Fotograf in Potsdam
Fotograf für Kinder, Paare und Familien in Potsdam
Canoeing in the Everglades with Rahul
1/23/04 Today was our first full day in the Everglades! We woke up and got to the permit station about 10 minutes bfore it opened at 7:30am. We had planned to get there earlier, but for some reason my alarm didn’t go off at 6:30 when it was supposed to. No big deal, though, because we were second in line. Pretty much every site was open for the first and second nights. I expected far more people. We got our permit and set our sights on getting camping gas & breakfast. The latter was easy, but the gas was a problem. The two suggested places only had the Coleman style propane in the heavy metal cannisters. We decided to try to get ahold of Doug Hamilton and worry about gas in the afternoon. In the meantime we ended up seeing our first alligator just off the side of the road! Actually, there were three… one of them fairly large, about 6-7 feet. The birds didn’t seem too concerned about them. In the same area, there were a bunch of manatees! Very cool, but unfortunately you can’t see very much of them, only when they come up for air. Noses, back, and a whale-like tail is about it. Then we decided to head out on the canoe for our short day trip to Sandfly island. It’s only about 2 miles across Chockoloskee Bay. The tide was low, and I had to push the canoe out in about a foot of mud that stunk pretty bad. Yuck! Rahul went the smart way after I did all the work and barely got wet. We got beached in the middle of the bay and had to walk for a little ways, but it was actually pretty cool to be standing in the middle of the bay. We made it to the island and did the short hike around, about a mile. Nothing too interesting, but people used to live there farming tomatoes! Why? I don’t know. On our way back to the Ranger Station we took a different route and had to fight the tide at its peak for a little while. It was tough, but we did it and that gives me some confidence. Rahul did the navigation as I was steering in the back. Things went well. A little confusion towards the end, but we made it. We’ve decided not to use the GPS unless we need it. We got back to the Ranger Station and got a hot tip to get gas from an outdoor place in Naples, so that’s where we went! On the way we stopped in Big Cypress and did a short hike into the swamp on a boardwalk. Another small gator and lots of big birds with long legs wading in the water. Nice! We got the gas in Naples, and had dinner at Pizza Hut. Naples reminds me of Santa Barbara last winter. Very nice and expensive. We stopped to get some beer and decided to sort gear in the parking lot. Now we are back at the campsite. The nights are chilly, in the 40’s, but the days are perfect. Looking forward to tomorrow. Rabbit Key.
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1/24/04 Here we are at Rabbit Key! We woke up at about 7 am as planned. Didn’t sleep too good. It was a bit of a tight squeeze, but we managed to get the canoe packed up just fine. Most everything was tied down. I would like everything to be safe and attached, but unless there are some high winds and waves I don’t think we have to worry about tipping over. Anyway, we got out a little after 8 am riding the tide. Once we got across Chockoloskee Bay it was pretty nice. Only Rahul needed to paddle occasionally to keep us on track. Once we got to the end of Sandfly pass we island-hopped on the edge of the gulf towards Rabbit Key. We got stuck on a sand bar and Rahul had to make a deposit. A few minutes after he left I was able to start pushing the canoe again because the tide was on the rise. By the time he was done the water had risen far enough that he couldn’t make it back to the sand bar! I had to go pick him up. We had a little discussion about his turning technique. It was starting to get to me! I don’t think he will do it much more. If so I’ll have to vote him off the canoe! Well, we made it to Rabbit Key. We’ve been here for a couple of hours, mostly just watching the birds land on the sandbar that connects our island to another. We got a positive ID on a brown pelican, but it seems most of the birds are not on our chart. Some people just pulled in next to us. We knew we’d have company, but I’m not sure if this group has a permit. It’s much nicer to be the only people! We should be able to gather some wood and have a fire tonight, since we are on a beach. Rabbit Key is nice. Should have a good sunset. Looking forward to dinner! Tomorrow we head to Mormon Key, which was named that because one settler who lived there had two wives. I figured it must have been something like that.
