Monday, February 21, Ship Ahoy!!

We got an early start this morning and packed up the camper. We dropped the trailer at Gator Park along highway 41 in their storage lot. We then drove into Fort Lauderdale. Our destination today is Port Everglades to catch a cruise ship for a five night cruise to Labadee Island then Jamaica. We will be at sea from this evening until next Saturday morning.

We will not be taking our laptop on the cruise with us so there will be no posts for this week. As soon as we get back I will catch everyone up on our cruise and post some pictures. We will have our cell phones with us so there is a chance we may be able to make or take some calls. I will check our e-mail as soon as we get back next Saturday.

We heard from Kerners and the Wrights yesterday and they will not be heading as far south in Florida as we are so we will not be seeing any of them. We are disappointed since we were looking forward to having some fun and visiting with them.

We miss you all and send our love. Hope all is well with you.

Sunday the 20th

Another hot and sunny day. How boring! We hear that Michigan's snow melted due to the heatwave and I am really glad for you guys!

Today we went to Shark Valley, an Everglades National Wildlife Refuge with a fifteen mile blacktop trail for bikes and a tram that takes you through the Everglade wetlands and has a tower at the end that gives a panoramic view of the surrounding area. The wildlife viewing here is awesome with (believe it or not), alligators, turtles, herons, egrets, and other marsh birds. We rode the loop then went back to the truck for lunch then did the loop again. We got our exercise and some wonderful views and pictures.

Hope everyone is well. We send our love. 

Anhinga, the "Snake Bird" perched along the canal. This one is drying it's feathers after chasing fish underwater.

Another snake bird.

The march of the turtles. Coming to a theatre near you.

These turtles are bigger around than a basketball.

A butterfly on a thistle.

Zoom in on this alligator. She has a cluster of babies perched on her back and around her.

This fat boy crawled up on the bank next to me to take a nap. I'm glad he wasn't hungry.

This is the tram that takes visitors on guided tours around the fifteen mile route. We had to share the road with a tram about every half hour.

The trail looking down from the tower.

This is the observation tower seven miles in. From the top you could see for miles in any direction. There was a pond below that was full of more alligators! The return half of the loop was another eight miles.

February 19 Already?

Sunny and hot. The weather has held out beautifully for us this week. No rain and warm temperatures. It makes it worthwhile to have driven all this way. We are thoroughly enjoying this winter getaway.

Today we went for a four hour guided canoe trip through the mangrove forests and canals at Turner River. The National Park sponsors this free excursion and provides the canoes, paddles, life jackets and two ranger guides to show us around and tell us about the area and it's wildlife. Our main guide, Melissa, reminded us of Liz in her looks and her mannerisms as well as her love of the park and wanting to share it with her clients to give them a better understanding of the importance of the environment. There were six canoes and people from in their late sixties to teenagers on this trip. We had a great time and saw a lot of alligators, some turtles, a red shouldered hawk, and shore birds and ducks. One of the alligators was growling and putting on a courting ritual which was quite rare to see. We also saw a pair of ospreys in and around their nest. This was a great experience and we hope to do more of these guided activities while here in the Glades.

Getting ready to take off on our tour. Six canoes and two guides in kayaks.

A Red Shouldered Hawk we saw along the way. It allowed us to get within about twenty feet and get some good pictures.

A couple of turtles along the edge of the canal.

February 18th and 80 Degrees

Well, we finally made it to 80 today for a couple of hours in the afternoon. A beautiful sunny day. We went over to Everglades City after lunch and had a ride on "Captain Doug's Air boat Tours". This was a fifty minute ride on a small six passenger air boat that was a lot more fun than the "Gator Gal" at Myakka River. The pilot took us through a lot of Mangrove tunnels down the canals from Everglades City. We saw pelicans. raccoons and an alligator! Not as much wildlife as I would have expected, but we were in saltwater instead of fresh, so the alligators were not present here. The boat moved along pretty fast so it was a fun ride. The only drawback was that there were so many boats doing the same circuit that we didn't have the freedom to just cruise and not worry about other boats coming at us or running up on the boat ahead. Captain Doug was doing a brisk business today and had most of his fourteen air boats in operation.

Afterward we drove into Naples to do laundry and pick up a few supplies. The laundromat was a real experience. This was late Friday afternoon and prices were fifty percent off until six pm. At Five fifteen (*this is no joke), a bus pulled in and forty Hispanic young men came piling out with loads of laundry and hurried in to get first crack at any open machines!! The place was fairly busy before this and now we were packed! Luckily we were far enough ahead of them that we could finish and get dryers before they were ready for them. The young men were very polite (although I didn't hear any English being spoken), and were probably getting off of work for the week and wanting to take advantage of the discount before six o'clock. It was a strange experience for us though.

After we finished laundry we went back to Everglades City and had Stone Crab Dinner. We had to sample the local fare and it was really good.

We still have a faint signal here and even our cell phones don't get a signal. This is the first time for my phone! I will post pictures when we can.

Captain Doug's  Air boats! $40 per adult, six per boat and fourteen boats! There was a line waiting for rides. What a racket!!

Aw, what the heck, what else do you do in the Everglades?

Captain Greg showed us blue crabs that were in a crab trap he pulled up out of the water.

Waterfront campers at Everglades City Luxury RV Park.

Air boat scooting through the mangroves.

We stopped so Captain Greg could feed the Raccoons.

This air boat was taking the pelicans for a ride!

