Fort Myers - Feb 15-17

We left the Everglades and crossed the state west on Highway 41, the Tamiami Trail, which I thought sounded like an old Native American word until Russ decoded it for me as the “Tampa to Miami” trail. This road is also known as “Alligator Alley” and that name fits wells. The road runs through the sawgrass prairie that covers most of Southern Florida with a cutout channel paralleling the road for much of the crossing. This channel is full of Southern Florida critters and on this day most of them were out sunning themselves.  I lost count of the number of alligators I saw.  And there were lots and lots of turtles, herons, egrets, vultures and even a bald eagle.

This road must also be the world capital for airboat rides.  Every mile or so, there were signposts urging us to stop for an airboat ride, a gator show and authentic native food, including gator. I imagine if you took a plane ride over the area, you would see crisscrossing water channels and lots of small lakes, offering lots of fishing and full of airboats skittering about. We are going to have to come back some day and ride one of those airboats… I don’t know about the alligator sandwiches though.

We spent a very pleasant day at the Henry Ford and Thomas Edison Winter Estates.  Ford and Edison were close friends (Edison mentored Ford and helped him get his first factory up and running) and they spent many years vacationing together, first on camping trips in the Everglades and then in Fort Myers, where they bought adjoining homes on large properties. The two men spent a good part of their vacation developing research programs on rubber sources that could grow in the U.S. They changed their properties into a research park, full of experimental tropical plants. While they were never successful at finding a rubber source, they did create a beautiful botanical garden. I really enjoyed getting a look at what life was for the rich in the early 1900s.

Another day, we went south of Fort Myers to Sanibal Island which was billed as being a great place to find shells. While we found lots of shells, they were all alike and very tiny. Still, it was nice to spend an afternoon sitting on a very pretty beach. I made up for the puny shells by shopping at a very "Old Florida tourist" Shell Shop.

So far, I am impressed with the Gulf side of Florida. It feels like time has slowed down, the people seem to drive slower and conversations are even slower. I think it is a requirement to own a truck and a fishing boat. Housing seems to be bimodal; either large new houses in well landscaped developments or small 50’s cracker houses with large swamp coolers on the roof.

We continue north to Sarasota.

Edison bought an existing home and then added a second home to host the company that he invited down to Florida. The homes were adjoined by a breezeway.



I loved the architecture - it had many of the same features that are on our home which was built in 1935. All the home needed was a coat of yellow paint and I would have been ready to move in.



 

Ford's home was about the same size as Edison's. He actually bought the adjoining property and built the house. While Edison would spend the entire winter in Fort Myers, Edison usually only stayed two weeks a year.

 

A statue of Henry Ford.



There were several large banyan trees in the gardens. The tree sends out vines which plant themselves in the earth and form additional trunks. The trees can spread over several acres.

 

The properties border Tampa Bay with beautiful water views.





The gardens featured lots of orchids.




The houses were not mansions. At the time the houses were in use, it was difficult to get down to Fort Myers. The trains went only as far as Tampa and the roads were not in great shape. Everything had to be freighted in.




The Edison house was decorated as it was in the 1910s. They entertained a lot which is why they built the second adjoining house to provide guest rooms while retaining privacy for their family.

The Edison master bedroom.



Edison designed this light fixture as well as all the other light fixtures in the house.



The Ford house was decorated in the style of the 1930s. You could see the Mission style influence on the furniture.



The garage housed several Ford cars.



Sanibal Island has several beaches. We went to the one on the southern tip, called Lighthouse beach. Fort Myers is in the distance.

Russ is demonstrating the Sanibal crouch, very popular amongst those who are shelling.

I got high tech with a shell collector.  You can see how small the shells are.

Several dolphins spent quite a bit of time just offshore.  I wonder if they were watching us and were interested in what we were doing.



Fort Lauderdale - Feb 10-12

We drove back up to Fort Lauderdale for a couple of days while we wait to get into our campground at the Everglades National Park. We decided to enjoy a couple of old Florida tourist activities; a gator farm and a dinner cruise on the canals of Fort Lauderdale. The weather, while cool in the evening, has been nice during the day.  Mid-70s and bright sunny skies.

The gator farm was basically an airboat ride in the Everglades and a gator show. The airboat we took was not the typical small boat that I have seen on TV, rather it was bus sized and had a canopy to protect you from the hot sun. That wasn’t an issue for us, but I could see where it would be nice to have in the warmer months. The tour was about an hour and included a mix of fast rides through some channels and a slow ride while the guide explained the environmental issues surrounding the Everglades.  We didn’t see any gators, but did get some close-up views of birds I haven’t seen before.

The gator show did provide some education on alligators and American crocodiles while the young man cracked silly jokes and acted like he was a swamp boy. I was glad it didn’t last too long, the jokes were really stupid.

One evening we drove to the modern, expensive part of Fort Lauderdale along the beach and took a dinner cruise on the Jungle Queen. A variation of this boat has been around since the 1930s, offering day cruises through the canals and a dinner cruise to their privately owned “isle” where they have a buffet dinner and show. As we headed toward the dinner place, we passed by many mansions and mega yachts, as well as the places where mega boats are built. The guide gave a funny and interesting commentary on the famous people who owned the mansions. Dinner was surprisingly good with ribs, chicken and shrimp along with cole slaw and beans. The campy show was about two notches below a poor cruise show and included a singer, ventriloquist and juggler. The highlight was when the singer went out into the audience and told us that there was a special guest on the cruise. He then pulled up a gentleman who turned out to be one of the current Temptations on vacation with family members (I looked on Google and found him in a group picture of the Temptations.) Along with two other (random) audience members, they sang “That Girl” and did a reasonable job for something done on the fly. Russ and I saw the Temptations, along with the Four Tops at an AARP conference in Las Vegas a couple of years ago and really enjoyed them.  I think they are on the third generation of both groups.

