Everglades Canoeing 2000
Dave and Helen Damouth
www.damouth.org
February 22 - March 2, 2000
The usual jumping-off point for entering the interior of the Everglades from the West is Everglades City, a small and low-key fishing village hardly deserving the "city" label. We pulled the trailer to Everglades City on Feb 21, 2000, stopping at Barron River Resort - a fishing camp on the edge of town. We called before leaving this morning and were able to get reservations in their overflow area - actually quite nice for "overflow" - grassy, with 30-amp electricity and water. It would be a quiet and peaceful spot - except that three busy airboat tour companies are based on the River or on the canal across the street, and these boats are incredibly noisy. Fortunately, they don't operate at night.
After setting up camp, we had time to drive the mile or two to the Everglades National Park Visitor's Center, where we picked up the information we needed to plan our canoe trip, asked lots of questions, and signed up for the sunset boat tour out through the 10,000 Islands to the edge of open Gulf of Mexico - a preview of some of the area we'd be canoeing.
Along the mainland is a series of large open bays, extending out a mile or more toward the Gulf of Mexico. Beyond these bays is an extensive area of mangrove islands. The bays are rarely more than 2 to 4 feet deep, with large areas that are dry when the tide is unusually low. The fairly large tour boat (about 40 feet?) was specially designed for these conditions, drawing perhaps three feet, with rudders and propellers recessed into tunnels in the hull. Even so, our captain/guide was careful not to venture out of the dredged channel - the only way for "big" boats to traverse the five miles from the Everglades City docks across the bay and through the mangroves out to the Gulf.
Other than the sunset (which obliged us with a green flash in spite of a low fog bank out on the Gulf), the main attraction was the large variety of birds. Several of the channel markers were crowned with osprey nests. This is the nesting season for them here, and each nest was occupied. The female sits on the eggs 80% of the time, seemingly undisturbed as boats pass a few feet away. The slightly smaller male takes an occasional turn on the nest, but spends most of his time fishing, bringing fish to the nest to feed his mate.
A bald eagle flew past to look us over. Great blue herons were frequent, standing motionless among the mangrove roots as we passed. We also saw a black-crowned night heron, several kinds of gull and tern, a large flock of cormorants, a small flock of skimmers, and many brown pelicans, who, judging from the splashes, were following a school of fish. On the way back, a small pod of dolphins rode our bow wave for a while - swimming so close to the hull that they could be seen only by leaning far out over the bow railing.
2/22 Spent much of the day planning the canoe trip - proposing and discarding dozens of alternative routes. Planning is much more difficult than for our usual northern wilderness trips because there are very few places to spend the night. Dry land is extremely rare in the Everglades. There are three kinds of campsites here - shell mounds, chickees, and sand beaches.
Shell mounds occur sporadically in the mangroves, and still have a bit of mystery attached. They are huge mounds of oyster shells, sometimes with prehistoric native artifacts mixed in with the shells. The conventional explanation is that these are simply the discarded shells left while the Indians camped here and ate seafood. When we see the size of some of these mounds, we're not completely convinced - some are several acres, and extend five feet or more above the water. There are 15 campsites on dry land, most of which are shell mounds. Most of these ground sites are big enough for several separate groups of campers.
Chickees are 10' x 12' wooden platforms, held above the water on pilings, built by the National Park. They generally have a roof, to provide a bit of shade. There are no side walls - not even a railing. A narrow wooden walkway leads to a self-contained toilet. There are 16 chickees, and a few are doubles - two separate platforms used by two separate groups of campers, linked by walkways to a common toilet.
The beach sites are on the outer islands, facing the Gulf of Mexico. Wind and wave action build shallow sand dunes along the shore. The dunes then become stabilized by grass and other shore plants, sometimes becoming extensive enough to have a complete ecology of dry-land plants and trees, quite different than the rest of the islands, which are a tangled maze of low swampy mangroves. There are 16 of these beach sites in the National Park, and some additional uncontrolled sites outside the park in other portions of the 10,000 Islands
This is a total of only 47 places to camp, scattered over a million acres of park. In the portion of the park through which we'll be traveling, there is a campsite roughly every five miles - approximately half a day's travel time. An additional complication is that these sites must be reserved, hold very few people, and reservations are accepted no more than 24 hours in advance of the start of your trip. Thus, we had to be prepared to accept alternative routes if our preferred route didn't have campsites available when we made reservations.