Traffic jam watching an alligator in the water.

Our welcome back to the dock committee.

New Camp, Same Area

This morning I got an early start and after breakfast drove over to Midway Campground, about eight miles east of where we were. I got in line at about eight fifteen to wait for an open campsite. There were four campers ahead of me but after about forty five minutes enough sites were vacated so that I got a campsite. This campground is very similar to the one we were in except here we have an electric hookup. Also the road is blacktop so that we don't get all the dust. At the last camp they were working on a back country road and we had dumptrucks bringing loads of gravel in all day and raising dust each time they came in.

I did sacrifice my good WIFI signal here and consequently I can't post pictures today. When I have a better signal I will catch up again.

Hope all is well with everyone in Michigan, Colorado, California,Florida and those on the road wherever they may be.

Until next time, goodnight



Our new camp at Midway Campground.



We stopped at Burns Lake Campground which is still being developed.

Flowers on the nature walk behind the Clyde Butcher Art Studio. Check out his website. He does some awesome black and white photography of the Everglades and Florida wildlife.

More of the nature walk.

Flowers like this in Michigan are still four months away.

Huge cypress roots behind the art studio.

.

Another Day in the Florida Sunshine, February 16

Once again we rode bikes in the morning. We rode for about twelve miles from Monroe Station on an old gravel road. The road was in pretty good condition for the first four miles then got all lumpy and full of puddle holes. We started seeing a lot of alligators and they were starting to crawl up the banks onto the side of the road. Nancy got so geeked out that we had to turn around and get back out of there! I was having a great time.

We went back to camp and had lunch then soaked up some sun for a couple of hours. Later we took a ride to go on another gravel road tour, but when we got there a couple of cars were coming out and creating a dust storm. I decided there were better things to do so we went to Kirby Shorter Boardwalk and took a hike through the glades.

The campground has filled up the last two days and tomorrow morning I am going to try to get a site at Midway Campground so we can have electricity.

We got some great pictures of Natalie, Hannah and Treveor yesterday and have been looking at them a few times today. Please keep them coming!

Here are a few pics from the day's activities.

Love you....

This was our welcoming committe at the beginning of our bike ride this morning, Maybe that's why Nancy got so jittery when she saw all the alligators!

An Ibis and a cypress. The cypress trees fan out at the roots. This is one of the few trees that can survive in water.

We thought you might be tired of looking at alligators so Nancy took a picture of an alligator wrestler. 

This little fellow is hanging under our picnic table on the trail. Did someone say Geico?

A look at the prarie swamp in the dry season.

We are still enjoying the star fruit we picked with Uncle Bob and Aunt Donna. Here we had some for lunch.

And once again the day came to a close.

We are having a great time and send our love to all!

Tuesday, February 15

Another beautiful day in southern Florida. We loafed around this morning and had a leisurely breakfast. Probably wasted too much time. We packed lunches and headed for the beaches at Marco Island. We got into quite a bit of traffic and didn't know our way around. We never did find the beaches! We did some shopping in town, got gas, and headed back towards camp. We did take a detour on the way back and drove down to Everglades City and then to Chokoloskee. This is an old fishing village and Seminole Indian village. We went through the Smallwood Store and Museum and saw what an old fashioned Indian Trading store looked like. We also walked on the Fakahatchee Strand Boardwalk which went for over half a mile through a hardwood swamp. Kind of interesting and we didn't have to get our feet wet!

We hope to have better luck tomorrow as we spent way too much time in the truck today.

Entering Evedrglades City. This is a small laid back community and surprisingly quite a few homes, cottages and resorts.

Smallwood Store. A turn of the century(last century) Indian trading post and fishermans store. It is now a museum and gift shop.

All kinds of old stuff here. A lot of the shelves still hold merchandise from the 1920's.

They had a good selection of gator heads.

This is the entrance to the boardwalk. The walkway stretched for six tenths of a mile.

Here is a view of the boardwalk.

Some of the trees here were spared by the loggers and are huge!

The Fakahatchee Headquarters building.

Happy Birthday to Elizabeth!! Happy Valentine's day

Happy birthday Elizabeth, happy birthday to you!! We hope that life is bringing you good days and fulfillment. We wish you the best in all you do and may you continue to grow through your experiences.

We made it south of Naples today to Big Cypress National Preserve just west of the Everglades National Park. The landscape changed to flat country with some trees and lots of marshland. We saw a few places advertising air boat rides and there were a lot of alligators in the canals along the road. I actually saw three signs warning to watch for panthers crossing the road! This is much more primitive camping than we had at the luxurious Harbor Lake RV Resort that we stayed at the last two days. We used our Coleman stove and the Coleman lantern tonight and had a barbecued steak dinner in the lantern light for Valentines day. I am writing this post using candle light.

We are planning to explore this area for the next three days and will be going to Marco Island, Everglades City and other spots here to see what we can. The weather has been great, perfectly blue skies with highs in the mid seventies.

A look at the landscape shows how desolate this area is. Nothing around for miles and miles.

Here is a picture of our camp across Monument Lake.

You know you are near the Everglades when you see signs like this.

What else would you see in an area like this?

We were taking these pictures from a boardwalk at the visitors center of the park The alligators were in the canal that runs along the highway.

The gators have a lot of fish to feed on here and they grow big and fat.

The fish are Talapia and Cichlids. There were also catfish that would swim to the surface and gulp for air.

Anyone want to go for a swim??