Posted on

Trip16

Monday.

Everglades day. Did the usual oatmeal, coffee, food bar, and headed off for the rental shack. Didn’t rent a kayak where we expected to. Reserved a canoe out at Nine Mile Pond instead. It sounded like a better place to paddle. Took a four hour self guided canoe tour across a lake, then through mangrove swamp and sawgrass swamp. Wow! It was wonderful. It’s buggy in the campground, even in January. It wasn’t buggy on the canoe trail at all. Passed a couple gators on the way across the lake. Disappeared into the narrow winding passages of the red mangrove swamp. Some passages were so tight we didn’t even use paddles, we just pulled ourselves through by the surrounding branches. There were a total of maybe six other canoes out on ten miles or so of trail. Nice density for Judy and I who like to be out by ourselves. There were times we got total swamp isolation. We could just glide and listen to the creaks and croaks, splashes, sudden squawking complaints, and flapping wings. About halfway through, we burst out of the mangrove and spike rush swamp and into the sawgrass swamp. We could see farther now, but with our heads lower than all the clumps of stuff growing around us, we were still in wilderness. We saw great big turtles underwater. We saw lots of fish. Lots of birds. We saw an underwater plant called a bladder wort that sends up pretty little yellow flowers, while below the surface, its other parts are eating tiny animals. Saw a three-foot Florida Gar. Saw a couple more frigate birds. On the way back, to close the loop, we passed within a few feet of a seven-foot gator. Oops. Didn’t mean to get quite that close. Almost ran over one on the bank when we returned the canoe to shore at the start/finish. Spent the evening hanging around the visitor center and marina. Watched a couple crocodiles doing some serious dating. That involved some close contact with heads held perfectly vertical out of the water, then some chases and mock chases. Crocodiles, not alligators. They have them both here. A manatee surfaced. Saw a roseate spoonbill fly over. I left to go for a run, and was only gone for a few minutes when Judy came to get me in the car. She picked me up and took me back to show me the white crowned pigeons she had spotted. We thought we were too far north, but we weren’t. White crowned pigeons. They are not very common. They are not even listed in my Stokes Eastern Bird Book at all. We got the white crowned pigeon! But then it got even better. We stopped at the swamp pond on our way back to the campground, as it was getting dark, and guess what popped out of the reeds. A purple gallinule! Right there in the middle of all the moorhens, ibises, and herons, there was a purple gallinule muttering its way through the marsh. Then it got too dark and buggy. While we were in the RV Park, back in the Keys, we watched some football, and flipped around to the local channel to see what was on. There was a guy describing the indigenous plants. He was explaining that when he referred to a tree as deciduous, that meant that there was a two week period in January when the tree had no leaves at all, then it grew them all back. That’s pretty funny considering how tight all the deciduous trees are locked up in Colorado for six months. Tonight we’re sitting here listening to light rain on the roof. Zero miles on the motorhome. Alligators. Crocodiles. Mosquitos. Manatees. Two new birds. Tomorrow, the Big Cypress Swamp Preserve. Oh Yeah. A picture. What’s that saying? A bird in the tent….

Posted on

Trip15

Sunday.

Got up, packed up, visited the neighbors, visited Lovie, Dovie, Bert, Jack, and ZZ, sat on the dock a while, and were off by 11:30. Drove all the way back up the Keys. I can now announce that Louisville is safe: we drove right past the yard statuary store and did not stop to buy a five-foot high concrete manatee holding a mailbox (well, they do ship). Had lunch. Marveled at the beauty of the Keys. Started planning our next trip to the Keys. Drove to Florida City and turned left. Drove into the Everglades National Park, and all the way out to the Flamingo Visitor Center and campground on Florida Bay. The whole time we were in the Keys, we kept Annie out of the ocean. We didn’t want to mess with the salt water, and the mess she would make back in the car. We didn’t want her to be fish food, with all the barracudas swimming around, or gator food. We made it all the way to the last day of the trip. While we were sitting on the dock, motorhome packed, taking our last look out over the ocean, we heard a “plop” behind us. It was Annie in the water. She just couldn’t stand it any longer. She jumped off the dock into the shallow water. She was headed for the deeper water. Judy headed her off. We drove away with a happy wet dog in Judy’s lap. We have a winner! You know, that contest to see who can get the biggest, most expensive, most garishly painted, most attention grabbing motorhome? Now I know brother Bill is saying to himself right now, “We already have a winner. It’s that ‘hooked on a dream’ behemoth with the programmable light sign board in the windshield we saw at the Grizzly RV Park in West Yellowstone.” That’s last year’s winner. This year’s winner is a giant pusher with all the pimp lights on around the smoked glass mirrors inside. The Italian opera is playing on the outdoor entertainment center. Purple lights glow outside from underneath the entire coach. This is all good, but not enough by itself. It still needs one more thing. What locked up the title is that the purple lights glowing underneath the entire coach are linked to the music. They are pulsating in time to the music. Now that’s class. Tonight we’re in a National Park Campground. It’s a wide-open field with a few trees, and lots of space between each site. But we’re back to generators. I forgot about generators. Fifth wheel generators in particular. They’re always the loudest. It doesn’t seem that fifth wheels come with generator compartments at all. They all seem to have some industrial size generator in the back of the pickup, or set on the ground out in the open, grinding away. Fifth wheel campers. Enjoying the serenity of the outdoors to the roar of their generator. Generator hours are eight to eight. The fifth wheel behind us ran theirs from eight to eight. Maybe it doesn’t have a battery on board at all. Maybe that is their only source of electricity. Happily, the sites are all spaced fifty feet apart, so nobody is right next to us. And they all have to go off by eight pm, so we can hear the night after that. I like State Parks better, because they have electrical hookups. Birded for a while at a swamp pond here. Saw an ibis tree. Saw egrets, pelicans, hawk, anhingas, coots, moorhens, pied billed grebe, green heron, turkey vultures, black vultures, and three alligators. No purple gallinule. Went for a run. Got chased by mosquitoes. Pretty thick. Two hundred mile day. Docks sitting to start. Neighbor visiting. Bird cuddling. Cat drugging. Driving. Birding. Mosquito slapping. No new birds. Tomorrow, our chance to explore the Everglades. We signed up for two nights here.

