The Swamp Part 1

Thursday, October 16, 2014

Today we arrived at Midway Campground in Big Cypress National Preserve.  If you are tracking us on your Florida map, we are on Fl Hwy 41, Tamiami Trail, about midway across the state, thus the name of the campground.  Wow what a change in venue.  This campground is in the boonies compared to our last stops.  There are only about 5 campers here now, so have the park to ourselves.  It is dark, great for star gazing, quiet, and we have trees and vegetation all around.  Skeeters haven’t been a problem here.... so far.

On the south side of 41 is the Everglades, on the north is Big Cypress, both NPS land.  The campground is also NPS.  With  our Senior pass we are camping for $15.  We have electric, but no sewer and water hook-ups.  There are running water restrooms, but no showers.

The weather is great!  The “cold front” dropped temps to the mid 80s, but humidity is way down.  Whew, a welcome break.  After setting up, we went on the Loop Road, a 24 mile dirt road trek through cypress swamps and saw grass prairies.  Oh, the poor truckie, it now really needs a bath.  The following pictures show some of the things we saw today.

Remember Epiphytes? If you’ve forgotten, go back to our post about Selby Gardens.  They are plants that grow on other plants.  The next picture shows some great examples.  They are all over in the swamp.

Black Vulture

Great Egret

Anhingas

Now that’s one big Gator!

Before the NPS took over the Loop Road, it was originally populated with a wild bunch of folks.  There were gator poachers, moonshiners, orchid thieves, pot growers, plume hunters, and other “non-conformists”.  It was an area too remote for law control.  They didn’t have electricity until the 70s.  It is rumored Al Capone had a home, hotel, and brothel in Pinecrest, a little town of about 400.  They aptly named the 12 mile marker, “The Middle of Nowhere”. 

 

Friday, October 17, 2014

We headed east a few miles today to the Shark Valley Visitor Center located on the south side of 41 in Everglades territory.  They have a 15 mile loop that takes you into the Everglades with an observation tower that is about 7 miles in.  Before the Everglades became a National Park in 1947, they discovered oil in this location.  Humble oil owned the rights, but bailed after a short period due to the low quality of the crude here.

The observation deck sits on top of the old well.  Half of the loop road is dead straight from 41, it was the well’s access road.  The other half of the loop was built by the NPS.  The loop road can be traveled by tram or bike; we chose tram, in part because a ranger narrates the tour.  The ranger led tours are always good and this was also. 

Today we learned the Everglades is formed by a river that originates in north central Florida and empties into Lake Okeechobee.  The overflow from Okeechobee then passes into the Everglades, which is more like a delta.  Think of the Everglades as being a huge bed of water filled with vegetation over a limestone base.  Most of the Everglades is saw grass with areas of Cypress, Mangroves, and hardwoods like Mahogany and Gumbo Limbo.  These treed areas are called Strands if the growth is in a depression, or Hammocks if the trees are growing in an area of increased elevation.  In the wet season the maximum water depth is about 2 feet, with saw grass about two feet tall.  Strands and Hammocks only vary about 1 to 2 feet from the saw grass depth.

What makes this interesting is a couple of things.  First, during the winter dry period, the Everglades pretty much dries up except for canals and strands.  Plants and critters that rely on water to survive go to the depressions or dig their own.  The second thing is how the ocean interacts with the glades.  As the tide rises, more ocean water will enter the glades; freshwater plants and critters have to be able to adapt to survive.

So, we have learned that the Everglades is not really a swamp, which explains why we are beginning to find it a bit boring.  Certainly the animals, tropical plants, and flowers have their beauty but the Everglades is mostly saw grass and flat.

 

Observation Tower

Blue Heron

This is a picture of a soft-shelled turtle taken from the observation tower.  The shell was about 3 feet across.

It seems everybody comes to the Everglades to see alligators, so anytime there was one visible from the tram they stopped.  Here is one we saw.

One final thing we learned about the Everglades was an algae that is responsible for purifying the water and supports the fish and birds that live here.  It’s called Periphyton, and is the olive to tan colored stuff that covers most of the Everglades bottom.

It also acts like a sponge retaining water during the dry season.  It is a very important component of the Everglades.  In the Great Lakes algae is a curse, here it is welcomed.

Our next stop was an air boat ride.  We chose one run by the Miccosukee Indians.  We will upload the video to You Tube once we have WiFi again.  The sensation is much like a regular boat ride except for two differences, its loud and it travels over grass and swallow water that even a jet boat couldn’t.

 

The next two stops today were weird and unique.  The first took us to the Skunkape Research Center.  The is a guy that runs a little campground in Ochopee that claims to have seen a primate in the Everglades, that he named Skunkape (a really stinky primate).  He has a fuzzy picture in his store taken in 1997, along with footprints and other evidence, according to him, that supports its existence.  Seems to be the Big Foot of the Everglades.

 

We talked to him and find he is mustering an expedition to go looking for the Skunkape.  $500 will get you a ticket.  No, we didn’t sign up.

The last stop was unique.  The Ochopee Post Office is the smallest continuously operating  post office in the US.  It was a farm shed that was converted in 1953 after the original post office burned down. Unlike our post office, there were no lines.

 

 

 

 

An oil well operated