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  

Ft. Myers

Sunday, October 12, 2014

Today we moved south about 85 miles to Ft. Myers.  Our journey was mostly on I-75, arriving about noon.  Whew, hot again, 90+ and high humidity.  We decided to check out Ft. Myers Beach, only a few miles from our campground.  Wow, being Sunday, a holiday weekend (Columbus Day), and a Pirates Fest, it was Party On!  at the beach.

Although there was a nice breeze it was hot, so after a nice little walk, we headed home.

Monday, October 12, 2014

Today we’re off to Sanibel and Captiva Islands.  The Island is heavily residential with lots of big and expensive homes.  Half the Island belongs to the J. N. Darling National Wildlife Refuge.  There is a 4 mile wildlife drive with turnouts overlooking a wetlands.  Some pictures follow.

Reddish Egret

Rosette Spoonbills

Mangrove

Mangroves grow wild around here, and as you see, it would be impossible to get through a stand of them.  They seem to grow with no direction.  Their root system covers a large area and is intertwined.  It is a curse for developers.  In fact, there has been efforts to eradicate them, until finally it was realized their importance in protecting the shores from erosion and helping to dissipate hurricane winds and storm surges.

The beaches at Sanibel are rated some of the best for swimming and shelling.  A storm appears to be approaching, so we didn’t stay long.  We found some interesting small shells.

 

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Today our interest takes us to the winter home of Thomas Edison.  With lots of Edison history in Port Huron and at Greenfield Village, this was a must visit for us.  His estate is located on about 14 acres of land along the Caloosahatchee River that he purchased in 1885.

While he had visited Florida previously, his selection of this particular area was made because of the bamboo and other tropical plants present.  Edison wanted to develop bamboo as filament material for his light bulb.  Light bulb filaments lasted maybe a couple hours at this time.  A carbonized bamboo filament lasted hundreds of hours.  As we know, tungsten became the preferred material.

About this time, Edison and Ford became friends.  In fact, Ford bought a house and property next door to Edison on the River here in Ft. Myers.  Edison developed the battery and generator for Ford’s cars.  In the late 1920s, Ford asked him to look for a domestic source for rubber. At this time the US used 70% of the world’s rubber production for tires, all of it was imported and subject to political, price, and weather impacts.  Kind of like oil today.

Edison had a botanical garden growing hundreds of plants and a laboratory to test them for latex content.  He was searching for a source that could be grown anywhere across the US and and found that Golden Rod, as in the “weed”, worked and could be grown nationwide.  After WWII synthetic rubber was developed, basically ending further research.

Well, it wasn’t our intent to turn this into a history lesson, but Edison was a fascinating guy.  He has almost 1100 patents.  We figure he was probably viewed a little kooky in the day with all his inventions.  Following are a few pictures of the Estate.

Edison Winter Estate

Edison Living Room

Edison’s Study and Moonlight Garden

Some interesting plants,

Palm and Coconut

Bougainvillea

Shoreline in front of Edison’s house

Edison Dock / Pier, (only pilings remain).  Pier was used for barges bringing materials and boats carrying Edison or Ford.  No roads or railroad reached this area until the 1910s.

Ford Winter Estate

Ford Living Room

As stated above, Edison researched plants that could be used for rubber production and grown in the US.  Since rubber was extracted from plants in South America and other tropical areas, he planted and/or tested over 14,000 plants in his botanical laboratory on this site.  The lab has been reconstructed and it looks as if the clocked stopped here in the 1920s.  Even the dust looks original.  This was Dan’s favorite in the complex.  Some picture’s follow.

Edison is known for many inventions, like the phonograph and

the movie camera. In fact, his Edison Studio in New Jersey produced the movie titled “The Great Train Robbery”  A 10 minute silent western.

His work with the light bulb and electricity generation is one of his big accomplishments.  He made the light bulb practical and created the electrification system necessary to put it in homes, streets, and buildings.  He had to invent each component used in this system and those used in the power station.  One of his generators is shown here.

 

Thomas Edison was a remarkable man.  He lived to be 84 and continued working right up to his death.  Many of his achievements came when he was in his 70s. We are glad we had an opportunity to stop here as it provided more insight into his life.

At some point we need to visit his West Orange, NJ lab, now a National Park site.

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Fort Meyers has been an interesting stop.  It is a bit lower key than Sarasota and much less traffic.  Tomorrow we head into Big Cypress Preserve and The Everglades, part 1.  We will visit the southern part of the Everglades during our stay in Homestead in a couple of weeks.

Our stop tomorrow is at Midway Campground, a NPS campground near Ochopee.  It is unlikely we will find WiFi for the next several days. We’re having fun sharing our adventure.

