Well, on Saturday we had to leave the Midway Campground in Big Cypress National Preserve because our 10-day stay limit was up. Check-out was at noon and we rolled out around 11:30, hit the dump station and were on our way.
It was an easy 50-mile drive as we made our way to an RV-Dreamer's home in Goulds, Florida between Miami and Homestead. She (another Linda) attended our South Carolina Rally last April and had invited us to stay at her place when we were originally going on the RV At Sea Cruise last November before it was canceled. As it turned out, it's the perfect location to continue our south Florida tour and to park while we fly to Boston. :)
So we are parked in a large fenced yard in the middle of what appears to be the plant nursery capital of Florida. Our hostess is off on an RV trip of her own, but her daughter and son-in-law live on-site and we were given good instructions. :)
On Saturday, we just got set up and didn't do much else. Oh, I got the videos posted in the prior entry: Halfway Creek Canoe Loop. You at least have to go back and check out the video with Linda and the cockatoo. :)
Today, Sunday, it was just too nice out with blue skies and temps expected to be in the mid-70s to just sit and work. So, we made the decision to drive the 20 miles down to the eastern section of Everglades National Park and check it out. We plan on camping there at some point this winter, so we were interested in the campgrounds as much as anything.
We started at the Ernest Coe Visitors Center, where we looked over some of the exhibits and watched the movie about the park, a very good one by the way.
The movie explained how the 1.5-million acre park is divided into three main-eco-systems: the freshwater sawgrass prairies, the brackish water mangrove forests, and the saltwater Florida Bay.
From the Visitors Center, we went through the entrance and paid our fee, then turned left off the main road a few miles in toward Royal Palm. At Royal Palm is one of the most popular trails in the park - the Anhinga Trail.
It's a three quarter mile paved and boardwalk trail. The Anhinga Trail is sort of a like mini-Shark Valley with opportunities to see the typical wildlife up close, but with more people in a concentrated area ...
and fewer animals and less variety simply because it is much smaller (less than a mile as opposed to a 15-mile loop at Shark Valley).
One thing you notice right away are all the Black Vultures just hanging out by the trail. Very strange.
There is a sign as you enter the parking lot that says "Vultures can cause damage to vehicles". We didn't see any in the parking lot, but they were on the trail like they were in a petting zoo. :)
We quickly saw the usual gators, herons, egrets, cormorants, and anhingas. The cormorants, like the vultures, were inches off the trail and not afraid of people at all.
We got a nice close-up view of this Wood Stork feeding.
Did you notice how it uses its feet to scare up small fish and other food. It feels for them and clamps shut with its bill. This bird supposedly has the fastest bill in the bird world.
Along the first part of the boardwalk, we looked hard ....
but didn't see anything we hadn't seen before.
Here is a gator on a log with a turtle.
But then in the middle, we noticed several Anhingas nesting and an unusual, constant sound. Ah, the Anhingas have babies and the babies are clamoring to be fed! :)
It was quite the spectacle and Linda got some of it on video.
Now that we hadn't seen before.
It was mostly the males sitting with the babies and feeding them. When they fed them it looked like the adult birds were trying to swallow the heads of the chicks. :)
With all the commotion caused by the babies and the adults switching in and out and bringing food, some of the alligators were more active. They were swimming around under the nests waiting for a baby to fall.
Some eggs hadn't hatched yet, while some of the Anhinga chicks were almost full size (upper right of photo below).
They still had their blond coloring, but they were as big as the adults.
As we continued, we saw this cormorant catch a catfish.
Other birds chased it as it swam underwater with the fish until it got away. Once it resurfaced, it swallowed the fish quickly.
Moving on, there were lots of gators at the end of one viewing platforms.
We parted to let this lady in the wheelchair get a closer look.
She was talking to them and told them they wouldn't be interested in her because she was "old and tough". :)
We spent about an hour on the aptly named Anhinga Trail, mostly watching the activity in the rookery. Then we walked over and did the Gumbo Limbo Trail in the same vicinity.
The Gumbo Limbo Trail is named for the large, red-barked trees all along the way.
And unlike the Anhinga Trail, just a hundred feet away, there wasn't a soul on this trail through the woods. Of course, there wasn't nearly as much to see, either. :)
As we got in the Jeep, we noticed a crow casing a convertible across from us. Soon it was down inside. Linda got the video camera going and then there were two crows looking for something to eat.
As you could see, they didn't scare easily. Perhaps the warning sign out front should have included crows along with the vultures. :)
From Royal Palm, we drove back out to the main road and went a few miles farther to the Long Pine Key turnoff. The first of the two campgrounds inside the park is located at Long Pine Key.
The attending ranger gave us a map and let us drive through. It's a 108-site campground, all first-come, first served, with no hook-ups. The map has sites color-coded based on size the sites will accommodate. There were 26 green sites for RVs from 38 - 46 feet. Let me tell ya, I'd say less than ten of those sites would have held our rig and they would have been close.
The Long Pine Key Campground is only about 6 miles into the park, but from what we saw, we wouldn't anticipate getting one of the few larger spots in there, nor would we necessarily want to.