Posted on

Trip14

Saturday.

The morning was beautiful. Clear and warm and calm. Perfect for either the manatee paddle, or the white-crowned pigeon birding. So we did neither. We got to talking with the neighbors, Don and Lisa, with the birds, and visited till noon. We were out on the dock, admiring the morning sunshine, when the guy brought the cages back out and set them on the table in the shade. He arranged everthing just like he wanted it, then opened up the cages and five peach-faced lovebirds came wandering out onto the table, talking and squawking, and eating the seed he had spread there. It was irresistible. He was sitting there with his arms out, talking to his birds, picking different ones up in turn, holding them for a while, talking to them, or rubbing their little bellies, then putting them back down. Little birds, just roaming the entire tabletop, but not venturing anywhere else. By noon we were picking up little Lovie, Dovie, Bert, Jack, and ZZ, handling them, talking to them, putting them back down and getting another. Judy and I have seen skeptical expressions when we’ve resorted to spelling words around the dog, because she’ll understand what we’re talking about if we just say the words outright. It makes a difference if you say the word b.a.t.h., or spell it in Annie’s presence. Well, we caught these people spelling words in front of their birds. t.r.e.a.t. Come on people. They’re tiny little birds with tiny little brains. They’re not warm blooded thinking people like Annie. We had birds on the table. Birds on the ground. They put them on the ground and let them run around too. Then Don said out loud, “who wants a treat?” instead of spelling it. Five little birds all hurried over to his feet to be first. It was hilarious. Turns out we didn’t forego the mangrove paddle either. Don and Lisa also have a sea kayak, just like the one we paddled in yesterday. We spent the afternoon paddling canals, shallows and mangroves. Back in the mangroves we got really close to a green heron. It’s like a little night heron. For the longest while we just floated out in the bay and let the drift take us. It took Annie about thirty seconds to get used to the boat. Then she just sat in the bottom, or hung over the side watching the shallows go by with her ears dragging in the water. There was lots of interesting stuff to see. After visiting with the neighbors, lunch, kayaking, and an afternoon run, we decided to go back to Key West one more time in search of the white crowned pigeon. Found the Botanic Gardens, no mean feat in itself, and prowled the depths. Gray catbirds. Palm warblers. Eurasian collared doves. No white crowned pigeons. No more chances this trip. I think we’ll be north of their territory by our next stop. Guess we’ll just have to come back and try again some other time. For this trip, we figured we’d just drive down, find a KOA, then look around to get our bearings and see if we found something we liked. We did. We found all of the keys. We like them all a lot. RV parks are very expensive here, but hotels probably cost a lot more. It cost twenty-five dollars just to spend the night in a State Park, except you can’t spend the night in a State Park unless you made a reservation months ago. They’re reserved up solid. We feel we were lucky to find the Bluewater Park we found. The Keys are the closest thing to the Carribean we’ve seen. Great turquoise shallow water. Mangroves. Lots of islands. Swimming. Fishing. Kayaking. Snorkeling. We saw an advertisement for a restaurant that claimed they were conveniently located at the intersection of heaven and earth. Not too far off. The Keys are expensive, but definitely worth a look. No miles on the motorhome. No new birds. Neighbor meeting. More dock sitting. Birding. Kayaking. Tomorrow, time to head north. We’ll spend the next night at the Flamingo campground in the southern end of the everglades. I read an account of some purple gallinules there.

Posted on

Trip13

Friday.

