We left the sunny, good vibes of the Florida Keys retiree lifestyle, and plunged headfirst into the backcountry of Everglades National Park. The campsite is electric only, the showers have no hot water, the skeeters are out in force, and we’re deep in gator country!
When I think of the Everglades, I conjure up visions of dense swampland full of alligators and muck. The reality is actually a lot different than I expected; the area is mostly miles and miles of wet grasslands and tons of birds. Water is the life force of this place, and flows down from the lakes in central Florida, passing through rivers of wet grasslands before flowing out into Florida Bay. The National Park does a good job of illustrating and explaining the massive water conservation efforts that are currently underway to help preserve the fragile ecosystem. The guy at the visitor center said the populations of Egrets and other wading birds are down 90% from where they were in the 1930’s.
We went on a few short hikes to check out the scenery. The first thing you notice is the huge variety and number of birds. They are everywhere! It’s the dry season here, so the numbers of bugs are greatly reduced from their summer volumes (so we are told.)
Anyone looking for some endangered swamp mahogany?
On Friday, we got up early to embark on what turned out to be a fairly epic 5-hour canoe trip into the Everglades backcountry. We rented the boat at the Flamingo Marina – $22 for 5 hours. The guys at the dock were really nice. I think they were a little excited to have some young people that seemed actually interested in the area. They told us about a sweet hidden route from Coot’s Bay through a tunnel of mangrove trees to Mud Lake.
We paddled about an hour up the waterway to Coot’s Bay – the weather was sunny and pleasant – really peaceful! Not much in the way of wildlife, but lots of white mangrove trees. If we veered closer to shore the bugs would come out and bug us so I tried to keep us closer to the middle of the canal.
We made it out onto Coot’s Bay, and worked our way along the shore until we spotted the entrance to the mangrove tunnel. That tunnel was the coolest part of the trip by far.
It took about 10 minutes to meander through the narrow channel. The trees were dense; sometimes we had to duck down, and other times we had to pull ourselves along using the overhanging branches. Noelle thinks she saw a gator slip into the water, but I’m not that sure.
Mud Lake was really neat – it was muddy, shallow, full of birds, and we were completely isolated. That little mangrove tunnel is the only way into the lake. We had a nice little picnic lunch in the canoe, saw some more birds, and some weird jumping eel looking things.
I panicked a little trying to find the little mangrove tunnel on the way back, but Noelle’s common sense eventually had us working our way along the shore until we spotted it.
The haul back to Flamingo was pretty tough – we had been paddling for over 3 hours at that point, and we faced a strong headwind back in Coot’s Bay. The sun was going strong, and body parts were starting to ache. The last leg of the canoe trip was pretty brutal. Skin tight from sun, backs cramping, hands raw from the effort.
A friend from the cold northern wastes of Chicagoland suggested I do some alligator wrassling while we are down here, but up to this point we hadn’t seen a single gator. We had a running joke that the whole idea of alligators everywhere was just a huge Florida marketing ploy intended to lure unsuspecting tourists. Ironically, as we rounded the final bend, we saw this bastard sunning himself on the boat ramp. Yeah we just canoed all day long without seeing a single gator and we could have seen this thing without even leaving the car! Oh well, it felt really good to complete that trip.
It was a different guy at the dock when we got back – he asked where we had gone – we said Mud Lake and he was like, “Wow you went all out!” I was like, “Heck yes we did!”