Another complication for us Northerners is in adapting to the very different canoeing conditions. Fortunately, we had canoed here for a few days in 1995 with an experienced guide, and so knew at least some of the differences. We couldn't count on trees in which to hang our food, requiring some sort of animal-proof storage container. The animals are different too. Bears are no longer found in the Everglades. Panthers are still here, but scarce and not likely to raid human food supplies. But the whole area is overrun with hungry raccoons - not big or muscular, but smart, with sharp teeth and agile hands.
We also have to carry all of our drinking and cooking water - there are no fresh water sources anywhere in the park. I visited the NACT (North American Canoe Tours) outfitter, just a short drive from our campground, and rented a large rugged "dry box" which comfortably held all our food, and neatly fit crosswise in the canoe and also rented three 5-gallon water containers, after being told that ordinary gallon jugs or soft drink bottles will be chewed through by animals desperate for fresh water.
Since there are no portages and no hills to climb from water to campsite, the extra weight and clumsiness of the water and the containers isn't a major issue. The food container turned out to make a useful table or bench while in camp.
In the evening, we went into town for a good meal at Seafood Depot.
2/23 I got to the Ranger Station shortly after its 7:30 opening time, the earliest that we can make reservations for a planned departure tomorrow. A mid-week departure proved (as always) to be a good idea, and we were able to reserve all of our first-choice campsites along our preferred route - one hurdle out of the way. The trip will be 8 days and 7 nights. I paid my $10 reservation fee, got the permit (printed on waterproof paper) and headed back to the trailer to finish organizing and packing our gear.
I find it very surprising that this spectacular park attracts so few canoe and kayak travelers during its peak season, in comparison to other waterways. There were only a few other groups registering while I was in the office - no waiting line. In contrast, the Boundary Waters, in Minnesota, has at least 10 times as many available routes and campsites, and is almost fully reserved for the entire summer, many months in advance. Last August, I stood in line there for three days in a row trying to get one of the rare reservation slots which open up when an advance reservation is canceled.
Although there is only one tiny, poorly stocked, grocery store here, we managed to avoid a drive back to Naples for supplies - finding enough food among our stored supplies, augmented by a few things we found in the local store. In general, I'd recommend buying all supplies before coming. At dusk, finished packing, we had another good meal at Seafood Depot and went to bed early.
2/24 Up at dawn, to try to get a free ride on the outgoing tide for a few miles. We hitched up the trailer, drove a couple of miles to the Ranger Station, and parked on the grass - free for the duration of our trip. A small launching area is available, behind the Ranger Station. We got under way while the tide was still ebbing, but found little current heading our direction. We ducked under a bridge half a mile after launching, crossing the causeway to Chokoloskee and paddling a shallow canal, then crossing a bay at the mouth of the Turner River between Chokoloskee Island and the mainland, continuing along the shore to the Lopez River, then heading inland on the Lopez. While crossing the bay, a small pod of dolphins was visible in front of us for quite a while, traveling only slightly faster than we were.
We reached our first campsite just a couple of miles up the Lopez - a shell mound on the bank of the River. The eight mostly sheltered miles we paddled should have been an easy day, but this is the first significant paddling we've done since last August. The canoe is much deeper in the water than usual and feels slow and heavy, since we are carrying 8 days of drinking water in addition to all our usual food and camping supplies. The rangers recommend 1 gallon of water per day per person, so we have15 gallons weighing 120 pounds. Since we had to carry water anyway, there's little incentive to use dehydrated foods, and we're carrying some canned meat and other "luxury" items. Because of the weight and our out-of-condition muscles, we seem to be traveling at only 2 to 2.5 miles per hour. Good thing we've planned fairly short daily trips!
