ahhhh...florida

Ahhhh…Florida. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve wanted to come here. Sun, surf, sand…well, two out of three isn’t bad.
Not too much sun this week. After getting my car serviced in Savannah on Tuesday (and posting the last blog) I drove down the Georgia coastline, such as it is, and into Florida. My first stop was in Fernandina Beach (sp?) and it was clouding up and blowing about 30mph. The surf was pounding and there were a few surfers out trying their luck on the huge (by Florida standards) waves. Some couldn’t even make it past the breakers because the incoming current was so strong. Looking at the USA Today I’d picked up at the hotel, I could see that the Florida forecast was for thunderstorms across the entire state all week – which proved to be accurate.
I headed further south hoping to outrun the storm and camped that evening right on the beach, at a state park just north of Daytona Beach. I was expecting some wind and rain but nothing like I got. I thought I’d been soaked up in Delaware, but that was cake. My tent held up pretty well (with me weighing it down!) but the campground was one giant puddle – and as I drove south along the coast, many of the town streets were, too. It rains a little differently than I’m used to with our wussy California weather – in Florida it’ll go from dry to pelting rain in 10 seconds and then back to dry in just a couple of minutes. I hoped if I headed far enough southwest I could get out of the rain, and I was right. I pulled into the Everglades campground a bit after dark and enjoyed a dry evening – but awoke in the morning to a thunderclap directly overhead (or so it seemed). That was enough to get me out of the tent and into the car to plan out the day.
It’s off-season in the Everglades (I didn’t know there was such a thing) and the campground was free – and nearly deserted. There were only 5 spots occupied out of about 160. Since I wanted to cover the Everglades and also travel the Florida Keys, I decided to make the free campground my base of operations for a couple of days. So on that first day I did some hiking on the nature trail near the campground (it was full of standing water and I only saw one snake) and then headed over to the main visitor center. The ranger on duty was very helpful and told me about a naturalist-led boat trip down at the other end of the park, so I drove down to the Flamingo (flaming “O”?) bay region to catch the boat. The mosquitoes, which were bad at the campground, were 10x worse down on the bay – they were eating me alive, and mosquitoes don’t usually bite me. I had to buy some DEET. The 2-hour boat tour was really fantastic. We saw lots of birds and wildlife – crocodiles, alligators, dolphins – but unfortunately no manatee and no rare Florida panthers. I did see some pink flamingoes later – wading, not standing on one leg in the classic pose. I did several other hikes, nearly ran over a rattlesnake in the car, but the mosquitoes drove me out of one hike called Snake Bight. (You know I just HAD to try that one!)
The Everglades is really an interesting place. It’s essentially a river of grass, not a swamp – 80 miles long and 50 miles wide, with an elevation change of just 14 feet. So although the water is moving, it’s moving very slowly. There’s a spot in the park called Rock Reef Pass, elevation 3 feet, which is sort of a continental divide – water on one side of the ‘pass’ flows to the Gulf and the other side flows to the Atlantic. Slight elevation changes of just 6 inches or a foot cause ‘islands’ of certain types of trees (like mangroves) instead of grass, a little higher and even different trees (mahogany, for example) can grow. It rains all summer and dries up in the winter, so some of the grassy water becomes prairie, and the animals congregate to the wet areas. (The alligators dig water holes all around the park that keep the wildlife wet.) So at this time of year the wildlife is a little more scattered, but I still encountered my share of beasties. I was hoping to see some alligators on dry land (from a safe distance, of course – they can’t outrun you and they don’t chase prey across land anyway, but still…) but every one that I saw was in the water. There’s a short trail called Aningha which is world-famous for seeing wildlife and I went out there several times.
In fact, I have to tell you this: when it comes to wildlife, I don’t scare easily. But one of the nights I decided to go out to this Aningha trail and take my headlamp to see if the alligator eyes really glow red. Of course, I was the only one out there and as I got partway up the trail, I started thinking – what if one of them IS on land and gets in behind me and doesn’t want to move? And, having forgotten my cell phone in the car, the mind started racing and I decided it was not the best place to be. So I never did get to prove the red-eye thing. I did see some lightning bugs out there, which I haven’t seen anywhere else. Cool - reminded me of the year I spent in Illinois as a child…
On Friday I drove down the length of the Florida Keys, all the way to Key West. I just left my tent set up at the everglades since it’s only about 30 miles from the beginning of the Keys highway. I got off to an early start because I planned to meet a former co-worker, Catherine Mollyneaux, at the north end of the keys in the evening where her musician husband was performing. There are so many fine beaches and things to see that I could probably spend a week just hanging out. The weather was pretty good – even when it rains in Florida it’s 85 degrees. My main goal was to get a ‘bath’ in the ocean so I could be more presentable in public - no showers in the Everglades campground and with the sticky weather, I was a rather humid being. I have to admit it was pretty nice just floating in the ocean off of Bahia Honda State Park…
It’s been good to visit my friends on this trip – I’ve worked with them remotely but not too much face time. I have one more person I want to see in Houston and then my celebratory retirement tour will be complete – just in time for me to get back to work (at least temporarily)!
I definitely have to come back and spend more time lazing around the Keys, but it was time for me to head north and really, start heading towards home. I’ve had a blast but I am feeling a bit homesick. Travelling alone is a tradeoff between the freedom of doing whatever I want whenever I want, vs. the loneliness of missing my wife and family.
So Saturday morning I broke camp in the Everglades and headed towards the gulf coast. I stopped at one other Everglades entrance to explore an area that I later found has been closed since Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Didn’t see much in the way of wildlife and the ranger told me that this is mainly why they haven’t put budget into re-opening the area. I drove partway up the gulf coast, past Fort Myers (home of the ubiquitous blue-haired lady) before veering inland towards the Ocala National Forest, which someone told me was beautiful. I was worried about finding a campsite on the weekend (which has been a problem on this trip) but was able to sneak into a rather noisy Forest Service campground.
Now I have to take an opportunity to laugh at myself. Despite my “don’t scare easily” comment above, I do have one kind of animal I’m not too thrilled with: spiders. And in the morning I found I had a friend stretched above my tent – the biggest spider I’d ever seen in real life (excepting slow and ponderous tarantulas). Some sort of common garden-type spider, I’m sure, that wouldn’t bite me except in self-defense, but still, an intimidating sight. I snapped a photo, took down my tent and went on my way. A few miles up the road I saw a trailhead and headed off for a hike. Not 100 yards up the trail I walked right into a head-high spiderweb exactly like the one in my camp – but fortunately not populated. I’m sure it would have been a comical sight as I was jumping and herking and jerking trying to see if I had a giant spider on me. Naomi says I have no rhythm – I think she’d change her mind if she’d seen my arachnoleptic fit.
So later in the morning I did my most challenging hike of the trip, the 2-mile Salt Springs loop. How can a 2-mile hike be so challenging, you say? Well, the trail was full of these webs – most WITH big spiders in them. I believe in live-and-let-live but hey, this is MY trail and they can spin somewhere else. So armed with a branch and some very cautious steps, I trail-blazed my way to the salt springs overlook and lake. Spent some time watching the fish jump all over the lake – I don’t know what they were doing – it didn’t look like they were catching bugs but more like having fun, which I’m sure is not the case. Fish fun?
I continued my drive north and ended up in Tallahassee. Given my showerless state (and with some laundry piling up) and raining as usual, I decided on a motel, where I sit as I write this. I’m going to try to get some new tires for the car in the morning and then head up through the South – I plan to travel through Montgomery, Selma, Philadelphia (Mississippi), Memphis, and Little Rock over the next few days before hitting Texas. Hope everyone is doing well!