Sarasota

Thursday, October 9, 2014

Today we left Clearwater and moved south about 65 miles to Sarasota. In route was the the Tampa Bay Sunshine Skyway Bridge.  At about 4 miles in length, this is an impressive structure!  No pictures of it though, as we were driving.  Our home for the next couple days is Sarasota Sunny South RV Resort.  This campground has several park trailers with full time and long term residents. It lies within a residential neighborhood, a little urban for us, but has all the amenities to make a long term stay enjoyable.  There are a number of in-park activities like community cookouts and many social gatherings.

Yesterday we made a visit to a not too well known, little park in Tampa that was not mentioned in the last post.  The park is called Lettuce Lake Park and is a Pinellas County Park.  The draw for us was a 1 mile boardwalk through a swamp that borders the Hillsborough River.  Along the boardwalk you see an amazing variety of birds, along with big cypress trees.  A few pictures follow.

Lettuce Lake

Swamp Lettuce

A Little Blue Heron

The swamp.  Looks like you could walk across, doesn’t it?

Dan’s new camera has a 50x zoom that came in handy for critters here.

Ok, back to Sarasota.  After getting set up we drove over to The Ringling.  This is the estate of John Ringling of the Ringling Brother’s Circus.  The Ringling brothers and their circus originated in Baraboo, Wisconsin.  There is a circus museum there that Lynn has seen.  He and wife Mable made Sarasota their home and built this palatial house and out buildings in a Venetian motif.  The house, built in about 1920, and its surrounding property is called Ca’d’Zan, meaning House of John from a Venetian Italian dialect .  John had amassed quite a fortune from the circus, his real estate holdings (he owned most of Sarasota), railroads, and some oil drilling ownership in Oklahoma.

Unfortunately, Ringling’s fortune didn’t last.  The Great Depression caused a big real estate crash in Florida and people stopped attending the circus, because they could not afford it.  As a result, Ringling blew through his money.  To top it all off Mable died.  At his death, 7 years later, creditors took all but about $300, however John had bequeathed his Art Museum and the estate to the State of Florida.  John and Mabel had no children.

The house was not open Thursday evening, but a Circus Museum and the Art Museum were.  The Circus Museum had some interesting stuff, but nowhere near the collection in Baraboo.

The cannon used in the human cannonball act.

One of 140 circus wagons the circus travelled in early 1900s.

Ringling’s private railroad car used by John and Mabel in the early 1920s

The Art Museum contained many works that John and Mabel purchased abroad.  Most were portraits, not our taste, but the courtyard was impressive.  The sculptures and the night lighting made it special.

Friday, October 10, 2014

As you should know by now, we dig gardens!  So today we visited the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens.  What attracted us to this one was the largest collection of Epiphytes of any garden in the US.  We bet you’re all asking, what are Epiphytes?  They are plants that grow on other plants.  They are not parasitic, nor do they use the host for anything but a place to hang on.  Examples are orchids, ferns, bromeliads, and mosses.

Most Epiphytes reside in South and Central America.  The Gardens sends expeditions into these areas, almost annually, in search of unique plants to add.  Here are a few pictures.

These are Bromeliads, also known as air plants. One Bromeliad that you all know is a pineapple.

The next couple are ferns:

The were many varieties of ferns.

This flower is in the begonia family.

The following are some of the very large collection of orchids:

And there were other plants too -

Pitcher Plant- it’s carnivorous

A member of the zebra plant family

 

Bird of Paradise

The Marie Selby Gardens is the estate of William and Marie Selby.  They gained their wealth through the success of Selby Oil Company.  Marie’s passion was gardening.  Unlike the mansion Ringling built, Selby’s was modest.

Within the estate grounds is the Christy Payne Mansion.  The house has been transformed into a Museum of Botany and Arts.  Currently on display are works of Angela Maria Isaza, who specializes in an art form called  Batik.  The technique uses cotton fabric that is dyed, layered with wax to mask areas from the dye, and repeated until the image is complete.  The wax is then removed by ironing.  It provides a remarkable piece of art.

Saturday October 17, 2014

Today its off to the beach.  We checked out Siesta Key beach yesterday and it looked fabulous, sugar white sand and FREE parking!

It didn’t disappoint. Sunny 90 degrees on October 11th, and we’re at the beach!  Rubbin’ it in for our friends in Michigan!

As many of you know, we are keeping our eye on possible wintering locations.  Although Clearwater was nice it was way too busy and traffic was a pain.  Sarasota looks pretty good, lots of things to keep you busy, but still a bit busy for our taste. 

Next we move onto Ft. Myers.  Stay tuned!