Everglades: Birds, Crocodiles, Alligators, Mosquitoes

First, the good news: The Everglades is a great place to see wildlife. It is gigantic, and the National Park is huge. The campground is 38 miles from the entrance, and once you’re in, you’re in. You’re not thinking you’ll just go somewhere and do something else for a while. Or, if you are, you’ve got another think coming, as the saying goes. If you are looking to get away from it all, this just might be the place.

Sea of grass

The ability to see wildlife up close is amazing. We’ve seen SO many exotic and beautiful birds, including being able to watch them feed in the water, and work on their nests, from quite nearby. We’ve been deep in the mangrove forest, which looks like something out of a science fiction movie. We’ve seen alligators slowly moving through the water, with mostly just their eyes and a bit of a snout skimming above the surface. We’ve seen butterflies of every imaginable pattern and color. We have seen a sky so open that you can see the horizon in every direction. We’ve learned so much about the plants and animals we have seen by spending time with the Park Rangers, who are seemingly all young and so full of enthusiasm about the environment here. Much about the way it looks here, where ocean sits next to swamp, which leads to forest so thick you couldn’t possibly walk through it, which comes up against an ocean of grass, that leads to fresh water lakes, is just impossible to describe, and will be impossible to forget.

That’s the good news.

The good but also not so good news is that what makes the Everglades a place different from anywhere else is that the whole bottom of Florida is, or was, a huge watershed. Florida is a seriously flat place, and fresh water from Lake Okeechobee is supposed to drain down all over the southern part of the state. The ocean meets a big saltwater marsh and swamp environment, and in between, there is a transition area that is a combination of both fresh and salt water. This is what makes this place so diverse. There are both crocodiles (salt water) and alligators (fresh water), and birds and plants that belong in each environment, including the ocean, the ponds, the estuaries and swamps. But starting in the mid-20th century, the water coming down from the big lake started getting diverted to cities and for agriculture. So the environment is changing, and lots of wildlife have left. Many of the most unusual birds, like flamingoes, are gone. Some of the most common birds here, like egrets and herons, and storks, have apparently been diminished by as much as ninety percent. Some of the birds we have seen are endangered. So I’m glad to have seen it all while it is still here.

Just a couple of guys hanging out in the sun

But now some of the bad news. In the Everglades they are having a weirdly wet winter. What this
means for us is that within a few hours of arriving, we were both covered with mosquito bites. Covered! They are so prevalent that just going in and out the door brings them in….and then comes that terrible moment when you kill one inside, and get blood on your hand, meaning it’s too late! This has impacted our ability to enjoy being here, because the early morning walk or the evening talk given by one of the Rangers is just out of the question, at least at the southern end of the Park, by the ocean, where we are staying, since the salt marsh mosquito is the really prevalent one at the moment. So cooking outside is out, which has complicated things for us a bit. And then….there was the rain. We went out for a tour led by one of these young Rangers (a very enthusiastic woman about 28 who lives in the Everglades during the winter and Alaska during the summer), when there was a sudden downpour. When we got back home we found out that everything inside was wet, because of course we left the trailer open to the breeze. The beds were soaked, and lots of the rest of the inside of the trailer too. We couldn’t really take things outside to dry because there was apparently more rain coming, and there was no place to hang things up that they wouldn’t get blown away in the wind. We hung things around as best we could inside and decided that our best bet was to stay indoors and watch a movie. (Did I mention: no cell phone service, no ability to get a signal to use for wi-fi, no radio, no newspapers?) To cheer ourselves up we watched March of the Penguins, which was about as unlike the Everglades as any place you can imagine! After that we managed to find a semi-dry place to lay down and a couple of semi-dry pillows, and tried to sleep.

Then came the storm. And I’m talking a REAL storm, the likes of which I don’t believe I’ve ever seen. SO much lightning, thunder, and wind-driven rain….and a howling wind that was shaking the trailer. It was too intense to sleep through, and all I kept thinking about was the people in tents! It was so dramatic, and there was nothing for it but just to wait it out, and survey things in the morning.
The next day it was quite a bit cooler, and so windy that the mosquitoes seem to be somewhere else. And we had a nice bike ride, on a day that wasn’t hot, which was a delight. The pillows are out in the sun to dry, and the clothes that are hanging off every surface in the trailer are flapping in the breeze, and will be dry before the day is done. And I discovered a different area in the campground where they have warm showers because of a solar water heater, which was thrilling!

I’m itchy...damned itchy. But I’m clean, and my clothes are drying out. We’ve got nothing to do,
nowhere to go, and several books waiting to be read. That’s not so bad, right? I started to cheer up.

Can you see him here, just under the surface?

And today we went on a long canoe trip led by a Ranger. It was a three hour tour of both fresh and salt water ponds, and it was so beautiful. The “three hour tour” DID make me a little anxious…..but unlike Gilligan and his pals, we made it back,  although there was a point when the Ranger said"See those  bubbles under the water there? Stay to the left, that's an alligator," that I wasn't so sure.  But we made it back, and I was proud of myself for neither running the canoe into anything or tipping over. Hooray for me!

Tomorrow we are off for civilization. We’re heading across the state on the Tamiami Trail (which I found out today means between Tampa and Miami) to the Gulf side of the state. We’ll be in the Fort Myers area, where we will see Abbie on her February vacation (hooray!), and visit with Bob’s sister and her husband, who will be on a vacation from New Jersey, if it stops snowing long enough that they all can get out (!), and we will visit with some old friends who used to live in Boston. And then….Spring Training! GO, RED SOX!

I think the wilderness part of this trip is over, at least for now. That’s okay with me, and here’s hoping “civilization” isn’t so riddled with mosquitoes!