This shell mound is relatively small - extending perhaps 80 feet along the river and 30 feet inland. Like many of the shell mounds, the remains of an early settler's building is still visible. At the edge of the mound, the mangroves form a dense, intertwined, wall of aerial roots and foliage. For most of the afternoon, we have the place all to ourselves. It's very quiet, and while sitting on the river bank reading, I was startled by a "whuff" noise, looked up, and saw a dolphin which had just surfaced to breathe, about 20' in front of me. Later in the afternoon, a group of kayakers arrived and occupied the other end of the mound. Shortly after dark, a lone kayaker arrived. Fortunately, I was still sitting up reading by flashlight. I question whether he could ever have found the campsite if he hadn't seen my light. (A few years ago, we attended a talk and slide show by a kayaker who indeed got lost in the Everglades and hadn't found his campsite by dark. He spent the night trying to sleep sitting up in his kayak, in a dense swarm of mosquitoes.)
While setting up camp, I discovered two major omissions in our packing: our cook kit (pots, plates and cups) and our inflatable sleeping pads are both missing - apparently overlooked in the truck or trailer after being set out and marked off the checklist, but before actually being loaded into the packs. Sleeping won't be a major problem, but eating could be a challenge. We've got lots of food, but some of it needs cooking. An inventory of our supplies shows that we have three metal cans (one 12 oz. and two 7 oz.) of food. We'll open these first, and attempt to use the cans later to heat water and cook other things. As it turned out, this worked out adequately. The good part is that we had too much food with us anyway. The exercise, and the food being somewhat less appetizing than usual because of the preparation difficulty, helped strengthen our resolve to live off stored fat and lose a little extra weight. So we stretched the simple food into additional meals, and didn't use the foods which required more complex preparations.
2/25 An interesting and varied day of paddling. We continued up the Lopez River, and turned into the aptly named Crooked Creek, which twisted and turned its way though the mangroves for a mile or so before opening out onto Sunday Bay the first of several large bays we would cross today. We're now about five miles inland from the Gulf, but these are still brackish tidal bays, typically a mile wide and 2 miles long, connected by narrow rivers, through which strong tidal currents flow. These bays are big enough to pose a problem for open canoes when wind kicks up steep choppy waves.
This section of our route is part of the 99-mile Wilderness Waterway, extending from Everglades City, at the Northwest corner of the Park, southeast to Flamingo, on the opposite corner of the Park. It is navigable by powerboats up to about 18' long, so we are frequently passed by fishing boats, generally traveling at high speed but usually slowing or giving us a wide berth as they pass. Most of these boats seem to be occupied by a commercial fishing guide and a pair of middle-aged male tourists. One boat which drove straight up to us as we crossed a bay turned out to be a park ranger who inspected our backcountry permit. It was a fortuitous meeting since the location of tonight's campsite was a little ambiguous on the map, and the ranger was able to tell us exactly how to find it, perhaps saving us some extra exploratory paddling.
The number of dolphins in these waters is amazing. As we paddle, we frequent catch glimpses of a black dorsal fin appearing briefly above the water. They are curious creatures, and on several occasions we noted a dolphin change course to pass fairly close to us, slowing to match our speed, surfacing more often, and sometimes lingering longer on the surface. Seen up close, there is quite a variation in color among individuals, from a deep black to a fairly light tan or grey.
We arrived at Sweetwater chickee in early afternoon - having gotten a boost from the inflowing tide for a while as we paddled up the Lopez river, but then being somewhat slowed by headwinds on some of the larger bays. This is a dual chickee, and the other half was occupied by a couple who had just arrived in an unusual shoal-draft sailboat - pivoting larboards instead of a centerboard, a simple mast and rigging that could quickly and easily be detached and folded down on deck, and a tiny outboard motor. It looked perfect for this kind of trip, or for island-hopping in the Bahamas.
