocala National Forest roads

What a vacation! THANKS, ORAT!!!!!!

After dropping Orat off I then headed back toward Lake Dorr but detoured to Deland to hit the library. Unfortunately, they didn’t have wireless so I went to the nearest Dunkin Donuts and connected there. I had a nice, long conversation with Labashi and then updated the blog before heading back to camp.

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Tuesday, 3 March-

It was COLD last night. The overnight low was somewhere in the mid-30’s and I had foolishly packed away Labashi’s cold-weather sleeping bag so Orat and I were trying to get by with a light blanket each and my featherweight down bag spread over top of us. We were fine, it was just a bit of a surprise that the temperature had dropped so low.
After breakfast we drove into Daytona for a day at Bike Week ’09. We parked behind the Speedway and took a tram to the manufacturer tents. We enjoyed seeing the new bikes but were also very happy to walk through the extensive bike-parking lots to see the great variety of personally-owned bikes. We were surprised to see Honda is about to sell a chopper design called the Fury. They seem to have done their homework, It has all the styling cues for a classic stretched-out chopper. And they made a very smart decision to leave the badges off the tank and to only have a very small Honda plate on each side and the rear fender, plus a small Fury decal which can be easily removed by the owner. Price is $13-14K, a very competitive number compared to custom-built choppers.
The engine is a 1300cc model based on the VTX 1300 and is fuel-injected.
After touring all the manufacturer tents and the aftermarket circus, we went to the Harley demo area and each rode a bike. Orat tried a Fat Boy and I chose an Ultra Classic, Screaming Eagle edition touring bike. I enjoyed the test ride but don’t think I’m a Harley kinda guy.
We then returned to the van and had lunch before heading across town to Daytona Beach. We circled another venue, the Ocean Center, but no parking was available and we thought we had really already seen everything likely to be there.
We crossed back to Daytona and parked just off Beach Avenue and walked through five or six motorcycle shops and then an aftermarket sales area until about 1700.
We then drove to a Carrabba’s Grill near the Speedway for supper. We shared a pizza and splurged on chocolate martinis.
After dark we headed back to our campsite at Lake Dorr. We shopped at a Publix supermarket along the way, replenishing supplies.
Back at the campground we each took a shower and then read and blogged the evening away.
Good day!

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Monday, 2 March –

After a perfect sleeping night we woke early to yet another sunny morning. The overnight temperature had dropped to 44 degrees but we were very comfortable in good ol’ Mocha Joe.
After breakfast and cleanup chores, we drove back out to the hard road, surprising a turkey and five feral pigs (including two baby porkers) in the process. The feral pigs are generally difficult to see so it was quite a surprise to come upon these along the side of the road. The two little ones became disoriented in all the confusion of running back and forth to escape the approaching humans and were quite comical.
We drove to the rangers’ office and talked there with an earnest young guy about the ‘Slough. They are continuing their ongoing program to kill off non-native plant-life. The panther hunters put radio collars on three new panthers in the last year and the estimate for the number of panthers in the Slough is eight to ten. They built additional road out in the Four Corners section and that will apparently be the extent of new road building.
Orat and I then drove north on 29 toward La Belle and onward. After a few hours we had lunch at a Checkers (one of Orat’s favorites) along Route 27, near Avon Park. We made the Ocala National Forest by mid-afternoon.
At the visitor center we learned that my favorite campground, Farles Lake, is closed to camping this year. We drove out there anyway since I knew of a primitive site at Mud Lake (near Farles Lake) but that too was closed. At Farles we talked with a caretaker couple who said they aren’t sure why it was closed but believe it will be open next year. The caretakers recommended nearby Lake Dorr since the campground had been re-habbed in the last year.
At Lake Dorr, we were standing at the iron ranger when a guy walked by and said hello, then chatted a bit. As he talked I realized I knew him from last year and I asked his name. It was “Erie Joe” (aka “P-A Joe”, who I had met last year at Farles. He had been the one to tell me of Tie-Die’s untimely death. I had forgotten some of the details and want to record them here. Tie-Die’s real name was Mark Wright. He died in his camper, found there by his friend Larry who saw his camper pulled alongside the road at Cobb Place in the Osceola National Forest and went to investigate. There sat Tie-Die, slumped over with one of his signature tie-die patterns in hand. Larry touched him and his skin was cold and Larry knew he was dead. Last year Erie Joe joined with a group of Tie-Die’s friends at the music festival in Dunnellon to celebrate his (Tie-Die’s) life.
Labashi and I met Tie-Die on our 2006 and 2007 trips and have fond memories of him and the other people we met on our first two trips to Florida.
After I spoke with Joe about Tie-Die awhile, he remembered me, mostly because of my home-made one-man kayak loader which he had seen in action at Farles Lake.
After checking into the campground we washed down the boat to get it looking a little better. It was covered in a thick layer of dust from the dirt roads at Big Cypress, Fakahatchee Strand, Picayune Strand, and Farles Prairie.
After supper we took a short walk to the lake, then took showers in the new shower house. While Orat showered I talked with an interesting couple from Vancouver about travel in Canada, Arizona, and Florida, then enjoyed the extra-hot shower myself.
We spent the rest of the evening viewing more Alaska video clips and blogging and reading.