From there, we drove all the way to the end of the park road to the Flamingo area (it's 38 miles into the park). At Flamingo, there is another Visitors Center, a marina and store, and the Flamingo Campground.
The Flamingo area was devastated by hurricanes Katrina and Wilma in 2005. The lodge and restaurant were gutted and the campground was closed for a couple of years.
Before getting to the campground, we stopped at the visitors center to see if we could get some food.
As it turns out, they are serving food behind the lodge in a screened-in area looking out over Florida Bay.
They have a menu and a couple of servers and food is being cooked in a trailer. So, we ordered a late lunch. It wasn't bad, but don't go there expecting anything quick. :)
I got a canoe and hiking trail map at the visitors center. We could canoe a different trail every day for a week. :)
Then we walked over to the marina. I was hoping to see an American Crocodile, and I heard the canal behind the marina was a good place to look.
Sure enough, people were gathered on a bridge and a croc was hanging out below. I think we were all excited and didn't even read that we weren't supposed to be there. I got a quick picture before we got chased back into regular people territory.
Notice the lighter color and the more tapered snout. They are pretty easy to distinguish from the American Alligators, especially when you've seen as many alligators as we have. :)
This part of the Everglades is the only place were crocodiles exist in the wild in the U.S. We had certainly never seen one before, so that was a nice treat.
The marina has canoe and kayak and motorboat rentals. They also do two daily tours - one in the backwaters and one out into Florida Bay. I believe each of them was $26.50 per person.
After that, we drove over to the Flamingo Campground. They have a walk-in tent area, and four other camping loops with paved roads and pads. There are 234 "potential" RV sites.
The A & B loops have about 110 sites with no hook-ups ($16 per night), but all the parking pads are fairly short. There is plenty of room if they let you park on the grass beyond the end of the pads, but the rules say the camping units have to be on the pavement (enforcement of that rule didn't seem to be too strict).
Loop C is just like Loop B, but it is closed except for overflow and for vehicles towing boats.
The "Trailer" Loop, Loop T is for larger RVs. All sites are pull-throughs with good spacing between sites.
There are 65 sites and, as of January 15, the first 41 of them have electric hook-ups for $30 per night.
All of the electric hook-ups were taken today, but there were plenty of no hook-up sites ($16) available and some of those sites are HUGE.
That site could hold three large motorhomes. :)
For 2011, none of the electric sites can be reserved. And no specific site can be reserved ahead of time. You can't even reserve a specific loop. There are a certain number of non-electric spots reservable through the online reservation system, but it only gives you a spot in the campground, not necessarily one you will fit in. :)
Note: We didn't get any cell service out at Flamingo, and I'm not sure whether we would with our trucker antenna and amplifier or not. I assume we'd get at least some signal, but don't know that for sure.
The campground is nothing fancy, but the T Loop sites are large and access is easy. The dump station and water spigot is located right in the middle of the loop on one of the arc-shaped cross roads. We'll certainly be going to Flamingo at some point while we are down in this area.
After touring the campground, we just headed back. We accomplished what we set out to do, and we didn't have time before dark to check out any of the other stops or trails.
Back at the rig, we finally met our hostess's daughter and her husband. They are super nice and they showed us around. We feel safe and secure here and that's a very good thing. :)
That's it for another day. Looking forward to seeing the folks in Boston, but we'll also be glad to be back to the warm weather and more exploring. :)
Howard, great tour, thanks! I wonder if you would consider writing about what is the "same" since you've quit working. I'm sitting here annoyed at the corporate politics and multiple demands of my jobs and wonder if retiring really gets you away from those annoyances or if other things substitute (like annoying Comments, haha!)
Posted by: Alice | Monday, January 31, 2011 at 04:06 PM
You can't pass up the shakes at the roadside stand called "Robert is Here" very long! Right on the Everglades entrance road. BTW, if you can stand it, the Mexican food at the various food trailers along the way is also outstanding.
www.robertishere.com
Posted by: lurker | Monday, January 31, 2011 at 09:58 PM
Great post thanks for all the information. Loved the videos. Is it me, or was there no sound on any of them? I checked all my laptop sound controls and even went to Amazon and played some music to make sure. I missed the sounds of the wind and Linda's great comments softly in the background.
Posted by: Sherry | Tuesday, February 01, 2011 at 08:55 AM
Nice post, brought back a lot of memories from a couple years ago. Robert is Here is certainly worth a stop. Great produce and free samples. We did see several black vultures eating the rubber away from the windows of a car at the Anghinga Trail Parking Area when we were there. Dianne chased them away several times, but they kept coming back to the same car. When we were there, we took turns hiking on the trail and guarding the car.
Posted by: roger and dianne | Wednesday, February 02, 2011 at 09:53 AM
Alice, indeed we'll write something about what is the "same" (not much) since we started full-timing.
Sherry, I'm getting sound on the videos.
We passed "Robert Is Here" and it was packed. We'll have to try it when we camp at the Everglades later.
Posted by: Howard | Thursday, February 03, 2011 at 06:48 AM