Travel Update 13

After wrapping up in Biscayne and the northern entrance of Everglades, we started on our road towards Austin for Christmas. We drove up the gulf coast of Florida all the way through Alabama, Mississippi and into Louisiana. We mostly had driving days with a few library stops here and there, trying to keep up with blogging.

The most interesting bit of driving was going through the Florida panhandle, especially near Panama City, where Hurricane Andrew made landfall in October 2018 as a category 5 hurricane. It seemed like nothing escaped without some form of damages. Many of the buildings seemed like a complete loss. Still, the city is slowly rebuilding, as construction crews were on many sites, replacing what had once been there.

On a much lighter note, on Thursday, December 12th, shortly after crossing into Alabama, we were looking for a place use the restrooms when we turned the corner to find .. a Buc-ee's. As we haven't driven in Texas yet, we were not prepared for what we saw.

   

All sorts of coffee, but only one type of tea.

Buc-ee's is a Texas based travel stop with Buc-ee's branded everything from travel gifts, to coffee, to "brisket for now and jerky for later", to roasted nuts, to world famous restrooms. We happened to stumble upon their first store outside of Texas.

That night we ended up at a free campsite in Mississippi at which we were able to stretch our legs and have a quieter and darker night than we had at the Walmarts the prior nights.

  

We stayed there for an extra day to recoup from driving, but had to continue on the next day to catch the Oregon men's basketball team beat Michigan in overtime and cash in on a free burger at Red Robin during Kathleen's birthday month.

Everglades - North Entrance

On our way south we stopped briefly at the Shark Valley visitor center in Everglades national park. However the main attraction from this visitor center is a 15 mile paved trail. There are trams that operate on this trail, but it is perfect for a relaxed bike ride. When we stopped on the way south it was getting late in the day so we didn't have time to complete the loop before it got dark. So instead we decided to skip it and make sure to stop on the way back north.

The trail was well worth the bike ride, and it was nice to be able to stop and take pictures of all of the wildlife as we went along. There were a ton of animals a long the way.

Baby Alligators!

Wood Stork

In the middle of the loop there is a 45 foot tall observation tower. From the top there are amazing panoramic views of the "river of grass" as well as many of the birds and other wildlife that the park has to offer. 

It was beautiful and a great way to end our time in southern Florida before rushing to Texas for Christmas.

Biscayne

The second National Park that we visited in Southern Florida was Biscayne National Park. Biscayne covers nearly 173,000 acres, 95% of which is covered in water. It was established as a National Monument in 1968 to protect the bay from encroaching industrialization in Southern Florida. Biscayne bay is incredibly shallow, averaging only 10 feet. Plans were made to dredge out a channel to the ocean, which would have devastated the coral reef ecosystems that support the large variety of life. 

Since the park is covered mostly in water, we had to take boat tours out to explore the park. Our first trip out was an evening trip: The Park After Dark - Evening Bay Tour. We ended up having the whole boat to ourselves because we were the only ones who booked the trip that night. It was a super relaxing slow boat ride around the bay as the sun was setting. 

The next day, we came back and took a trip out to Boca Chita Key. This key was owned by Mark C. Honeywell in the late '30s. He used the island as an exclusive party key and had a variety of structures built on they key, including a light house (on the wrong side of the key), a chapel (so that he wouldn't have to leave the key on Sundays), a garage (for fancy cars with no roads?) and a random wall.

 

The structures were almost exclusively made out of bricks from coral limestone.

As we mentioned, the lighthouse was on the wrong side of the key, leading a few ships to run into the coral reefs and sink. The coast guard eventually had to tell the owners of the island that they could not have any lights in the lighthouse. From the top of the lighthouse you can also see just how shallow the water is and how many boats have scraped along the coral reefs nearby.

Walking around the island we also caught a glimpse of some underwater life.

All in all, we really enjoyed our time in the park. If we go back, we think we would love to do the snorkeling excursion that they offer. There is a lot to see underwater, including many shipwrecks and a ton of sea life around the coral reefs. Even better would be bringing your own boat out to explore at your own pace.

Travel Update 12

After Thanksgiving and showers in the Ocala National Forest, we headed south to see Florida's national parks. We drove a pretty direct route while avoiding big cities and freeways. Our first stop was in Naples, a very tourist heavy town. We decided against paying $6 to see the sunset at state park.

Crossing southern Florida, we first stopped in the Big Cypress Swamp before reaching Homestead. Most of our nights were spent at Cracker Barrels this week, as there weren't any free camping options outside of Big Cypress. We spent a full day exploring Everglades and saw so much we had to break it into three posts (1, 2, 3). We also took a day trip down the Keys.

On the 7th, we took some time to work on writing blogs and tried to take Aiden to a local dog park. The park we found was closed for renovation but had a lot of agility equipment. The park also had a variety of simple exercise stations with instructions on how to do them.