Pitching a tent on a windy chickee can be a bit of a challenge, since no tent stakes can be used on the wooden floor. I was able to tie the two windward corners of the tent floor to the floor of the chickee by fishing thin nylon line down through cracks between the floor boards, and also tied a guy rope to one of the vertical roof supports along the edge of the chickee. It's hard to relax, knowing that anything we lay down outside the tent may immediately roll or blow into the water. In our past lives, we've spent several weeks vacationing on small sailboats, so we quickly adapted. Even though this particular boat didn't move, we found living on a chickee to be very boat-like.
The shallow brackish water, and the bordering mangroves, are incredibly dense with life. A cacophony of bird sounds emerges constantly from the mangroves, although we rarely see the birds in the dense foliage. We think we're hearing cardinals, great horned owls, large woodpeckers, several kinds of warblers, and numerous other birds. We can usually see two or three kinds of herons, an egret or two, and sometimes a flock of ibis wading in the shallows. Kingfishers dart out of the trees and fly low over the water, sometimes splashing noisily into the water when they see food. The water itself is seldom quiet - something is always splashing - little splashes as tiny fish rise to eat floating insects, rushing noises as whole schools of these little fish dash into shallower water to avoid predators, the odd splash -- slap sound as little fish jump several feet through the air and land awkwardly on their side, gigantic noisy splashing as dolphins lash their tails, swimming in a semicircle to herd smaller fish against the shoreline where they are easier to catch. The pelicans add their own noisy splashes as they fold their wings and dive from 20' up to catch a meal, sending a geyser several feet in the air when they hit the surface. While paddling near shore, we hear a chorus of small "plops" as unseen turtles, frogs, small alligators, and perhaps other things slide into the water ahead of us. Much of this constant and noisy operation of the food chain goes on 24 hours a day - we go to sleep and awake to a chorus of splashes.
2/26 Up and on our way quite early again. We find that we're going to sleep early - shortly after dark - and waking at dawn. Breakfast is simple - instant oatmeal or granola bars - and doesn't take long. The paddle to Lostmans 5 Bay, where we'll spend tonight, is through more bays, connected by creeks that are becoming narrower and twistier as we continue inland.
The water is also becoming less salty and alligators are becoming much more numerous (we're told that they don't like salt water). We frequently see them sunning themselves on mudbanks among the mangroves. They generally don't move a muscle as we paddle past. If we drift too close, they slide quietly into the water and disappear. Only when we come silently around a corner and surprise them do they react suddenly - dashing into the water with violently lashing tail and lots of noise. We also see occasional swimming alligators out in the bays. They swim almost completely submerged and are inconspicuous, but after a while, we learn to spot the distinctive triangle of two eye bulges and the tip of a nose breaking the surface.
Tonight's campsite proves to be low and damp - not a well-drained shell mound, but real soil, and only about a foot above high tide. The site is also sheltered from the breeze and too warm. In the evening, there are more mosquitoes than on previous sites, but not enough to be more than a mild nuisance. We chose this site, instead of the Plate Bay chickee, less than a mile away, because we want to spend two nights here, and the chickees are limited to a single night's stay. As we've moved further away from the ocean and toward the fresh-water portions of the Everglades, the foliage is changing. More varied types of trees are appearing. Large, showy, bromeliads and other air plants are becoming more common - and our tent site is surrounded by them. Some of the bromeliads have large flower buds, but we haven't yet seen any actually in bloom. We expected orchids, but haven't seen any.
A group of 4 men paddled in and set up camp in the other end of our campsite in late afternoon. We struck up a conversation and soon found that they were from Avon, NY, close to our previous home in Rochester. We were even more surprised to discover that one of them was Bob French, the father-in-law of Sue French, who was the guide on our first trip into the Everglades. Bob's life-long love of backcountry travel was passed on to his sons, Rick and Randy who each married women with similar interests. The four of them founded Pack Paddle, Ski, Inc., to support their hobby of travel and exploration, and have turned it into a big success, with a large catalog of adventure trips all over the world. Two of the other men in the group manufacture the Sawvivor, a popular folding pack saw which we use. Small world indeed!
