Mardi Gras Parade

Hi Blog! Today is Tuesday, February 17, 2015 a/k/a Fat Tuesday or as the French say Mardis Gras! Eddie and George are excited to participate in the campground's Mardis Gras Pet Parade. The boys don't usually go out at night. They spend most of their time waking up in various locations. Tonight, they finally got a chance to kick back and party! Laissez les bons temps rouler!

The competition arrived and tried to influence the judges with a Grand plié.

Another tried the cuteness approach.

To our surprise, there was another entry in the non-animate category. This pair of flamingos would give our boys a run for their money.

Here is Kathy taking Eddie and George over to registration.

The participants are decked out in everything from the simple bead harness to.....

the extravagant.

Some participants are parading for a cause like Breast Cancer Awareness.

For others, it was just an excuse to party with their homies.

The crowd was in a very festive mood.

The parade marshall heads out in a festive golf cart leading the parade.

The entrants fall in line and begin to prance down Main Street.

After quick spin around camp, the winner is announced. Even Eddie and George voted for the French Bulldog in the ladybug outfit.

After the parade, the boys retired to the deck to let the good times roll. Here they are with Doreen comparing bling.

However, everyone agreed that Grant had the most.

We had to get in on the act, too:

The Mardi Gras dinner special tonight was red beans and rice with cajun sausage. Everyone brought a snack to share to round out the meal.

Let's just say that what happens in the Club House stays in the Club House. They boys are safely tucked back in the RV. It may be a few days before they wake up again.

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.

Biking "The Redlands"

Hi Blog! Today is Saturday, February 14, 2015 - Happy Valentines Day! We have a dinner dance tonight, so we want to stay close to our RV park today. We heard from several campers that the Redland Farmers Market makes for an interesting outing. It is only five miles away, so it should be an easy bike ride. Here's Dave leading the way.

Traffic was fairly light this morning. We didn't have any trouble finding the market place. There are several large buildings with stalls, plus the entire parking lot was lined with large numbered spaces for those who wanted to sell their own wares. They even had an art studio in the complex. We wondered what these folks were looking up at.

There were a number of unusual stalls like the bicycle sale and repair shop and the barber shop. However, most of the shops sold clothing, shoes and sundries.

Food was everywhere! The food court was decorated in red with lots of hearts and flowers. We took this opportunity to try as many Mexican dishes as possible. We ordered a couple of tacos, a quesadilla, a gordita and a tostada. We tried some with beef and some with chicken, but all were made on different types of corn tortilla. There were each delicious. Armand from Providencetown, Cape Cod told us to make sure we try Arepas - corn pancakes filled with queso cheese.  Since we already had lunch, we just ordered one. It was very tasty. Here were are eagerly awaiting our lunch time feast.

After lunch, we took a leisurely stroll around the flea market area. You can get just about anything you could want from musical instruments to golf clubs. You can even sign up for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. Check out the "Obamacare" info van.

The highlight, of course, is the actual farmers market. With its tropical climate, many tropical fruit crops are grown in Redland that cannot be grown commercially anywhere else, such as mango, avocado, guava, passion fruit, lychee, jack fruit, canistel, sapodilla, longan, mamey sapote, black sapote ("chocolate pudding fruit"), miracle fruit, jaboticaba, cecropia ("snake fingers") and coffee beans. We did look for Florida coffee beans, but couldn't find any at the market, but they had just about every other kinds of fruit or vegetable you could imagine.

After walking all the aisles both inside and out, it was time to bike back to camp. We followed the same route back, but we had been so intent on our goal when we originally cycled to the farmers market that we hadn't noticed that one of the farms we passed was actually a fish farm.  Pay a fee and you can catch your own tilapia for dinner!

On our way, we also passed the Knaus Berry Farm. There was a huge line outside. We thought, since it was Saturday and Valentines Day that there was some type of strawberry festival and all these folks were just waiting to get in. However, as we came back, it looked like the line hadn't even moved. We asked a couple ladies heading back across the street carrying large flat boxes what the line was for. They responded in unison with excitement - CINNAMON ROLLS!!! Seriously, hundreds of people lined up just to buy cinnamon rolls. As we stood there in disbelief, a car pulled out to turn onto the street and asked Kathy for directions to Route 1. After confirming that he was heading in the correct direction, we asked if he also waited in that line, and if it was worth the wait. He gave an emphatic YES and actually offered us one of these precious rolls. We thanked him profusely and proceeded to explore the buttery, salty, cinnamon sweetness of the freshest warmest cinnamon roll we have ever tasted. Forget those over-sugary treats that Cinnabon sells. Knaus Berry Farm has it all over them. Still warm from the oven, the ooey-gooeyness coated our finger tips and danced happily on our tastebuds. It came as close to orgasmic as a cinnamon roll (or any food for that matter) can.