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Sunday, 1 March –

This morning we again headed out early, this time so we could see the morning light on the Turner River Road and Wagon-wheel Road area. But a cold front had come in overnight and we saw very few gators or other animals.
We then entered the Fakahatchee Strand for our adventure of the day. Today it was a slough-slog (that’s “sloo”, not “sluff”, by the way). I knew approximately where to find the start of a ribbon-marked trail into the slough and we depended on our GPS to get out. The trail of ribbons petered out after an hour or so and we were on our own. Fortunately I had walked into this slough from the other end last year and had made some GPS waypoints. So we simply slogged off-trail until we reached one of my waypoints to find the exit trail. Slogging off-trail was slow and arduous. The water table is extra-low this year so we only had a few instances of wading through ankle-deep water but the growth around us was impenetrable in many places. We just had to take our time to work around any obstacles and then get back on track via the GPS. As we neared the closest of my waypoints from last year, the GPS batteries died. I tried continuing on without the GPS, hoping to spot a familiar landmark but we ended up loading up a new set of batteries to enable us to move on. Thank goodness for the GPS! And thank goodness for the much more sensitive Sirf chip in my current GPS. Labashi and I had tried to enter this area several years ago but had to turn back because my Etrex Legend couldn’t stay locked on the GPS satellites. But my Garmin 60CSx never lost the signal once today and even after we loaded the new batteries, it easily found the satellites again.
Our slog lasted about two and a half hours and we were glad to find our way out of the labyrinth.
After lunch in the van we drove on through the Fakahatchee Strand to the Picayune Strand State Forest. We visited the campground at the south end of the Strand and learned it has been a slow year there for visitors.
We then drove north through the Picayune Strand to the Equestrian Campground and the Ranger office. I hoped to talk to a ranger about next steps in the recovery of the Picayune Strand but nobody was available so we moved on.
We continued north out of the Picayune and on to Immokalee, then to the Okloacoochee Wildlife Management Area. I know a nice little campground there so we found a site, dropped the boat, and spent the next two hours cruising the dirt roads of the WMA, looking for wildlife. We saw five turkeys, two deer, plus a whole roost of ibises but that was it. The cold front had brought wind and cold temperatures and the animals were hunkering down. When we ran out of daylight we returned to the campsite and made supper.
We then whiled away much of the evening by watching video clips from our Alaska trip. Orat had seen only a few of them so this was a perfect opportunity to catch up. After a few hours of that, I blogged while Orat continued reading ‘Yukon Quest’.