We got to talking about Alaskan canoeing (Pack, Paddle, Ski runs at least one canoe expedition near the Arctic Circle each year, and we're planning to be in Alaska this summer) and Bob related a story about one of these expeditions in which both he and his son Rick participated. These trips typically start in the foothills on the north slope of the Brooks Range and follow a river north out of the mountains and onto the arctic tundra near the Arctic Circle, to a lake where a float plane can land and pick them up for the return trip back to civilization. On this trip, when they got to the pre-defined pickup point, the bush plane didn't arrive. A day or two delay isn't unusual, and they had packed three days of extra food.
But at the end of three days the food was gone and the plane still hadn't appeared. The nearest help was an Eskimo village another 150 miles North, down a difficult river. While they were sitting around worrying, a herd of caribou appeared, far down the lake shore, and began to swim across the lake. Rick yelled "come on, dad", grabbed some rope, launched the canoe, and they chased the slowly swimming herd. They used the canoe to separate the herd, gradually isolating one individual, which they then lassoed. They sat and let the frantic animal tow them around the lake until it was exhausted, then slit its throat with a pocket knife and towed it back to camp. The general consensus among the hungry campers was that caribou steaks, roasted over an open fire, are absolutely delicious.
Two days later, the bush plane finally arrived. A severe storm, where the plane was based on the other side of the mountains, had filled the lake with debris, so that the plane couldn't take off. It was five days before there was enough clear water to take off.
2/27 Up early again, and on the water by 7:55 A.M. Today, we leave our gear set up at Lostmans 5 and paddle the empty canoe up Lostmans 5 River and back. This takes us further inland, and conditions change rapidly. The tide is only a few inches, and the water has only a trace of salt. The channels through the mangroves are getting narrower, and the foliage around us is changing, with fewer mangroves and considerable diversity. Alligators are more common. We begin to see larger intervals of sawgrass marsh, outposts of the vast expanses of sawgrass which are just another few miles to the north. We're close to the point where we should begin to see cypress swamps and pine-covered hammocks, but didn't quite make it that far.
The water channels are becoming braided - narrow, twisting, and interconnected in complex patterns. Occasionally, we're in small channels barely wide enough for the canoe (but still quite deep, scoured by strong current during wet periods), with the trees closing together close overhead. These channels lead to small lakes, where several additional channels branch off in all directions. Maps aren't much use in this featureless terrain, particularly since each major storm can fill old channels and carve new ones, and the fast-growing mangroves quickly heal the scars. We have the GPS receiver with us, but it isn't much help either - it tells us accurately where we are, and where our camp is, can't be trusted to pinpoint the hidden entrances to the particular narrow channels which we need to traverse. We finally turn around and head back before we get hopeless confused, retracing our path to camp after several very interesting hours.
2/28 Again, we're underway fairly early, headed down Lostmans 5 River, south and then west all the way out to the Gulf and then northwest a couple of miles to Hog Key. The other campers on our site had a weather radio, which was forecasting light east winds. In fact, by mid-morning we had a brisk west wind - a real concern once we got out toward open water. Hog Key faces several hundred miles of open Gulf water to the west, with no protection at all. As it turns out, wind and waves never became a serious problem, but it was a slow and fairly strenuous trip, going up-tide for a few miles, and up-wind for many miles. The route was lengthened, as we poked along windward shorelines, trying to stay sheltered from the wind whenever possible.
Along the way, we stopped to watch a fisherman who had just hooked a large game fish (perhaps 5' long). The fish was occasionally jumping high in the air, shaking its head as it flew, trying to dislodge the hook. It took a long time to tire the fish and bring it alongside the boat, after which they released the hook and sent the tired fish on its way.
