Florida Travels
Most of my travels tend to be connected to people I love and places that I want to adventure. Friends in Texas, family in Arizona and Colorado, Caving in TAG (Tennessee/Alabama/Georgia), my childhood home and heart in Arkansas… Honestly, Florida wasn’t on the list of places I felt drawn to (no offense, Floridians!). Organizing travels, making molds for jewelry collections, and participating in shows in Florida resulted from my husband’s draw towards the Everglades.
I greatly enjoyed participating in the Mermaid Festival in Nokomis and the Boca Raton Fine Art Show. It was an honor to share Ozark Impressions Jewelry with folks there and hear some of their stories and connections to my work. But, the Everglades stole the show for me. After both of the art shows we traveled south to the Everglades for two separate 4-day canoe trips.
Brent and Summer (my bonus boy) traveled to Florida when Summer was just around 7 years old. They canoed the mangrove trails, visited some national parks, and saw wildlife that’s so foreign to me as a lifelong Ozarkian. I’ve heard stories of them canoeing in the Everglades for over a decade now and decided it was time to see it for myself.
I’ll be quick and to the point here (although this post itself is lengthy;) I’m terrified of about 75% of the adventures I go on. Caving, backpacking, canoeing, these are all things that I sincerely love. They help me breath deeper and find peace as the world around me spins forever out of my control. But there is a bit of fear in the anticipation of carrying these tasks out. Doing these things is a muscle I’ve learned to exercise. I’ve simply gotten better at them through experience, practice, and repetition. More often than not, I’m focused on taking one step at a time, one bear crawl at a time, one breath at a time. Knowing that as long as I keep moving, no matter how miniscule the distance covered, it’s still a movement forward. And that in itself is progress towards my goal.
A bit of transparency here…alligators, pythons, and panthers only accounted for about 50% of my conscious thoughts. The other 50% of those thoughts only occurred as a result of distractions from the ever-impending mosquitos and no-see-ums that fell on us like clockwork from sundown to sunup. There are many biting-things in Florida. The majority of them can be dealt with by simply crawling into a tent. We did see a lot of alligators, a couple small sharks, but not a single python or panther. In all honestly, in spite of my apprehension, I would have liked to see them all.
The Everglades left the strongest impression on me, for sure. Paddling the mangrove trails and the keys is extremely different than paddling the Buffalo or Elk Rivers I’m used to. Although I live on Grand Lake in Northeast Oklahoma, it’s rare I dip a canoe or kayak in its calm lake waters. I’m use to water that moves; stretches of rapids broken by eddies, protruding boulders and strainers to avoid, river banks you can stop and stretch your legs on and have a beverage. These are waters I’m comfortable with for the most part. With the ocean’s waters, once you’re moving with or against the tide in either the mangroves or the keys, you’re not getting out of the boat until you’ve reached your destination.
For our first trip, we paddled from Hell’s Bay Trailhead to Hell’s Bay Chickee. Enroute, two alligators gently broke the water’s surface and disappeared in clouds of mucky water ahead of our canoe. Instead of the fear I’d been anticipating for days leading up to that trip, I turned and smiled at Brent in complete amazement as we paddled over their cloud of disturbed mud beneath us, never to see them again. I wasn’t about to get in that brackish water with them, but I knew they weren’t interested in us. I felt that if I respected their environment and gave them space to move on their way, they weren’t going to bother us. And thankfully they didn’t.
That was the only time I saw alligators while canoeing. I worried about startling one and how it might respond, but my worries were for naught. What we did see, were dolphins and thousands of water fowl. The dolphins would swim through the shallows, stirring up the fish hiding in the seagrasses, and then chase them in circles before moving along 10 feet to repeat the exercise. Osprey, storks, pelicans, seagulls, herons, and cormorants entertained us mostly. And they were welcomed in their abundance.
We camped on Robert’s River Chickee and Pearl Bay Chickee for the other two nights in the mangroves. The Chickees are simply raised platforms a few feet above the water’s surface with space enough to pitch a tent and a port-a-john that gets serviced rather infrequently. You’re near the mangroves, but there is no solid land within sight. We both wished for a bit more space to stretch our legs, but it felt so good to get a break from constantly paddling that we didn’t mind the limited space.