We noticed this "hysterical" marker just past the bakery and berry farm.  Redland Farmlife School was formed from the consolidation of seven small neighborhood schools. Redland was dedicated by Governor Cats on July 4, 1916. There were separate teachers for each of the eight grades and a small high school and agriculture school. Ninety-eight percent of the students were bused to school. The buses consisted of a slatted, roofed “cattle car” type of trailer with seats for 85 children hauled by a separate tractor. A senior high boy was responsible for keeping order on the bus and seeing that the children crossed the road safely. A teacher was required to live at the end of each bus line and usually drove his own bus. 

We enjoyed biking through the Redland Agricultural Zone. Now, we've stayed in farm country before. But what is so unique about this area is that most of the products grown here don't stay here. We passed acre after acre of trees, bushes and plants all being grown in pots. These guys will probably end up in a Home Depot or Lowes sometime this spring.

Some pots are larger than others.

Some of the trees are so big, you need a special crane and truck to transplant them.

Just before getting back to camp, we made a quick stop at the Castellow Hammock Nature Center. We picked up a trail guide but decided to come back another day for a hike around the park.  We didn't feel we had the time to enjoy it before we had to change for the big dinner-dance.

Shark Valley in the River of Grass

Today we bicycled through Shark Valley in the Everglades National Park.  To Native Americans, the Everglades was known by a name meaning, "River of Grass," and that exactly describes the environment.  The Everglades are a natural region of tropical wetlands in the southern portion of the U.S. State of Florida, comprising the southern half of a large watershed. The system begins near Orlando with the Kissimmee River, which discharges into the vast but shallow Lake Okeechobee. Water leaving the lake in the wet season forms a slow-moving river 60 miles wide and over 100 miles long, flowing southward across a limestone shelf to Florida Bay at the southern end of the state. The Everglades are shaped by water and fire, experiencing frequent flooding in the wet season and drought in the dry season. Writer Marjory Stoneman Douglas popularized the term "River of Grass" to describe the sawgrass marshes, part of a complex system of interdependent ecosystems that include cypress swamps, the estuarine mangrove forests of the Ten Thousand Islands, tropical hardwood hammocks, pine rockland, and the marine environment of Florida Bay.

Shark Valley is the name for a region through which runs the Shark Valley Slough - the heart of the waterflow of the Everglades.  The water runs shallowly and slowly (it can take a year for the water to get from the Kissimmee River to Florida Bay) through grass prairieland, flooding it in the rainy summer season, but leaving dry vistas during the dry winter season.  Here is a typical panorama of the Everglades prairie:

Within the prairie are hammocks of pines and hardwoods, on the one hand, and solution holes and ponds where water had eaten through the limestone bedrock to form deeper ponds and lakes:

Here, Kathy is inspecting "solution holes" - places where, on the trail, the water has dissolved a hole in the limestone right under our feet:

The Shark Valley region of the park consists of a loop road 14 miles long, with a tall observation tower at the south end, seven miles from the visitor center:

From the observation tower, you can start to comprehend the grand vista of this prairie and river of grass:

Where the water runs a little deeper, alligators thrive.  Near the observation tower, the 'gators decided to hold a mini-convention at mid-day.  They were a bit too close to our bicycle stand, and we wondered whether we would be able to get to our bikes after stopping for lunch:

The alligators make use of all water and shelter that is available.  About every 200 yards along the loop road are culverts to permit drainage through and under the road.  Alligators have found that the culverts make great little hideouts, where they lurk to pounce on potential food sources.  We swear we did NOT see any alligators surprise little tourists.  This gator snuggles in his own particular little hidey-hole of a culvert:

Turtles are pretty common.  On a sunny day like today, they sun themselves wherever it's safe:

Wildlife abounds, particularly wading birds.  Here is a Great White Egret, lifting off from a waterway across the fields of grass:

Here, a less common Pectoral Sandpiper hides among the weeds, as concerned about being seen by us as he was with finding his meal:

This Tricolored Heron stands majestically among waterplants:

Florida Gar floated lazily in this slough, not more than 10 feet from a hungry alligator.  We were as amazed that they stayed there as that the 'gator didn't try to grab them:

This Glossy Ibis didn't seem to care whether we were in the area, and concentrated solely on his hunting:

Perhaps the most spectacular bird we saw was the Purple Gallinule, wading the shore of the slough and looking for snacks at the edge of the water:

What Everglades trip is complete without a Great Blue Heron?

This Snowy Egret and Limpkin seem to be conferring on their fishing strategy for the afternoon:

Kathy didn't believe her day would be complete without finding a Roseate Spoonbill - and, at last, we glimpsed one on the far shore of a pond, preening and fluffing his rose-colored feathers in the sun:

This Ibis is being very ibis-like in the shallow-water:

We were lucky enough to spot two collections of miscellaneous water birds, all together.  In this group, we spotted a Great White Egret, a Snowy Egret and a White Ibis, all consorting in one little pool:

This Little Blue Heron graced one little canal next to our bike path:

We took over 180 photos today!  It was all we could do to trim them down to these samples.  We saw thousands of birds and could have posted hundreds of unique photos.  But we hope you find this sample interesting - enough that you come in person to see this spectacular wildlife, all consorting in the wild not more than 50 feet from you!