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Saturday, 28 February –

This morning we woke a bit early and got underway quickly. By 0830 we were walking the trail at the Tree Snail Hammock. This area has beautiful tree snails on the Liguum trees. The attach themselves and go into a state of hibernation. The signs at the beginning of the trail ask you to leave them alone, noting that if you detach them from their attachment spot they will die. Their shells are like jewels, each different from the others.
We then slowly drove the remainder of the Loop Road, stopping at each culvert. We saw dozens of alligators, all of them a good healthy black and all of them out soaking up the morning sun. Only the small ones—the ones under four feet in length—moved about or reacted to us in any way.
As we reached the end of Loop Road at Monroe Station, the lot there was filled with swamp-buggy trailers. We talked briefly with one of the guys about his buggy. He was obviously was proud of it but sheepishly told us of having built it a foot too high to get out of the garage. They had had to cut the main vertical supports and remove a foot of pipe and reweld it so they could get the buggy out of the garage. I can see making a mistake of, say, three or four inches, but a mistake of 12 inches seems like a real Bubba- class engineering mistake. I asked why it had a crane-winch on the back and he said he wasn’t sure— just in case they got a deer or something. He then pointed out the charcoal grill built onto the back of the buggy and proclaimed it the best feature of the buggy. He said. “You know— kill-it and grill-it”.
We then toured the Big Cypress Visitor’s Center and watched a really excellent late-70s movie about the Preserve.
We drove on to Everglades City where we walked through the Rod and Gun Club, an old-Florida upscale lodge. I like the dark old paneling and game mounts reminiscent of Teddy Roosevelt’s time. Bully!
We drove on to Chokoloskee and had lunch at the Havana Café. I had a fantastic grilled mahi-mahi with home-made spiced French fries and Orat had the fried version. We then splurged for flan and key-lime pie and split them.
After visiting the Everglades Visitor’s Center in Everglades City, we zipped over to Collier-Seminole State Park to launch the boat. We were on the Blackwater River by 1430. We had a fantastic time maneuvering through the mangroves and into the larger river before spilling out into the Gulf of Mexico. After taking a short beach walk on one of the Ten Thousand Islands, we continued out into the Gulf about a half mile. As our day was winding down, we decided to turn around and at that moment spotted four dolphins. For some reason these dolphins spent a long time on the surface and Orat took some very good video shots of them. I believe this is the best dolphin encounter I’ve ever had.
We then zoomed back up the Blackwater River to the launch ramp and pulled the boat, washed it down, and headed out just at sunset. We drove back to the Turner River Road to Bear Island campground, about 18 miles of very dusty road into the backcountry. Along the way we had to dodge a raccoon, a great blue heron, and, of all things, a bobcat.
We easily found a camping spot and had supper, then took a short night walk around the main camping area and learned we had done very well in our choice of campsite—the others had noisy radios blaring away.
But we had it quiet at our campsite so I finished the evening updating my blog while Orat read. What a great day!

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Friday, 27 February-

This morning we sat around the campsite enjoying the beautiful morning in Key West for an hour or so before getting underway. We have miles to go before we sleep so we didn’t tarry a long time but it was very nice.
We drove north up US 1, making a few stops along the way. We stopped at a Boater’s World to look for some hard-to-find items and Orat checked out the nearby Sandals World, hoping to find a bargain.
In Islamorada we stopped at the World Wide Sportsman shop (owned by Bass Pro) to see the Pilar, a sister ship to Hemingway’s famous sport-fishing boat and sub-hunting boat of the same name. The boat looks massive as it takes up the center of the store. You can go aboard and get a feel for what Hemingway’s boat was like, including the below-decks area. That was really special.
Afterwards we had lunch at the Islamorada Grill, a nice little on-the-water restaurant open to Florida Bay on two sides. I had wanted to try a grouper sandwich and enjoyed that with a mojito.
We then continued north to John Pennekamp State Park. We walked through the aquarium and checked out the dive shop, then drove through the beach and picnic areas.
In Florida City we took a break at the local Starbucks before pressing on to the Everglades and I introduced Orat to the java-chip frappacino, affogato style.
We pushed on to the Tamiami Trail, hoping to get there in time for an airboat ride. Our timing worked out perfectly. We got the last ride of the day and since it was close to closing time, they took just the two of us as soon as we walked in—there was no time to wait for other prospective customers.
The ride was at Sunset Island and lasted 40 minutes (for $18 each). Our driver was ‘Regis’, an interesting ol’ cracker-boy. Our boat was powered by a Chevy 350. Regis was actually very good and gave us our money’s worth, both on the airboat and also as our guide on a short tour of a remote Miccosukee ‘camp’. The airboats are operated by the Miccosukee tribe and fly the flag of the Miccosukee nation—a four-horizontal-bars flag of white, black, red, and yellow, representing the four races and the four cardinal directions.
After the ride we drove on to the Shark Valley visitor area. We arrived just 45 minutes before closing so settled for a short walk along the tram path. We did manage to see five or six alligators up close (within ten feet) and shot some good footage of birds.
We then drove on to the Loop Road and our campground for the night at Mitchell Landing. This is a freebie campground within the Big Cypress National Preserve. As we drove by a young guy stopped us and asked if we were looking for a place for the night and offered the spot he had been occupying for day use and left us more than enough firewood for the evening.
Orat made up our supper salad and we sat by the campfire for a bit but the mosquitos came out and became a little too much. Orat retreated to the van to read while I sauntered over to talk to our neighbors, a couple from Massachusetts. They were sailors and had been to many of the same places I’ve been on the New England coast so we had a nice chat.
I then sat around our fire for an hour or so since the mosquitoes now seemed to only be an occasional bother. Orat was into his book so stayed with that and eventually I joined him in the van and caught up the blog.
It had been a picture-perfect day weather wise. The sun lit up the green waters of the Keys just perfectly and we had a nice breeze to keep us pleasantly cool throughout the day.

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