Hog Key is an unimproved beach site, and appears seldom used. We see no human footprints other than our own - but thousands of pig and raccoon tracks. The name is appropriate, since there is a resident population of feral hogs - presumably escapees from a farming attempt long ago. The beaches are all torn up in a strip just above the high tide line where the hogs dig for something edible. We never did see any pigs, although several times, we heard something crashing through the jungle behind us. The raccoons were conspicuous - beginning their beach patrol at dusk.
The foliage on the dunes just behind the beach is remarkable - seagrape trees laced with thorny vines, mixed in with plants we're more accustomed to seeing in the desert - clusters of 10 foot tall yuccas (Spanish bayonet?) and large opuntia (prickly pear). Later, on another beach, we also saw big agave plants. Even though rainfall is plentiful here, the sand dunes don't hold water, and the conditions are harsh and desert-like. The dunes are narrow, rarely extending inland more than 100 ft. Just inland from the raised dunes, the mangrove swamps take over. At low tide, we can walk for miles along the narrow strip of beach - but can't penetrate inland at all.
As the sun got low on the horizon, we collected driftwood and built our first fire of the trip. Fires are not allowed in the National Park, except on the Gulf of Mexico beaches below the storm surge line. Wood is plentiful, confirming that this site is rarely used. This site, and the one we'll be at tomorrow night, are several days by canoe from any park entry points, and several miles from any of the marked routes through the park.
Mangrove wood is hard and makes excellent firewood. But when I tried to find dry tinder that would light quickly and burn hot enough to ignite small sticks of wood, I again realized just how different this area really is, compared to our usual north country canoeing. None of the familiar tinder sources existed. The first several things I tried - various kinds of dry leaves, dry Spanish moss, etc. just smoldered and went out. Finally, I resorted to tediously whittling several fuzz sticks (carefully cutting dozens of paper-thin layers of wood, which curl back and are left attached to the stick at one end) from small twigs of sun-baked long-dead mangrove. These worked fine, but I'd like to find out what the natives use. The sunset, across the Gulf, was incredible - it seemed like the whole sky turned red.
We have several hundred yards of beach all to ourselves, limited (except at low tide) by mangroves creeping down through the dunes at each end. When we arrived, we explored around the corner and down the side of the Key in the canoe, and discovered another couple setting up camp on a beach about 1/4 mile from us. We stopped to compare notes with them, since we had no indication as to where the "official" campsite was located. They didn't either - but it precipitated another "small world" story - the guy noticed the Adirondack Mountain Club T-shirt I was wearing and said he was also a member. This of course immediately led into a long conversation - they were from Canton, NY.
2/29 Our watches didn't know this was leap year. Probably just a primitive and dumb computer, not a Y2K glitch. Up and on our way early again. It's a short paddle - only five miles to our destination - but we're nervous about wind and waves since the entire distance is in the open Gulf of Mexico. The wind generally dies at night, and then begins to build up again in mid-morning, so there is usually two or three hours of calm paddling starting at dawn. Today behaved as expected, and we had a pleasant, placid paddle - arriving at Turkey Key in time for lunch. Again, we've got a long stretch of beach all to ourselves.
After lunch, we hiked along the beach for a substantial distance, looking at shells and assorted trash that drifts in from the Gulf. Actually, this beach is surprisingly clean relative to many we've seen. The human artifacts were sparse and tended to be floats and rope from crab traps, pieces of docks that apparently broke up in storms, and an occasional sandal or other durable floating item which might have drifted hundreds of miles. There are many shells, but most are badly eroded and bleached, since there have been no recent storms to bring in fresh shells. In spite of this, Helen is collecting many, and we already have a big garbage bag filling up.
This beach, like the previous one, is littered with large horseshoe crab shells. We're not sure why they come ashore, but they seem to be a staple of the raccoon's diet (we did read that these crabs lay eggs on the beach during the full moon - but we're far from full moon). Beginning at dusk, the raccoons patrol the beach, and in the dim light, we frequently saw coons gnawing the meat out of a crab shell.