We got some errands done and are ready for the Everglades.  We are leaving the Atlantic coast of Florida – we had a great time and can't wait to see what the Gulf coast has to offer.

We took our tour on one of these king-sized airboats.  They had two 500 hp engines and were incredibly loud when fully powered up.

 

 

Pussy willows were all over in this part of the Everglades. The guide said this was because pussy willows were very tolerant of the insecticide and fertilizer runoffs from the cities. The lily ponds are indicative of improving water conditions.

This is one of the bazillion channels dug out by the Army Corps of Engineers during the 1940s to drain the land and prepare it for farming and development.  Unfortunately, this resulted in the dying off of the vast Everglades sawgrass river.  There is now a plan in place to restore more of the Everglades and attract back the wildlife that used to migrate to south Florida.

This crowd of vultures make their home on this island.  The ones nested in the trees reminded me of those pictures you see at Halloween of ominous vultures hanging over the cemetery.



These flowers bloom in the early morning and provide food to local fish and birds.



Another airboat taking the tour.



This is a Purple Gallinule. This particular one has learned to hang out in this particular area and get very close to the boat because the guides feed him as well as others.



The passenger in this helicopter was hanging outside his door taking pictures of us. I initially thought we would see copies of the pics that we could buy back at the dock, but I guess he was just out for a ride.

 



Carrying a 200 pound gater over for the show.  There were about 11 gaters in the enclosure.  All of them are "rescue" gators; having been caught in someone's hot tub or backyards.



One of the several tricks the young man showed us. The farm is run by a group that was involved in the reality show, Gator Boys. This guy was in a few episodes. I have never seen the show but will keep an eye out now.

 

This is the fourth iteration of the original boat that started giving tours in the mid 1930s.

Just one of the many yachts we saw on the boat ride.

This was part of a 17 million dollar estate.

The building where we had our cruise dinner. The whole evening was well organized and, even though the entertainment was rather kitschy, I enjoyed our outing.

 

 

Everglades National Park - Feb 13-14

We stayed at the Flamingo campground which is at the end of the only road in the National Park, about 45 miles from the entrance. It is a rather large campground, but not well developed.  The sites are huge, they could easily put twice as many RVs in, but I am glad they didn’t. It was so quiet at night and with the great weather we had, the stars were amazing.

The first evening, we walked down to the amphitheater to watch the sunset. There is an osprey nest very close to the campground and the parents were busy feeding their young. They didn’t seem to mind humans walking just below their nest. There were some dolphins frolicking in the water just off the point and kayakers were out chasing them. The dolphins were having fun making the kayakers go in circles.

We spent Valentine’s Day visiting several boardwalks along the main road. The first one is right by the visitor’s center and we had visited it two years ago when we were in Florida after our Panama cruise. We enjoyed the walk along the slough just as much as before. Lots of birds, fish, turtles and alligators. We could not have asked for better weather; mid-70s and clear blue skies.

Other boardwalks brought us through hardwood hammocks, sawgrass prairie and an old growth mahogany island. I found the interpretations along the walks to be interesting and just enough detail.  The park was more crowded than when we were here before, but it is President’s weekend after all.

On the way back to the campground, we stopped by the marina (which is about a mile walk from the campground), and watched more ospreys in their nests.  I counted four different nests. Then we noticed some movement in the mangroves across the channel from where we were sitting. I saw my first manatees!  The huge creatures were pulling down the foliage from the mangroves so they could get at them for dinner. Those animals are giant!  They can get as big as 15 feet and 1500 pounds. Related to elephants and aardvarks, they have a definitely unique look.

I fixed a nice Valentine’s Day dinner of steak, veggies, and cherry dump cake. Yum! So glad that we got this last minute reservation – a very cool place to stay.

I think this is a Blue Heron.

This is the only road in the Everglades.  A pretty isolated road, you saw an occasional car, most people don't seem to go beyond the visitor's center.

  

The rig is holding up pretty well. Sure enjoy having the comforts of home on the road.

Sunset at the bottom of the Everglades National Park.

One of the many Anhingas we saw.  They spread their wings to dry them after diving into water for fish.

These large birds seemed to have little fear of humans.

Lots of alligators liked this particular part of the slough. And the vultures seemed to like the company.

The waters weren't quite as clear as they were when we were here a couple of years ago, but you could still see the fish.

I don't know what kind of turtle this is, but it had a very leathery looking shallow shell.



We had a nice walk through a hardwood hammock.  These hammocks are like islands in the sawgrass river and harbor lots of birds and animals.





The truck had a hard time getting up this pass and we had to downshift to get down the other side. The Everglades literature makes a big point of this pass because the plants that grow on this pass are different from the rest of the Everglades.  Apparently, in a state where the tallest point is 300 feet high, a pass of 3 feet is significant.




We kept thinking that these bare grey trees had fallen prey to some bore or disease.  But it turns out that these are Dwarf Cypress and they look like this during winter.



A view of the sawgrass that makes up the Everglades. This used to cover all of Southern Florida, including Miami and Ft. Lauderdale.



Not sure what kind of birds  they are (think they are some sort of terns).



 

An Osprey parent feeding its young some dinner.  You can just see the young one's head.

 

While one parent feeds their young, the other stands watch at a nearby tree.

A manatee getting some dinner off a mangrove tree.