We launched from Chokoloskee Bay for our Everglades Keys trip. Before embarking, we stopped at the local grocer for a bag of ice. The cashier pointed out the water mark on the wall showing Hurricane Ira’s impact on the tiny shore town. The mark came up above my ribcage and my mind was absolutely blown. Folks must have a deep connection to these waters and shorelines to endure the destruction Mother Nature blows their way year after year. At least 5 hurricane marks were indicated on that flood stained wall, but Ira out-massed them all.
Osprey were abundant on the keys trip and we enjoyed hearing their warning cries and watching them dive for fish from incredible heights as we paddled past their nests which lined the channels. I obsessively looked for pythons, but didn’t see a single one. Apparently, they are masters of camouflage and even the locals who hunt them rarely manage a sighting. Brent read an article to me (perhaps in an attempt to ease my mind) about a python hunt organized by the state of Florida. Out of the 1500 hunters signed up to participate, few ever saw a python, and only 63 managed a kill. For our eight days of canoeing I obsessively scoured the vines and branches for pythons, but never managed a single sighting.
The only real concern on the keys trip was the larger boats, some of which seemingly disregarded the impact of their massive wakes on our smaller vessel as we paddled along the channel out to more open waters. The first large boat we encountered filled our canoe with waves from its wake as we tried to take a short break for lunch. I was not amused.
On this trip, instead of camping on chickees, we were able to camp on the beaches of the small islands along the outskirts of the Everglades. Our first camp, Tiger Key, had one resident racoon who didn’t seem to be in the best of shape. He (or she?) feasted on tiny sand crabs. Digging holes in the wet sand with its tiny paws, it would wipe the sand off as best it could, then crunch up the crabs with its back teeth. During the evening we could hear it rustling through the large waxy leafed bushes, carefully pulling the branches to its mouth and lapping up the heavy dew that had collected on the leaves throughout the night. Being alone, I wondered if it had gotten washed away from its family and home island during one of the big storms.
The second night we camped on Jewel Key and I swear I heard an animal getting mauled and eaten in the night…but I tend to be very imaginative when in the wild. The last night we camped with about a dozen other folks on Pavilion Key. We inspected what seemed like a hundred conch shells while taking in one last killer sunset before returning towards the mainland. Paddling back to Chokoloskee Bay was the longest stretch of open water paddling I’d ever done, but we were finally moving with the tide and we unintentionally managed the fasted time of all.
Canoeing the Everglades was the highlight adventure, for sure, but we also managed a short sunset sail, a few days camping and touristing around Key West (I can check that off my list and vow to never return), and eating the absolute best seafood I’ve ever had in my entire life. Oh, and I got sea sick for the first time in my life! It turns out that snorkeling in choppy waters is not conducive to keeping that yummy seafood down. I chummed a couple times, but still saw some cool fishys.
When we manage a second visit to Florida (someday…but not anytime soon) I’ve got a bucket list of spring rivers to visit. We floated Rainbow Spring River as a last stop before leaving the state, and I could have spent multiple days there. Never in my life have I swam in such pristine, clear waters. We canoed and snorkeled for hours, watching huge turtles as they caught fish in the sea grass, colorful fish darting in and out of the tall sea grasses, cormorants diving, fishing, and swimming underwater… It was magic, and the perfect send off before making our way back home to Oklahoma.
We made stops in Georgia and Tennessee; hiking and caving with friends, making molds underground, and collecting foliage for future jewelry impression collections…but I’ll write about that some other time.
If you’ve read this far, I’m seriously impressed (:I’m talking to you mom & sister;) I sincerely thank you for bearing with my writing imperfections and grammar mistakes, my lengthy descriptions, and whatever other critique I could hyper-focus on to avoid publishing this. But mostly, thank you for wanting to share in these adventures with me.
They won’t all be this long-winded, I promise;)