On these exposed beaches, we're finding that the rounded shape of our Sierra Designs Comet tent stands up well to strong winds. Our little aluminum tent stakes don't hold well in sand, and we neglected bring big broad sand stakes. But in spite of these insecure anchors, the tent quietly maintains its shape and never threatens to blow away.
3/1 Another early start on a pleasant 5-mile paddle. The winds late in the day for the past couple of days have been brisk westerlies, raising annoyingly short choppy waves with small white caps on the shallow Gulf waters. The water along this entire coast is rarely more than 5 feet deep at low tide, and in many areas we have barely room to dip our paddles, even at high tide. At low tide, much of the area we paddled would be exposed muddy sand or seagrass, and we'd have had to take longer routes through the narrow twisting channels of deeper water.
We arrived at Pavilion Key at 10 A.M. - perhaps a new record for early stops. A large guided group of kayakers was still packing up to leave. The group consisted of a single guide and about a dozen young professionals, most of whom seemed to be camping and kayaking novices. They appeared to be having a really good time. While Helen searched the beach for interesting shells, Dave sat near the group and eavesdropped on the educational lectures by the guide, who was strongly promoting zero-impact camping. He showed them how to disperse the remains of the previous evening's campfire so as to leave no sign that it had existed. He stopped short of having them rake the sand smooth across their footsteps as they left.
Hog, Turkey, and Pavilion Keys all had nice broad sand beaches and shallow tidal flats with numerous sea shells. There were very few shells on the other sites (except, of course, for the zillions of ancient oyster shells of which the shell mound campsites are made). Helen collected dead shells on all three keys. Many live shells could easily have been taken by knee deep wading, but they would have started decaying and the odor would have become unbearable in the canoe. (Know the best place for finding shells? In garbage cans in rest stops at the Florida-Georgia border. That is how far the tourists get before the uncleaned shells start to smell bad and they get dumped.)
All three keys had pretty much the same shells. There were many Florida Crown Conch with dark and light bands and spires, Florida Fighting Conch with pink and mahogany interiors, Lightning Whelk with chocolate markings, Van Hyning's and Prickly Cockles with lovely pink interiors, broad-ribbed Cardita with brown markings and Cross-bared Venus. A nice selection of other, less numerous shells found included murex, pear whelk, banded tulip, moon shells, slipper shells, olives, scallops, jingle shells, pink tellin, yellow lucines, and sunrays. One treasure is a chalk white fragment of the beautifully shaped Angel Wing. Massive clams and oysters were most abundant and I pretty much ignored them. I only took samples less than 3", skipping the larger giant whelks and paper-thin horseshoe crab shells easily available.
Pavilion Key is one of the prettiest of the 10,000 Islands, and one of the furthest out in the Gulf. It has at least a mile of clean white sand beach, facing west. It's also one of the more popular places, and is within a long day's paddle of Everglades City (and because of the frequent use, has a pair of self-contained toilets - clean and complete with a liberal stock of toilet paper - what luxury.!) We were quite surprised to find that we had the whole place to ourselves after the kayakers left. In the afternoon, we took a long hike down the beach with our guidebooks, trying to identify the plants and trees populating the low dunes behind the beach. By nightfall, no one else had arrived. After watching another beautiful sunset and looking at the early stars for a while, we went to bed on our own private island. We don't feel quite as isolated as on earlier campsites, because we can see a faint glow on the horizon to the northwest - the lights of Naples, about 35 miles away.
3/2 We woke earlier than usual at first light, perhaps because we were a bit nervous about today's long paddle, the first part exposed to wind and waves. We packed up quickly, dumped about 60 pounds of fresh water which we obviously hadn't needed to haul along for the whole trip, and by 7 A.M. we were paddling. Almost immediately, fog closed in, and everything disappeared. Although it wasn't really a dense fog, it was sufficient to hide all signs of land, and the island we just left disappeared within a few minutes. We immediately went to plan B - choosing a slightly longer course that would take us fairly quickly in toward shore instead of paddling the direct route, many miles out through the open Gulf.
