Everglades

Finally, I have caught up to our most recent trip and it is even the same month! At the end of the post "Journey's end?" we abruptly terminated our trip into the south of Florida when everything headed for disaster. A lot happened in between but we decided to finish that trip now although this time we decided since we were planning to stay in just one place, we would drive Wolf, the Ascent, down and leave poor Timmber Wolf at home.

Back when I was still at H&R Block, I had a long time customer and when I mentioned to him that we were planning a trip into south Florida, he had recommended we stay in Florida City, south of Miami, as it would be convenient to both the Everglades and the Keys and was a pleasant town to stay in. Accordingly, we made motel reservations there and headed out early. 

Having started so early, we arrived at the Quality Inn in Florida City mid day and were able to check in and then, on getting helpful recommendations from the front desk, headed for the Farmers Market for lunch. This is a nice inexpensive place, no frills, no fancy decor but their soup of the day, Lasagna Soup, was delicious.

We just drove around a little orienting ourselves and then headed back for the motel and got settled in. We had a nice early dinner at the Capri Restaurant. They had escargot (snails) on the menu and since I have not had any in ages, I ordered these. They were cooked in a garlic butter sauce. I am used to having them served on a plate with indentations for the snails but here they were on a dish which is obviously used to cook them as well ... very nice! ...I had a lovely steak for my main course and we were overall pleased with the ambiance and service.

The next day we headed off for the Everglades and promptly got stuck in a traffic jam. We never did see what had everybody clogged up for probably 25-30 miles as we crawled along at around 5mph! We were headed for Captain Jack's in Everglade City which turned out to be a little bit west of Joanie's Crab Shack, the last fun place on our previous trip. We had purchased online a combo package which included the Mangrove Airboat Tour at Captain Jack's and then around to Wooten's Grasslands Airboat Tour, Swamp Buggy, and Animal Sanctuary.

The air boat seats five or six people plus the captain, in our case this was Captain Scott who was excellent, providing just the right amount of story and information, taking time to try to hunt out things for us to see but also just plain running the airboat at speed just for fun.Unfortunately we didn't see any manatees or dolphins in the brackish water in this part of the Everglades but we learned a lot about how the mangroves create land out of the swamp. There are three types of mangroves, red, white, and black, but it is the red ones that do most of the growth.

It swam around for a while under water but finally let us see him!

In one of the backwaters we finally found a gator as you can see above although it took some time to get a view of more than just a shadow in the water.

We also got to see raccoons which live in the swampy land of the Everglades eating frogs, crawfish,and other aquatic creatures as well as fruits and plants.A few fall prey to alligators but their biggest enemy nowadays are the Burmese pythons that are disrupting the balance of nature and the natural food chains in the Everglades.

The picture above is Captain Scott with one of the raccoons but there was a whole family of them in the mangrove roots and muddy ground of this backwater. We saw at least five!

It was after this interlude in the backwater that we were back out in the channels and Captain Scott showed us some speed and swift turns. Airboats are fun!

The captains work for tips and Captain Scott was so excellent that he received a good tip from us and hopefully the others on our tour. One of the other couples on the air boat turned out to have also gotten the combo package and so were with us in the next air boat tour and the swamp buggy ride so we stumbled on them again over at Wooten's where we were scheduled for the Grassland Airboat Tour and then the Swamp Buggy Tour across the road.

This next air boat ride was in a different area. It at first seemed  some what the same but quickly we realized that the mangroves were smaller and younger and there were lots of grassy areas and wider water channels. Our Captain here was JR and he was quite different from Captain Scott. There was more just plain fun to the ride and I think it was geared a bit more to children and fun seekers as there was less information. This may also have been partly due to the continued scarcity of manatees and it was more than halfway through the tour before we saw an alligator and then it was the only one we saw although I must admit we saw more of this one as you can see below. It soon crawled over a bank and disappeared.

Geoffrey had chosen what he thought would be the driest seat in the air boat and was rewarded with several splashes of water as Captain JR took some speedy turns through the glades.It is amazing how little water the air boat needs to be able to move, according to JR, some of the areas we crossed had only an inch or so of water.

It was quite interesting to see the smaller groups of mangroves just starting to create the larger areas that would eventually become land. It may seem long ago from the point of view of human settlements in the glades but it was not all that long ago that this whole area was ocean.

After returning to dry land, we crossed the road to take the swamp buggy portion of our tour. This area has more dry land and muddy swamp and is entirely freshwater so many shrubs and trees can grow here that do not do well in the saltier parts of the glades. Here are found more of the mammals such as the raccoons, skunks, possums, bobcats, white-tailed deer, panthers and black bears. The peculiar looking vehicle to the right is perfect for traversing this area with large tires and height giving it the ability to travel through water, mud and on land.

It wasn't a good day for seeing animals but we did stumble on this cute little bear cub. According to the guide, earlier in the day there had been a pair of them. Although the mama wasn't spotted perhaps between then and our trip, she had chivvied one of the cubs home and would soon return for this one which we found peeking around the remains of an old leanto.

When we returned to the beginning area of the swamp buggy trip, we passed a small enclosed pond that had a captive alligator in it but that is not at all the same as seeing one in the wild. I realize that to some degree, most of these animals and birds are used to the frequent presence of people but seeing them in their own habitat is just so much better than when they are caged.

After this swamp buggy trip we returned across the road to check out the animal sanctuary where they also had some alligator wrestling and stuff like that but to me that is just stupid entertainment, not what the animal is really like. They had a huge fenced pond full of gators and a couple of cement enclosures, one of which had a bored sleepy otter.

We finally headed back to our temporary home at the motel along the Tamiami Trail, fortunately not hitting the traffic jam we had found earlier in the day.