More Mangrove Madness!

Almost two years ago today, to the date, we went kayaking in the mangrove estuaries of the Florida Keys with our friends Toni and Jim.  Our blog of that adventure can be found here. That wasn't by any means our only kayak trip - another one nearby, out of Everglades City, can be found here.  But this was our first chance in two years to go get Lost in the Mangroves! and we took full advantage of the beautiful weather.  The high today was 83F, with a light breeze and mostly sun, so we could wear our shorts and light shirts and water shoes without fearing that we would be too cold.

We found a great mangrove estuary in Key Largo at the John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park, about a 30 miles drive south of our campground.  Established in 1963, John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park was the first undersea park in the United States. With the adjacent Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, it covers approximately 178 nautical square miles of coral reefs, seagrass beds and mangrove swamps. The park extends 3 miles into the Atlantic Ocean and is approximately 25 miles in length. These areas were established to protect and preserve a portion of the only living coral reef in the continental United States. The park contains a wide variety of tropical vegetation, shore birds and marine life.

Kayak reservations are first-come-first-served, so we were up and out early to get ahead of the Presidents Day crowds.  By 10:15 am or so, we were out on the water, navigating our way across the main boat channel into the mangroves:

The park has over 50 miles of natural mangrove wilderness trails.  Some are very easy and well-marked.  Others are narrower, and still others require deft paddling with half paddles and some hand assists.  We explored all of them.  Here's Kathy working her way around one of the knottier messes of mangrove roots we found:

Our route comprised two separate figure-8's, on either side of the main boat channel.  Here we are working our way around the first loop, seeing houses and boat docks across the channel:

Back into the mangroves, we worked our way over to the second loop:

To reach the second loop, we had to cross a larger boat channel and open water on Largo Sound.  The wind was kicking up from the Northwest, and we had outflowing tide producing currents in the same direction, so we really had to paddle to get to our second loop:

We entered the second loop by way of Stingray Creek.  We wondered why it was named that until we looked down in the water by our boats:

The second loop had much more remote paddle trails.  As a result, we left the crowds behind, and got more opportunity to see wildlife.  We spotted a stork that we surprised as we paddled around a corner, but he flew off too quickly to be photographed.

We also saw the most amazing fish behavior.  Little fish leaped out of the water and skipped across its surface like a flat stone you would throw, make maybe three or four skips before diving back into the water.  Kathy was finally able to see the entire picture, and it appeared these little fish were leaping out of the water to escape larger, predatory fish who had found them and were chasing them.

This alerted us to look out for fish along the mangrove roots, and we were quickly rewarded by perhaps a dozen olive-green colored fish, maybe 12-18 inches, that had red-orange coloration along the edges of their fins and down their backs.  This fellow was kind enough to honor our request that he pose for a photo:



Kathy also spotted a black crab scuttling along a horizontal mangrove root just above the surface of the water, but - again - the little feller was too fast for us to photograph him.

Never mind the photo disappointments, we were enjoying finding our way through the maze of mangroves:

One short stretch back out to Largo Sound is called the Cathedral, and we understood why, because after entering it through a tight channel, the route opened up into a high-domed, room-like space created by the mangrove trees:

Back out on Largo Sound, we made our way on the shoreline, just outside the most shallow areas:

We turned our kayaks toward the point at which we would need to cross the boat channel again:

But, before we put our shoulders to the paddles, we turned one last time to look back at the shallow water and the mangrove islands, and were treated to a beautiful dance of waterplants in the sun and wind:

Our 5-mile paddle took about 3 hours.  We had hoped to stay out over 4 hours, but there was nowhere to beach the kayaks, get out and stretch our legs, so we had to sit in one position for the full three hours, which started to take its toll on our nether regions.  We decided to call it at 5 miles, happy we had this chance today to warm up for a ranger-led canoe paddle we plan to take down at the Flamingo Center of Everglades National Park this Friday.