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1/25/04 Here we are at Mormon Key! Last night was good. We met one of our neighbours, Marty. He was a charter fisherman out of South Carolina at an island near Cape Hatteras. Can’t remember the name, though. Quite a character with some interesting stories about a trip to Mexico ten years ago. We had our first real camp dinner of the trip, we both had freeze dried veggie lasagne. It was good. Managed to get a little fire going after a bit of effort, which was nice. Not much firewood around, though, so it was tough to keep going and it never got very big. Went to bed about 10 pm. This camp site was pretty nice because there were plenty of birds around to watch. I got up at 7 am to watch the sunrise. We didn’t get to see the sunset because of our location on the island. Sunrise was nice. Rahul slept a bit longer while I got to see a dolphin. Haven’t seen any up close yet. It was a pain in the ass loading the canoe because the tide was out and we had to carry everything through a bit of muck, about 100 feet. Those 7 gallon water jugs we have are another pain in the ass. I was steering today, Rahul navigating. We headed across some open water. And we paddled. And we paddled some more. Then we decided that we had better keep paddling. What a pain! The islands are so far away that it takes forever to tell that you’ve gone anywhere. And when you can tell that you’ve gone somewhere, you’ve still got a long way to go! We ended up at a little Pavillion Key, which was not where we thought where we were going. There’s not much to say really, except that we did a lot of paddling. Very tired. Today, though, we wore our gloves, which seemed to work pretty well. Hand feel good, and Rahul’s “almost” blister seems to be ok. We stopped for lunch at a small beach. We still had about a third of the way to go, but this last part didn’t seem too bad because we were closer to land. So, here we are, at Mormon Key. It’s nice. A beach site, but no birds to watch. A few bugs already when the sun is still out, so I think they’ll be worse tonight than last night, where we hardly noticed them. Oh, we did have some racoons last night. I chased them away, probably 3 or 4 of them the first time. This was while we were sitting at the fire. The second time we were sleeping and they woke us up. They took a look around our canoe, but didn’t come into camp. We had everything packed up pretty well anyway. We have 5 neighbors here at Mormon Key. They are about 50 yards down the beach, so at least there is some space. They are from Piladelphia and Washington DC! Only talked to one of them so far. I tried to go swimming. I got all the way in, but it was freezing, so I came right back out! I layed on the beach to dry out. So, here I am. See you tomorrow!
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1/26/04 Morning. GOt up around sunrise. Another nice warm day. More clouds, though. I wonder if there’s any rain in our future. Got another fire going last night. It was better than the night before, but finding good wood was a problem again. More bugs. We used our new bug head nets and they worked pretty well. Rahul tried to spit while he had his on! Oops. It was a mess. He also decided to put a partially empty gallon jug of water in one of his dry bags to keep it from the racoons. But the bag fell over and the jug opened up. Oops again! Hed had one more oops. He tried to cook in a pot that had a nylon strap attached for packing it with the other pots. It caught on fire. Tough night for Rahul! We chased a few racoons away before we went to bed. Tried to get a good picture of one that was in our camp this morning, but I don’t think it will turn out too well! Today should be a great day! We are waiting for low tide at about 12 pm to ride the wave up Chatham River to Sweetwater Chickee. Hopefully there will be minimal paddling. My hands are a bit sore and muscles, too, but I am feeling pretty good overall. Over and out.
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1/26/04 Evening. Today sucked. We expected it to be easy but the first half the wind was blowing us all over the place. The “river” was much wider than we thought it would be, so there was less help from the tides and more hurt from the wind than we had figured on. I am not too into canoeing right now. Once we got a ways up the river narrowed and finally we were basically able to drift with Rahul making minor corrections. Navigation was a bit challenging. Lots of islands that looked the same and don’t seem to match. Finally I found our spot, I thought, but for the first time we decided to check the GPS to make sure we were headed in the right direction. If we had somehow made it into the wrong river it would have meant some significant miles more to canoe, and they would have been against the wind. But, we were on course. Stopped at Watson’s place to take a look around. I guess a guy used to live here, and he had killed a few people. There were some remnants from his old farm. Talked to a few people who were setting up for the night. They had the same complaints about the wind. We finally mad it to the chickee at about 4 pm. We probably left at about 11:30 am. It was a nice site. 5 minutes after we got here our neighbors showed up. Glad we got here first, though the two sites are identical. The two platforms are about 12′x13′ connected by a gangway with an outhouse in the middle. It’s nice. No bugs, yet, and no racoons to worry about. But, there’s nowhere to go. And we really have to worry about the wind that’s blowing or we’ll loose stuff into the water. Kind of a pain. Haven’t talked much to our neighbors. Three of them. We did see a crocodile in the water. Our first of the canoe portion of the trip. The scenery is nice, but it’s getting to be a bit dull because it all looks the same. It’s getting dark now. The sun is down. It’s still breezy and I wish it would stop because the waves kepp sloshing our neighbors canoe around. I think we should get up early to avoid the waves and winds of the afternoon. I hope tomorrow is better.
