We are still at Everglades National Park enjoying the peace and quiet and planning to start heading slowly northward tomorrow.
Yesterday was a utility day and we did laundry in town and stopped by the post office to pick up our blueprints from our home designer. On the way back out we stopped at a fish market to pick up some fresh Florida seafood. We bought some fresh snapper, Mahi and Key West shrimp. We had snapper for dinner last night and it was delicious! We also stopped at “Robert is Here”, a fresh produce market on the side of the highway leading back to camp. (This is HUGE agricultural land down here with miles and miles of farm fields where they raise tomatoes, squash, beans, corn, papayas, mangoes and other fruits and vegetables) between Homestead and the Park. There are always irrigation trucks watering the fields and gangs of workers out in the fields picking produce.
We had a program at camp last evening and listened to a story about how the Park Service is working to restore the eastern edge of the Everglades back to its original condition. They are removing invasive species and scraping off the top layer of manmade top soil to allow the native plants to get re-established and return the ecosystem to a more natural state. We have seen a few snakes here the past couple of days and they ain’t no garter snakes! One was a moccasin of some sort, we saw another crossing the road and it was dark and about six feet long. One of the neighbors had pictures of two Eastern Diamondback rattlesnakes that were in a mating ritual at the parking lot of the visitor’s center three days ago. He took a roll of pictures as the snakes rattled and coiled around each other with their heads up high like cobras.
Today we took a tour of a Nike Missile Base that was in operation here during the cold war. This was one of four missile bases in southern Florida that was our first line of defense against the military bases that Russia was setting up in Cuba. We had a great guide who told us about the Cuban Revolution, the Bay of Pigs and the whole story leading up to the U.S. setting up bases in this part of the country to defend the nation against attack and the Cuban Missile Crisis. We stood on the launch pad where they would send up the missiles that could have started World War Three and ended the world as we knew it in the early sixties. (Think Mad Max!)
The weather got hot again today and we are under the threat of thunderstorms. Reception on the phones and internet is poor so I am posting as I am able.
Hope everyone is well
Inside the missile barn at the downrange location. This barn housed missiles with nuclear warheads 5 times more powerful than were dropped on Nagasakee in World War II.
This bunker is where the computers were housed that would detonate the missiles. In the early sixties they still used cathode tubes and the computers were HUGE!
Our last day at Long Pine Key National Campground. Peace to all!
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