 

That night we decided to stay at a hotel since the 8th is Kathleen's birthday and she loves hotel breakfast. We took our evening tour of Biscayne Bay and got some really good Jamaican food from a small hole in the wall restaurant called Yardie Spice recommended to us by the Everglades park volunteer from Bremerton. We stayed up late to catch the Hawaii vs Oregon men's basketball game before getting a decent night sleep before waking up early to continue exploring Biscayne.

Keys

We spent a lot of time trying to make Dry Tortugas National Park work. To go to Dry Tortugas without our own boat, we needed to drive to Key West and take a boat early in the morning. Our RV would not fit in the garage of the place that ran the tours, nor could we figure out where to park it in Key West otherwise. No RV parks were close enough to the dock to solve the parking problem. We tried to look at hotels and AirBnBs, but very few are pet friendly, and the ones that do tended to have restrictions such as: one dog, under 30 lbs. So we decided against going to Dry Tortugas and made a long day trip out of the Florida Keys!

We started out early in the morning, hoping to catch sunrise on Key Largo. Turns out there are very few places we could see eastward on the key, but we found a park that wasn't open, but we parked beside it and watched.

On the way down we just drove, enjoying the narrow stretch of keys that were initially connected for railroad use. When we got to Key West we decided to go to Fort Zachary Taylor State Park because we knew we could park the RV there. Unfortunately, they don't let you walk out of the park and re-enter, so we didn't get to see much of the town of Key West.

The end of HW-1 in Key West.

In the state park, we took a free guided tour of the fort. The fort was built with French help as a mid 19th century effort to secure the Atlantic coastline. There are several other identical forts (including Fort Jefferson in Dry Tortugas) that together guard the few channels that exists into the Gulf of Mexico.

The french design worked well in a lot of ways, because it was a structurally sound fort. However, there were also several ways in which southern Florida differs greatly from France that were not taken into account. For example the toilets in the fort relied on the 7-8 foot french tides in order to "flush." Southern Florida has tides closer to one foot and those toilets simply didn't work.

Fort Taylor held a significant strategic position in the civil war as well. It was always controlled by the Union and stopped many blockade runners from getting supplies from Pensacola to confederate forces further north by water.

As the weapons of war changed, so did the fort. When artillery became strong enough to shoot over the horizon and radar could be relied on to target boats, the top layer of the fort was taken off to make a lower profile. They also needed to the walls from bricks to concrete. There are records of outdated artillery being sold to different cities for display purposes. However, when the parks service hired someone to track them down, they could not be found. It turned out, that they were used as filler for concrete and somebody either forged the sale documents or walked away with the money. Modern scans of the concrete have found all the old cannons buried in the concrete. 

Before leaving Key West, we took a short stop at the Eco-Discovery Center, where they had some informative exhibits about coral reefs, the Florida national parks and deep sea exploration. The highlight for us was a 3-D video of snorkeling in Dry Tortugas, which made up for us not being able to go this time around.

On our way back, we got hungry and decided to stop at a Cuban place we had seen on the way down. It was a cute little hole in the wall place that offered authentic Cuban sandwiches. They were amazing!

   

We caught the sunset on the way up too and made it back to the Homestead to catch the Pac-12 championship game!

 

The Keys are a beautiful place to visit, but not easy to plan with an RV. We would love to go back to Key West and spend some time there in a B&B and just walk the streets. You don't need a vehicle to get around.

Everglades - South Entrance, Part 3

The sixth stop of the day was the Pinelands trail, the light blue arrow on the map. This trail is a lot different from other trails in the park and reminded us more of Eastern Oregon than the tropical trails in the area, although there were still occasional palm trees.  For Kathleen the most exciting thing on this trail was the tree snails. They can be hard to see at first, but if you slow down they are everywhere. 

 

 

They come in a wide variety of colors, and given the fact that they don't move very far or quickly their range is quite small. This means that there are large genetic differences between the populations even a few trees over. Collectors used to take a few members of a population and then burn down the tree in the area to make their specimen more rare, and drive up the value. 

After this trail, we decided to skip ahead to the visitor center, the dark blue arrow, because we concerned that they were going to close before we got a chance to fully look around there. The visitor center was pretty typical, and nice. The fun thing at the visitor center though was chatting with another couple that was entering the park in their RV. 

They were probably in their late 40s, early 50s and we learned they were from Bremerton. They are on a similar trip to ours and we had a great time discussing the Pacific Northwest with them and the park ranger who happened to be from Seattle. They said they were headed to the southwest in the late winter / early spring, so hopefully we'll see them again down the road.

After the visitor center we went back to one of the most popular trails in the park, the Anhinga Trail. This trail, marked with the purple arrow on the map, also says it has the Royal Palm visitor center. There isn't a lot by way of a visitor center there, although they were setting up for an event outside the next day.

The trail itself is a short boardwalk through a swamp area with a view of tons of birds.

 

 

 

We got there just at the right time,  just as the sun was starting to set and everything was gorgeous. It was the perfect end to our first day in Everglades.