We left the Everglades on Monday morning, January 21 after having deciding to stay the night in order to allow us to leave with ease during the daylight instead of pulling up stakes in the dark of night and attack of the mosquito’s. We pulled out of our site, as we had anticipated, at around 8:30 AM. The plan was to attempt to get to the next place along fluctuating route during the daylight and also with time to actually see the place and get acquainted with our new surroundings and also as usual to avoid the bugs. We have gotten quite adept at pulling up and putting down at this point but still it is quote a bit easier to do it when you can see what you are doing.
Initially, we moved our selves only a short piece up the road on the way out of the park. The idea was to park in the general parking lot to have our breakfast by the waters of the Florida bay and then head out towards the north a little with the idea of getting to the Seminole Reservation by noon. We have only our general ideas and intended direction as we leave one place and shoot towards another but they don’t seem to make much difference in regards to where we actually end up or our carry much weight for long in our decision making process.
Jasper had received a workbook upon entering the Glades from the ranger where we came into the park. It had many age appropriate projects and questions specific to the Everglades that he could complete or answer in order to earn a coveted Junior Ranger Badge. The goal of earning the badge was the prize for taking the time to learn about the place we were in. It also included sections for the Biscayne National Park and the Big Cypress National Preserve. If he (we) were to complete all three sections and earn all three badges then he could send in his completed book, signed by rangers in the parks and receive a patch like the one the rangers wear on their uniforms. The prize was enough to keep Jasper (somewhat) entertained and interested and interesting and educational enough for us to pursue it and use it as an educational tool for all of us. It is really amazing the things you can learn by doing these booklets with the kid. Do you know what periphyton is? I suspect most of his classmates back in school don’t either.
I secretly (up to this moment) hope that what we are offering him on this trip has him keep pace or exceed what he would have gained by staying in the school system. I am certain, experientially, this will be unsurpassable. We also worry that having nothing stable in place or people may be a detriment to him personally but. If it is I guess we will not find out for years to come and then only he or we assign blame to this trip. It’s all made up.
He completed the section for the Everglades mostly with Megan’s assistance and on the way out of the park we stopped in at the Coe Visitor’s Center. He went to the ranger at the info desk in to hand in his pages and have them reviewed by the ranger on duty. They spend about 10 minutes with him and look at the work he has done, ask him specific questions about what he has answered and throw in bits of interesting comment and other info and are just really sweet, understanding and nurturing of this seemingly budding environmental scientist, naturalist who loves learning about this stuff. He is then sworn in, which they do over the intercom system for everyone in the place to hear. They make a big deal of it. I was in another room when I heard the ranger announce that they were going to swear him. I came running to catch him just beginning the ceremony. He has to raise his right hand and repeat an oath that is centered around environmentalism in general and aimed specifically at his pledge to care for and maintain that particular park. He earned his first Junior Ranger badge and he loved and process of being sworn in and getting that prize. It was very cool to experience him in it. I can’t help but wonder where this child based activity will lead him.
We changed direction early on in the trip which in light of the fact that we are road schooling him gave us all another opportunity to work on some real life science, geography, history, botany and biology, with him, while we were here. It actually only started on our way out of the park, as the events of the days, previous to today, were filled with the activities of being here rather than specifically working in the book. So we all took it on to get it complete and feel as if we knew the park to a degree before we parted. Do you think that the everglades are a swamp? I did, but, that is not correct. It is a slow moving river traveling ¼ mile per day from up near the Okeechobee Lake towards the Florida Bay. This info may have no place in your daily life but when you are here in the park and it is your home and you want to know about where you live, this is pertinent info. A trivia piece that I will probably always remember
Inside the visitors center they had hung half of 58 extraordinary, large format, photos of a shared exhibit aptly named “America’s Best Idea.” The photos were taken by Stan Jorstad. http://www.nps.gov/ever/parknews/americas-best-idea-photo-exhibit.htm
He is one of the few people that have traveled to and even fewer who have professionally photographed all of the 58 National Parks and 391 designated National Preserves and Areas through out the country. His work is stunning and beautifully produced. I was honored to have been able to be present to the showing and was inspired, beyond our original calling, to take on seeing all of them myself and exploring all of the wilds of our country particularly our designated parks. We live on an amazingly beautiful place.
