Everglades - Paddling Hell's Bay

We've had very unsettled weather down here in the Everglades this week.  Every day has been windy, and Saturday had some rain.  But, after the rain, today, Sunday, March 13, 2022, was cool, with highs in the low 70F's.  We took advantage of the nice weather and picked a paddle that would not be adversely affected by the wind -- which meant a winding adventure through mangrove wetlands.  The ranger at the Everglades National Park Visitor Center suggested we try Hell's Bay, and here Kathy launches into the water:

This paddle is further upgradient from Florida Bay, less brackish, and, for some reason, a lot clearer -- perhaps because it isn't affected much by tides:

The water was perfectly calm, as we wound our way into the mangroves:

In some areas, for whatever reason, the mangroves appear to have died and have been replaced by grassy, reedy vegetation, still deep in flowing water:

The ranger advised us to carefully follow white posts which mark the paddle trail from the entrance to Hell's Bay, toward the three chickees -- or camping platforms -- that are set out in the Everglades backcountry.  Some of the marker poles were easy to spot --

-- and others were not.  Below, Kathy spotted Marker #6, almost hidden by the mangrove vegetation, and checked her map to be sure we were still on course:

We had 55 markers to pass, and we slowly worked our way past more, such as #8 below:

While most of the paddle route was very narrow -- often narrower than the length of our paddles, the water did occasionally open up.  Below Kathy relaxes and celebrates a short stretch of open paddling:

Some marker poles at junctions of multiple "streams" seemed to bear color-coded stripes, but we were not familiar with the meaning, so we just relied on our GPS and short explorations of branched streams to determine the proper route.

Epiphytes, or air plants, grow on the branches of many mangrove trees, and are most evident on dead, leafless branches:

We stopped for lunch and then continued.  So much for open paddling; below we started back into the narrow mangrove channels:

Some of the dead mangrove branches were bleached white and seemed starkly unreal:

In a few places, we spotted delicate yellow flowers blooming on the surface of the water.  The blossoms grew from underground foliage that resembled ferns or fluffy evergreens but were completely submerged:

This turned out to be one of our shorter paddles -- in terms of distance -- because our path was so twisted and narrow, and we needed to paddle slowly in order to navigate the jumbled channels.  We also were unable to start our paddle early because of other activities.  But as quick afternoon outing, it was very satisfying.  We're hoping to have another, longer paddle tomorrow to get more of this same type of experience.