Nice early start. Got up as soon as the sky got blue. Nice warm calm day again. Moved back to an ocean front site. Sat on the dock. Schools of fish. We have our own resident barracuda on this dock. Under this dock, anyway. He’s only eighteen inches long, but he does the whole barracuda thing. Watching. Just hanging there motionless, and watching. I think he likes us. He seems so interested in everything we do…. Drove up to sugarloaf key, then off to the side, across another bridge, to another island. Walked through a mangrove swamp looking for the mangrove cuckoo. Never saw it. Might have heard it. Got stopped by the police. Came back. Had lunch. Headed off to Key West for a sunset sail on the fabled trimaran (picture). This boat only takes six passengers at a time. We got luckier than that. We were the only two passengers for the afternoon, so we got a private tour. Left at two o’clock. Motored across the flat water to an uninhabited mangrove island. Tied up the boat. Launched the sea kayaks. Paddled for a couple hours. Rebecca from the boat paddled with us and gave us the eco-tour, and showed us some really cool places to paddle through. Saw tons of seabirds. Saw mangrove crabs, and a mangrove snake underwater. Played with a sea cucumber. Motored back across the flat water to the harbor, spun the boat around and admired the Key West sunset (picture). Got a stuffed manatee that seems to have the same expression as Annie. Maybe Annie is actually a Cockatee. Or a Manapoo. More and more, I find myself birding by sound. I’ll sort the different noises I’m hearing, identify which ones I’m familiar with, and focus on finding the source of the ones I don’t recognize. When we moved our motorhome today, the first think I noticed when I stepped out were the bird noises coming from the bushes right next to our site. New birds. Exotic birds. Immediately, I went to investigate. I found two cages of exotic birds the people in the site next to us apparently carry around and set outside, weather permitting. I assumed that part about weather permitting, we haven’t talked to them yet (the owners of the birds, not the birds). But certainly, you’d have to be conscious of whether you were in Key West, or Keystone, before you put the birds out. They could freeze right up if you weren’t paying attention. Saw pelicans, cormorants, frigate birds, yellow crowned night herons, little blue heron, tri colored herons, a thousand black skimmers, a stingray, a dead cormorant, a coopers hawk, egrets, terns, seagulls, ibis, and more palm warblers. Sat on the dock tonight and listened to the fish splashing in the dark. Annie sat with us. She didn’t actually sit, she did that stretch out to look at something, prepared to flee at any moment, growling that growl that says “I know you’re out there. I don’t know what you are, but I know you’re out there. Stay back. I know karate.” She was almost gotten by three different things. They were, in order, a floating bait bucket, a floating mangrove leaf, and a dock cleat. Judy finally took pity on her and held her for a while so she could relax a little. Traveled one hundred feet in the motorhome today. No new birds. Motorhome moving. Dock sitting. Dock sitting in the dark. Bird watching. Sailing. Kayaking. Tomorrow, either canoeing in the State Park to a place that’s supposed to have manatees, crocodiles, alligators, and sharks. Or bird watching back on Key West to try to see the white crowned pigeon, a new bird for us. Tough choices.

Posted on

Trip12

Thursday. This is a full park we’re staying in, without reservations. We moved to a canal-side site today so we could stay. A lower low last night. It got down to fifty-six. Made eighty-one for a high today. Woke up to a cloudless, windless morning. Sat out on the dock to have coffee and the ocean looked like a reflection pond. Watched schools of fish and a barracuda pass below. Sea gulls serenaded. The coffee was good. That took up the morning. We embarked on a more ambitious project for the afternoon. We have seen some mailboxes being held by manatees. That doesn’t sound right. It wasn’t a whole bunch of mailboxes and a whole bunch of manatees holding them up all at once. One mailbox, one manatee. The manatee stands about five feet high. Our mission was to find who sells them and take a look. We drove north. Did you know there are forty-two bridges between the keys? One of them is seven miles long. We drove all the way back to Key Largo and found the shop. Outdoor statuary. Manatees holding mailboxes. Five feet tall. They’re pretty expensive. Bought some smaller stuff. Stopped at John Pennekamp State Park to check it out. Stopped at a wild bird center. I got to grab a pelican’s bill and wrestle with it. I won! Judy had one land on her shoulder. That’s a little intimidating. Saw a yellow crowned night heron. I’m still bothered by the enormous impact of those giant cruise ships docked at Key West. They dwarf the town. My observation was that most of the cruise passengers weren’t getting more than two hundred yards away from the ship. Everything within two hundred yards of the ships has been built within the last two years. Is there a logic problem here? You travel to an exotic port on a cruise ship. Get off the cruise ship. Look at all the stuff they built for you to see in cruise village. Then get back on the ship and head for another exotic port. Sound just a little too much like Disney World? Disturbing. We had a romantic candlelight dinner for two. Just the two of us… and rags, the giant furry moth. We have Annie the giant caterpillar asleep on Judy’s lap, and Rags, the giant moth. He just can’t help himself. He’s drawn. His whiskers are shorter now and a little curly on the ends. He’s still trying to get the rest of the wax off his paws. Traveled three hundred feet in the motorhome today. No new birds. Motorhome moving. Cat drooling. More dock sitting (picture). No lunch: just munched all day. Tomorrow, the eco-tour aboard the trimaran: snorkeling or kayaking or both.