From this point we headed east, to Biscayne National Park. This would completely blow the concept of getting to our next living site during the daylight and the whole theory of getting acquainted with our surroundings, out of the water. But, it was worth it. Biscayne is just south of Miami and is an underwater national park. The winds were blowing 15 – 30 mph this day, so we did not get to experience the underwater portion via glass bottom boat, but, the beautiful visitors center offers 4 movies (we watched 2) and is designed and laid out in such a way that the outside is brought inside. We spent several hours there and completed Jasper’s second park portion of the book. The ranger there, who has been in this park for about 12 years, was even more animated and interested in Jaspers experience then Jasper was.
This portion of the booklet was much more complicated to find the answers for and a large section was completed by going thru the exhibit and searching out the answers. Once all the sections were finished, he was brought over to a specific area in the center, the ranger placed an official ranger cap on him and swore him in regarding Biscayne National Park and gave him his 2nd badge. Jazz asked if he could keep the hat.
With that we were ready to head to our next sight in the Seminole Reservation. But, not before we met a couple from Middletown. He used to work for Aetna and was very active in the development of the building there and thus in the politics of our city. We hit it, off he was a liberal and we lamented the political scene of Middletown and did a bunch of if only’s. It didn’t change anything in the moment but our intentions were positive for our city. You know, a Butterfly’s wings flapping.
We made it to somewhere between Miami and the reservation when we decided to stay in a Wal-mart lot again for the night. It was past 7 PM, dark and we had not had any supper. We plugged them into the GPS went to two of them and a Sam’s club and were rejected all 3 times by order of local city ordinance. We tried one local camp park but they didn’t have the pull thru site we needed to not have to undo our car which requires us taking the dirt bike off its rack and so on, so we got back of the highway and aimed, yet again towards the reservation. We never made it. To our good fortune once again, we came upon a great rest area that also had a boat launch area in a slightly off location to the parking for the regular rest stop area. This entire area was security patrolled thru out the night, we came to find as we asked the security guy for permission to stay over night. He told us that it was permissible. Now the good part! When you stay in a rest area, as I am sure you all know, from having done this so many times before, trucks taking a break there (which we have to park next to because of our size and inability to maneuver thru any other portion of the parking lot) keep there very loud, when you are trying to sleep, diesel engines running while they are on said break and they only stay for a short while so they are loudly coming and going more often than one would like whilst trying to nap. In short, it is not the best sleeping place. Not to mention, all of the very bright overhead lights that attempt to make it like day when it is really night. But, I had the somewhat scary but ultimately brilliant idea to drive over to the boat launch parking area to see if it was more remote and legal to park there. Guess what? It was much more remote, it was legal to park and sleep there over night) according to the security guard who was sitting in the lot talking on his cell phone securing a date or a pizza for later), there were no overhead lights at all and there was no one else there. It was as if they built it for us for that moment in history. We extended the slide out, pulled the front shades over the massive front windows, opened the side door and windows to the screen position, called the reservation and told them we would see them in the morning, got out the provisions for our supper, cooked it, had a beer and settled in to have a comfortable quite nights sleep??? Yes, no one even pulled into that lot until after 7 AM the next morning. Not even the security guard!
Initially, we moved our selves only a short piece up the road on the way out of the park. The idea was to park in the general parking lot to have our breakfast by the waters of the Florida bay and then head out towards the north a little with the idea of getting to the Seminole Reservation by noon. We have only our general ideas and intended direction as we leave one place and shoot towards another but they don’t seem to make much difference in regards to where we actually end up or our carry much weight for long in our decision making process.
Jasper had received a workbook upon entering the Glades from the ranger where we came into the park. It had many age appropriate projects and questions specific to the Everglades that he could complete or answer in order to earn a coveted Junior Ranger Badge. The goal of earning the badge was the prize for taking the time to learn about the place we were in. It also included sections for the Biscayne National Park and the Big Cypress National Preserve. If he (we) were to complete all three sections and earn all three badges then he could send in his completed book, signed by rangers in the parks and receive a patch like the one the rangers wear on their uniforms. The prize was enough to keep Jasper (somewhat) entertained and interested and interesting and educational enough for us to pursue it and use it as an educational tool for all of us. It is really amazing the things you can learn by doing these booklets with the kid. Do you know what periphyton is? I suspect most of his classmates back in school don’t either.
