Fort Meyers, Everglades City and Chokoloski, Florida
This is the beginning of our 7th week of this adventure. We traveled today to Fort Meyer, it was another nice drive with the Florida vegetation, blue skies, sunshine; same ‘ol, same ‘ol. We were able to get into the local Elks Lodge for a very inexpensive night fee ($5.00 donation and a couple of drinks in the lounge. There were no hook-ups, but luckily it cooled down enough that we didn’t need our air. Dinner was “old town” downtown at a very nice sidewalk café, the Morgan House. We sat on the shaded patio with the “Boys” at our side. As we walked by we saw a couple with their parrot, so figured they were animal friendly. This was an enjoyable new experience for the 4 of us travelers.
The Edison-Ford Winter Estate was the next morning’s 1st stop. We took the audio tour that led us around and through the homes and gardens that appear much as they did in the early 1900’s; a beautiful setting right on the bay. This is where Edison, Ford and Firestone worked to try and develop a domestic source for rubber. England owned 80% of the world’s rubber, during this time and was making the production of the Ford automobile and Firestone tires problematic as the British continually raised the price. The lab on the Florida property worked for several years to try and come up with a successful alternative. There were some interesting discoveries, but synthetic rubber was developed before they could ever develop a crop that would be productive enough for their needs.
It is official: It is HOT and HUMID – 90 degrees plus and humidity to match--yikes this is going to take some getting used to for the old folks! We know that we are lucky to be in the warmth, BUT this is just a bit more than we were ready for. To try and cool off a bit we took a boat tour of the Mangrove Wilderness of the Ten Thousand Islands area of the Florida Everglades. This was an interesting cruise through many small islands, out to the Gulf of Mexico. The islands are composed mainly of Mangrove Trees that grow on very shallow deposits of sandstone. We got some good close views of birds (osprey, cormorants, vulchers…) that were nesting on buoys in the estuary. Best of all; on our way back into port we saw 10-15 dolphins that were swimming and playing right off our boat. They swam around us for quite awhile, and we enjoyed watching the action. Our Captain Rick suggested that we eat dinner at Camellia Street Grill. It was a sort of funky little café’, but we enjoyed sitting outside right along the Barren River, dining on some alligator, calamari and crab – yum!
Saturday morning, March 9th our 1st stop was the Ochopee Post Office – officially the smallest post office in the US, it used to be an irrigation shed, complete with American flag and a mail drop box. We then set out to see more of the Everglades National Park. We were glad that the “Leaders” in Washington DC had been able to work out some temporary agreements, because otherwise many National Parks would have been closed starting today. Our travels took us along the Tamiami Trail, (US Hwy 41) that covers the northern most boundaries of the Everglades. We made stops at 5 different Visitor Centers and saw some amazing wild life and scenery. Alligators, alligators, alligators – there were no shortage of them today, amazing how close we got to them. We saw many little ones (less than a year old) as well as some pretty big “fellows” too. The last stop of the day was at the Shark Valley Visitor Center, where we boarded a tram that took us on a 15 mile drive through the heart of the Everglades. This 2 hour ride was through immense saw grass prairies, which is actually one of the largest and slowest rivers in the world. We had a very knowledgeable and informative guide who described what we were seeing and the ecosystems that are involved. We then climbed up a viewing tower and have a 360 degree view of the Everglades, quite a spectacular vantage point. Tomorrow we drive the Keys.