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1/27/04 Today was better. Slept good (well, better) because it was warm and I could leave the sleeping bag opened. The wind would not die down until it got very late. Got woken up to a dolphin hunting fish besides the chickee! Too dark to bother getting out to look, though. Woke up early, 6:30 am or so. We hoped to have some wind-free still water to paddle in, but the wind was already blowing in the river. We knew it would be worse in the bays we had to cross. Fortunately for the first and largest bay we had to cross, Last Huston, we were able to stay close to shore for most of the way which kept us sheltered pretty well. It was actually nice to paddle for a little while. Did I mention we saw a gaitor last night? Anyway, entering the second bay we had to cross a couple of rivers. This left us move exposed to the winda and waves, but we managed pretty well. We got to the third bay and the weather didn’t look so good. I thought about waiting out the storm in a strange looking boat house, but it looked like it would pass quickly. It did. Some pretty big drops came down, only long enough to get the rain gear on. Rahul put on a nice powder-blue poncho. He looked real cute! A nice blue bonnet. Looked like grandma leading the way! We had a couple of miles to go. Most of it was pretty nice as the wind calmed after the rain. Navigation was pretty easy as today we were following signs on the marked wilderness waterway. as we got close to Sunday Bay Chickee, the wind started to pick up and we heard some thunder. We made it in time, though, to set up the tend and get a bite to eat. We choose the Chickee which did not have a bench, as we alreay had chairs. Not sure why they decided to put a bench on this one? But, it soon started to poor gigantic rain drops. Our canoe was quickly filled up and started to sink! Shit! We started bailing as quickly as possible. After half an hour the rain let up and we won the race. Whew! close call. Would have sucked to sink the boat. We got here at about 1:30, which meant we had to sit and kill time on this deck for 7 hourse before we could go to sleep. It’s been raining on and off all day. Mostly sprinkles. We saw an osprey dive from about 30 ft in the air to get a fish from the water. Took him 3 tries that we saw. He flew around with it for a bit and then landed on a log and started to eat it. Too far away to see much, though. Also saw a little blue heron just behind our chickee getting lots of crabs. It’s about dinner time. No sign of the sun, yet. Lots of fish jumping around. Never more than 5 jumps. Why? So, hopefully, we’ll wake up to a nice day. Because of the tides we may wake up at 5 am. If the weather is not good, we may just paddle 3 miles to Lopez River instead of the 10 miles back to Rabbit Key. We’ll see.
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1/28/04 Got up around 7 am as usual to find a mostly cloudy sky. It looked hopeful, though. Chilly last night. Got on the water at about 9 am. I was navigating. I like navigating, but I also like being in control of the boat. We went across Sunday Bay back to the Wilderness Waterway. Into Crooked Creek and then the Lopez River. Stopped for a bite at the Lopez River camp site. Not very nice. It was a ground site. Did have picknick tables, though. We were moving with the tide today. Not much to say, really. Paddle paddle paddle. Rahul got us stuck on some oyster bars. We could have avoided them but I think he was feeling a bit adventurous. Finally saw a seagull actually get a fish. Pretty neat. Got back to Rabbit at about 1 pm. The clouds cleared up and now it’s mostly sunny. More sitting around. No birds to look at right now. Tide is rising. I wouldn’t mind going for a swim, but I’m sure it will be cold. Wish we had some beers. Next time will definitely bring a case. We have two Sam Adams, but they are for tomorrow. They will be good. We did see a couple of dolphins today, and last night a small shark in the water. This is a short entry, huh? Rahul says I should write about the osprey with the fish in its claws. There was also a nest nearby with its baby in it. We also spent 5 minutes trying to paddle the canoe backwards. It doesn’t work very well because steering is bad. It works a whole different group of muscles. There was just a fly on my map. How exciting! You just never know what the day can bring. Now I will go find a place to lie in the sun and hopefully I can still get back to camp without having to swim!