Thank goodness for the invention of the compass. I had plotted courses and written compass directions and latitude/longitude coordinates for important points along the route on our map. So all we had to do was follow the compass needle through the featureless grey mist. It was very satisfying to see the right pattern of shoreline appear out of the fog after half an hour of paddling on a dead reckoning course. We were right where we wanted to be. After that, the fog gradually lifted as the morning warmed, and we could again use the islands around us as a crosscheck on our compass navigation.
The next challenge was finding the right channel through the maze of convoluted mangrove islands which separate Chokoloskee Bay from the Gulf. After following a compass course and trying to compare the patterns of islands around us to those on our map (not always a good match, since the hurricanes move the islands around, and the map hasn't had a serious update for 40 years), we arrived at the entrance to what I hoped was Sandfly Pass. I dug out the GPS to verify this important location (it confirmed that we were where we expected), and then headed into the twisty, unmarked, passage through the maze. We had timed our trip so as to arrive here with the flooding tide, and we got a free ride down the channel, somewhat trusting the tide to take us around the correct turns. I assumed that all that water had to be going to the same place we wanted to go, and just let it carry us along - making almost twice the speed that we could have managed without the help.
After a surprisingly fast passage, we came out into Chokoloskee Bay, and could see the ranger station, about a mile away across the bay. We lost our tidal boost at this point, as the water spread out into the wide, shallow, bay, but with a light tail wind and the end in sight, paddled strongly and made good time, pulling up at our takeout point shortly after noon.
It didn't take long to load the gear into the truck, tie on the canoe, and drive a few hundred yards to Glade Haven RV Park, directly across the street. After checking in and hooking up the utilities, the first order of business was to wait impatiently for 15 minutes while the water heater came up to temperature (running both the propane and electric heating elements simultaneously) and then indulge in one of life's greatest luxuries - a long hot shower.
Afterthoughts: We took far too much water. Half a gallon per person per day would be plenty. We also took too much food - which was also true on other recent trips. Our traditional rules for food quantity need to be modified. We don't paddle as hard or as long as when we were younger, and thus don't burn as many calories. Also, we both have more stored body fat and can comfortably call on this reserve, with the resulting weight loss being welcome.
Sunglasses, hats with brims, and liberal quantities of suntan lotion are essential - even in winter. Despite all these, we both got dark tans.
The rented dry box worked well and was very convenient - a 70-quart rectangular heavy plastic box with a gasketed cover and a pair of nylon straps to hold it tightly closed. The rent was $5/day - ridiculously high - but we didn't want to buy something that we would have to discard or carry with us, and wouldn't be likely to use again for years. The water jugs were rugged, but at $2.00/day per jug, were not economical. We saw others using 5-gallon jugs purchased from Wal-Mart for $5.69 each - cheap enough to discard after the trip. These are lighter and thinner than the rented jugs, and are apparently adequately raccoon-proof.
The Park trip planning literature recommends 7 to 12 miles per day. We concur. Adverse paddling conditions are fairly likely, and wind, tidal currents, or waves can turn an easy day into a hard slog. The tides in these shallow, interconnected, waterways are somewhat unpredictable. With no place to sleep unless you reach your planned destination, it's best to be conservative.
For us, this trip was about the right length, and included a nice sampling of most of the Park's ecological zones. Several miles of relatively uninteresting paddling could be saved by arranging a shuttle so as to start and/or end the trip at Chokoloskee, three miles southeast of Everglades City. There is no long-term parking available on Chokoloskee Island, so shuttles are necessary when either starting or ending a trip there.
An even better trip would start on the Tamiami Trail instead of at Everglades City. This gives a few miles of the sawgrass country, perhaps some cypress stands, and goes past oak and pine hammocks before plunging into the mangroves. It slightly lengthens the first day, but provides a better overall sampling of the Everglades. We chose not to add the extra hassle of arranging a shuttle up to the starting point. Next time we're in the area, we'll probably do this section as a day trip - starting where the Turner River or one of the small canals crosses the Tamiami Trail and ending at Everglades City.