Everglades - Coot Bay to Mud Lake Paddle

Thursday,  March 10, 2022

Hi Blog!

On Wednesday, we drove east from Naples to Homestead, Florida. Our destination was the Flamingo Campground in Everglades National Park. In 2013, we had camped here years ago, but that was before we had our own kayaks. We made a promise to ourselves that we would return and spend more time paddling.

We started our first day here with a walk over to the Visitor Center where we chatted up a Park Ranger about all our paddling options. We left with several interesting options. We could paddle the Buttonwood Canal to Coot Bay or follow the Florida Bay shoreline out to Snake Bight. There were also a number of canoe trails we could follow. The one that caught our attention was the canoe trail from Coot Bay Pond, through a mangrove tunnel to Coot Bay and then from the far west shore of Coot Bay through another mangrove tunnel to Mud Lake. We didn’t have the best of luck last time we tried to paddle to something called Mud Lake. However, we were willing to risk giving it another go.

We drove out the main road to the Coot Bay Pond picnic area and launched our kayaks a few feet from the road. 

As we paddled across the pond, the entrance to the channel that would take us out to Coot Bay was not evident. 

We paddled to the spot where both the map and the GPS said our path would be and it still wasn’t evident. 

The ranger said we might have to work our way around some fallen trees and he wasn’t kidding. It took a little wiggling, but we managed to skinny our kayaks over and under a bunch of tree limbs.

Once we entered the channel, we had fun ducking mangrove roots and fallen tree trunks.

When we finally emerged into Coot Bay, we were amazed at how a tiny round dot on a map could be so vast. We worked our way around the shoreline, poking into shallow coves and keeping an eye out for coots. We would hear them playing in the mangroves, but we never got close enough for a photo.

However, we did find some really cool bayside works of art:

Arms Full of Shells:

Still Life of An Old Dock:

For the first part of our paddle, we had the bay to ourselves. The winds were fairly high, which may have discouraged others from coming out to Coot Bay. We did eventually see two other kayaks make their way to our bay from the canal. We lost sight of them as they continued across the bay to the far shore.

By paddling into the wind to the east shore, we gained plenty of cover from the wind in the shelter of the mangroves.  There was just enough of a breeze through the trees to keep the bugs away. We tucked into a nice shady spot for lunch. 

As we left our lunch spot, a great cormorant was drying its wings.

We continued our search for the channel to Mud Lake. We knew we were getting close, but it wasn’t until we were right in front of it that we finally saw the light.

 

Having navigated the channel to Coot Bay, we felt confident we would make our way to Mud Lake. Finding channel markers is a lot like finding geocaches. Your GPS tells you it’s there, but you still have to find it!  

As we made our way out into Mud Lake we noticed two things. First, Mud Lake was very muddy. Second, it had lots and lots of little islands.

 

Because we got a late start, we didn’t stay long. We were also worried about finding that hidden channel marker again.

We tried four or five times to get a photo of this tri-colored heron. He or she kept flying down the channel in front of us and perching just long enough for us to get close, but not close enough for a photo. It finally got tired of flying away and let us get our photo.

Back in Coot Bay, we encountered an alligator floating on the surface. We didn’t want to get too close. They usually just submerge and swim away, but why take chances?

With the wind sort of at our back, we made a straight line back across the bay to the channel for Coot Bay Pond, passing some fishing boats:

We stopped long enough to say hi to this shore bird.

The Great White Heron was guarding the entrance to our channel.

When we arrived back at the picnic area, there was a lovely young German couple who just finished lunch and were heading out of the park. They were almost done with their three week U.S. vacation. We wished them safe travels and began packing up the kayaks. Ours was the only car left in the parking area. 

As we dried our kayaks, we heard voices coming from the pond and noticed a two person kayak pulling into the launch site, occupied by two young women. With no other cars around, Dave asked them if they knew they were at Coot Bay Pond. They admitted they were lost. We gave them our map and directions back to Buttonwood Canal and the kayak rental launch. They too were also Germans on holiday. They certainly had themselves an adventure!