Well, looks like there are two canoers heading our way. We are at the good site. They will have to deal with the smell. There is a horseshoe crab floating away in the tide. It’s pretty funny. It’s still a mystery as to whether they are all dead, or if they are just shedding their shells. Those canoers should be here soon. Where are they?
They just arrived. A guy and girl, late 20’s. She is wearing a black sweatshirt. Must have been hot in that sun. Sounds like they’ve never done this, because they asked us about camping. And, neither had hats. I’m really glad that I found this hat!
Well, we are now wondering why you can look through binoculars backwards and everything looks in focus? I have a theory, but not a good one. I won’t bother to explain. The new arrivals are apparently still scoping things out.
The new arrivals walked all the way around the island, and then back to their canoe. Then they went the other way to some campsite that we didn’t know was there. I think they’ll get swept away by the tides. Rahul has been behind in his journal the whole trip. He has finally caught up to today. I’m sure he won’t finish it before it ends, though. He also brought back plenty of firewood to last us until our 8 pm bedtime. All for now.
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1/29/04 Woke up at about sunrise. For some reason Rahul was motivated to watch it. But I prefered my warm sleeping bag. It wasn’t too cold, but the wind was strong. Not good! We found a spot that was reasonably sheltered from the wind. Saw a couple of dolphins. We’ve seen many this trip, but never up close. I guess they see plenty of people on boats and aren’t too interested in us. Once the sun warmed us up a bit we got packed up and loaded the boat. We were trying to get the boat to some deeper water with a big push. Rahul jumped in. Rahul fell out. It was pretty funny. We both thought he was heading for a morning swim, but he managed to avoid it. The paddling wasn’t as bad as we had figured it would be. I guess the wind had died down some. Today we were headed to Kingston where we would spend our last night. The sun was shining bright! 6 miles to Kingston. It’s a chickee, but it’s on the gulf. The only one like it. Started out as a dock on the key, but the key apparently moved away from the dock, so turned it into a chickee. The paddling was pretty uneventful. Sometimes it took some effort because of the wind and waves, but other times it felt like paradise. We made it to Kingston in pretty good time. It was on the other side of a sandbar that wasn’t on the map. We decided to paddle around the gulf side of the key to get to it. This took us through some of the biggest waves we had been in yet, no more than 2 feet, but it was pretty fun. We were only 20 feet from shore, and if we dumped the waves would take us to land. It was really fun! Would have been a bit scary to ride waves like that in open water, though.
We made it to the chickee. It seemed to be a bit newer than the others. The platforms were significantly larger, too. I think it probably would have been my favourite place to stay. It was still early, thought, only 1:30 pm. I thought it might be nice to head to the ranger station a day early, which would give us more time to check out Shark Valley and Miami. So, we decided to paddle the 5 miles more and head out. First we had the two beers that we had been saving from the start. They were even cold! We took the Indian Key pass route. Lots of big boats. still a nice day. Made good time to the ranger station. We were pretty tired crossing Chockoloskee Bay, though. This was the most miles we had paddled in a day! We got soaked, too, splashing fight with the oars. I won! Passed some people on a tour boat just after I crashed us into a tree! Don’t think they saw that, though. We waved to them, and they waved back. Looked like everyone was having a good time. I think I would be pretty disappointed taking one of those tours, even without having taken this trip.
Well, it wasn’t always fun, but it’s not supposed to be. It was a great trip. I’d definitely do it again. To go from Flamingo to Everglades City would be a very nice trip. The bugs weren’t too bad, especially since we had our head nets. The only let down was that the scenery didn’t really change too much. Mostly all you see is mangrove lined islands. The birds were awesome. There was way more sitting around than I was expecting. But once you got used to the fact that there really wasn’t too much to do once you were done paddling, it was really nice. I’m glad we didn’t expect to see too many alligators because we would have been pretty bummed about our lone sighting at Sweetwater. But, all the birds and dolphins made up for that! The paddling was interesting. When you’re fighting wind and waves for too long it completely sucks. When the water is smooth, and the weather is good, it’s nothing short of paradise. I really did feel that way a few times on the trip. Especially on the way to Kingston. Ok, that’s it. Next trip, spring break!
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