Love Those Glades and other funny experiences!

We spent Thursday late night (Jan 17th) thru Monday mid morning

(Jan 21st) in The Everglades National Park. We celebrated the completion of our first month on the road on the 19th in the Everglades. If you have not been here and you are interested in experiencing on of the most amazing natural phenomenons on our planet, you should plan to visit and to be taken back by this huge, ornate and complex biosphere. It is by far one of the most magical and interesting places in the world I have visited and it is virtually in our back yard. It, like the glaciers of our continent, are effected by the natural evolution of the planet but are most impacted by the well intentioned landscape design and utilization of us humans in some manner. It is fragile and in need of oversight protection and on going care to see that it continues to exist. It is very evident in the south tropical areas of Florida that we, as inhabitants in combination with the altering weather patterns, can and are dramatically impacting our own existence in what could be considered the simple everyday usage and disposal of used water.

Living in this moving home has given us a very intimate look at how we use and dispose of our personal water. We have to look for it regularly as we can only carry about 50 - 60 gallons comfortably with us on board and we can only store up to 80 gallons of used water before we would have to find a place to dispose of it. (We really don’t have the option of waiting that long for other reasons pertinent to traveling around the country with sloshing waste water) So we find inventive ways to conserve in the usage of what is very precious fresh, potable water and we are becoming experts at discovering the dump sites required to live comfortably on this machine. What we simply pay for the treatment of, as it goes down the drain at our stationary home and don’t really think about as we use it or flush it, becomes a necessity here on the road. We have an intimate relationship with fresh water and what a plumber friend once described to me as “the juice of life.” Knowing that Americans are said to use up to 80 to 100 gallons of water per day per person in our homes we have very significantly reduced our water consumption out here traveling around. If only we had a fuel cell RV!
The park borders Homestead, FL. We camped in Flamingo, FL which is inside the park and is the southern most point of the mainland of the US. I didn’t realize that point, about Flamingo, until I got there and we read it from one of the travel brochures available at the park.

The picture is of the Saw Grass Prarrie that exists in plentitude thruout the glades. Enlarge it if you can, by clicking on the photo! you will see the Dwarf Cypress trees on the right. This shot is at the beginning of a Dwarf Cypress forest. Elev. 4' above sea level.

This may not be of any real significance to anyone in the world except maybe to me. But, now I realized that it is possible that we will be able, on this trip, to reach the other two extreme directional points in the US and possibly North America, that we have not visited to date. This would complete our, previously undiscovered and unknown to us, personal mission of doing so.
Two years back we stood on the Eastern most point of mainland North America in New Foundland. There we were the closest that you can get to Europe via Great Britain on quasi dry land. The same can be said for Flamingo, FL, except we would be talking about South America. We will have to determine the most Western Point in the US as soon as I have reliable internet access to se if I or we have already been there and then when we visit Alaska later in the summer this year I think we will have visited as far north in North America as these explorers can travel via our vehicle with our personnel. We met up with someone from Anchorage in the Everglades and they notified us that our hope of getting to Anchorage to see the start of the Iditarod on March 1st this year would not be possible. The roads would still be impassible by all practical means for an RV. So with much disappointment for me and Jasper we have had to adjust our itinerary and plan on a mid to late June arrival there.

The Everglades are host to thousands of Alligators and they, although startling at first, become quite common place after a while because they are in such abundance. I’m not sure if commonplace is the correct adjective by you sort of get used to seeing them. Snakes are said to be in abundance as well and thankfully we did not have the opportunity to become as accustomed to them as we did the alligators. The American Crocodile, (endangered) which exists here in the brackish waters along the Florida Bay and are also, with some tools of discernment, available for our viewing amazement. There are tropical and subtropical birds galore. Some are endangered and others like the Black Vulture, I believe, are taking over the planet. The endangered Florida Panther lives here in the glades, but, it is very rare to see them because of their limited numbers and their hunting and roaming patterns. (It would have been a pleasure). There is so much to know about this place and it is a very interesting look at evolution as you review how it came to be the only place on earth like it.

On this trip, I had the distinct pleasure of meeting a couple of the non endangered park's rangers, up close and personal, after having been stopped for speeding in the park on dark evening just before 8 PM. The citing officer was very polite, friendly and helpfully suggestive in attempt to resolve my RV issue that I explained to her upon her request, as to hopefully discern the elusive answer to the question, "why I was speeding." (You see my RV batteries had become so weak that we were in danger of losing all of our food in the fridge and freezer if I did not get them changes out with the new ones I had just purchased in town because it was almost 8 PM and you can’t run your generator, which would have helped keep things cool, after 8. Can’t you see the bind I am in and can’t you just give me a quick warning and let me get on with this very important task at hand) As she completed handed me my speeding ticket she told me how and where I could go to run my generator for a few hours to help alleviate the immediate issue at hand. Now the other thing that is very prevalent in the glades is mosquito’s which, as usual, wait until after the sun goes down to mount their attack on carbon monoxide emitting creatures like humans. They are not the worst here that we have seen them but they are plentiful and if I were her, there is no way in hell that I would be getting out of my vehicle after dark to give some schmuck a ticket on a basically deserted, any time, but certainly after dark, 38 mile stretch of unlit pavement, where, as she so aptly warns me, as one of the reasons for giving me the ticket, that if I hit one of the plentiful alligators on this road (HELLO, there are alligators on and actively crossing this road) we would be in big trouble and personal danger. (By the way as she went back to her car to write the ticket, she told me to stay in the car until she returned….) No SHIT!, we were in personal danger just being there and I was none to happy being stopped and looking like a stationary meal for one or more of these creatures who don’t seem at all particular as to what they eat. (We watched one eat a friggin rock, thinking it was the fish that its neighbor, on the left, had already eaten).

Anyway, all went well with the fridge and battery stuff. I saw her the next day helping out another visitor to the park. In that process Megan heard her mention that she had only been stationed here in the Everglades for two weeks. That explains a lot about why I got a ticket and she wasn’t off having coffee and somewhere where the natural element wasn’t so profuse. When she was done assisting the other person, I asked her, to verify, if she was the person that gave me my ticket last night. She confirmed. I then asked her why she asked me why I was speeding and if anyone’s story would actually make a difference in whether they got a ticket or not. She answered in reverse order saying, “NO and that she just wants to know if she can be of service to the person and help them solve the problem that they are having as she did with her suggestion to me.” She then asked me a question “Did you save the things in your refrigerator last night?” I told her that we did and that (although we had already thought of it) we took her suggestion and uprooted the RV to a remote, to the campsites) parking lot and ran the generator for a couple of hours to get the fridge cold again. She seemed pleased as she told me that she thought about us and our situation just before she went to sleep that night.

The picture to the left was taken in Mahogany Hammock inside the park. It was hard for me to imagine that there were actually harwood trees in this place. Their roots spread way wide but only about 5" deep as there is nothing for them to root down into. The picture is of the largest and oldest mahogany tree in the US as I was standing on a boardwalk underneath it. Notice the air plants growing piggy back off of the tree.