I secretly (up to this moment) hope that what we are offering him on this trip has him keep pace or exceed what he would have gained by staying in the school system. I am certain, experientially, this will be unsurpassable. We also worry that having nothing stable in place or people may be a detriment to him personally but. If it is I guess we will not find out for years to come and then only he or we assign blame to this trip. It’s all made up.
He completed the section for the Everglades mostly with Megan’s assistance and on the way out of the park we stopped in at the Coe Visitor’s Center. He went to the ranger at the info desk in to hand in his pages and have them reviewed by the ranger on duty. They spend about 10 minutes with him and look at the work he has done, ask him specific questions about what he has answered and throw in bits of interesting comment and other info and are just really sweet, understanding and nurturing of this seemingly budding environmental scientist, naturalist who loves learning about this stuff. He is then sworn in, which they do over the intercom system for everyone in the place to hear. They make a big deal of it. I was in another room when I heard the ranger announce that they were going to swear him. I came running to catch him just beginning the ceremony. He has to raise his right hand and repeat an oath that is centered around environmentalism in general and aimed specifically at his pledge to care for and maintain that particular park. He earned his first Junior Ranger badge and he loved and process of being sworn in and getting that prize. It was very cool to experience him in it. I can’t help but wonder where this child based activity will lead him.
We changed direction early on in the trip which in light of the fact that we are road schooling him gave us all another opportunity to work on some real life science, geography, history, botany and biology, with him, while we were here. It actually only started on our way out of the park, as the events of the days, previous to today, were filled with the activities of being here rather than specifically working in the book. So we all took it on to get it complete and feel as if we knew the park to a degree before we parted. Do you think that the everglades are a swamp? I did, but, that is not correct. It is a slow moving river traveling ¼ mile per day from up near the Okeechobee Lake towards the Florida Bay. This info may have no place in your daily life but when you are here in the park and it is your home and you want to know about where you live, this is pertinent info. A trivia piece that I will probably always remember
Inside the visitors center they had hung half of 58 extraordinary, large format, photos of a shared exhibit aptly named “America’s Best Idea.” The photos were taken by Stan Jorstad. http://www.nps.gov/ever/parknews/americas-best-idea-photo-exhibit.htm
He is one of the few people that have traveled to and even fewer who have professionally photographed all of the 58 National Parks and 391 designated National Preserves and Areas through out the country. His work is stunning and beautifully produced. I was honored to have been able to be present to the showing and was inspired, beyond our original calling, to take on seeing all of them myself and exploring all of the wilds of our country particularly our designated parks. We live on an amazingly beautiful place.
From this point we headed east, to Biscayne National Park. This would completely blow the concept of getting to our next living site during the daylight and the whole theory of getting acquainted with our surroundings, out of the water. But, it was worth it. Biscayne is just south of Miami and is an underwater national park. The winds were blowing 15 – 30 mph this day, so we did not get to experience the underwater portion via glass bottom boat, but, the beautiful visitors center offers 4 movies (we watched 2) and is designed and laid out in such a way that the outside is brought inside. We spent several hours there and completed Jasper’s second park portion of the book. The ranger there, who has been in this park for about 12 years, was even more animated and interested in Jaspers experience then Jasper was.
This portion of the booklet was much more complicated to find the answers for and a large section was completed by going thru the exhibit and searching out the answers. Once all the sections were finished, he was brought over to a specific area in the center, the ranger placed an official ranger cap on him and swore him in regarding Biscayne National Park and gave him his 2nd badge. Jazz asked if he could keep the hat.
With that we were ready to head to our next sight in the Seminole Reservation. But, not before we met a couple from Middletown. He used to work for Aetna and was very active in the development of the building there and thus in the politics of our city. We hit it, off he was a liberal and we lamented the political scene of Middletown and did a bunch of if only’s. It didn’t change anything in the moment but our intentions were positive for our city. You know, a Butterfly’s wings flapping.
We made it to somewhere between Miami and the reservation when we decided to stay in a Wal-mart lot again for the night. It was past 7 PM, dark and we had not had any supper. We plugged them into the GPS went to two of them and a Sam’s club and were rejected all 3 times by order of local city ordinance. We tried one local camp park but they didn’t have the pull thru site we needed to not have to undo our car which requires us taking the dirt bike off its rack and so on, so we got back of the highway and aimed, yet again towards the reservation. We never made it. To our good fortune once again, we came upon a great rest area that also had a boat launch area in a slightly off location to the parking for the regular rest stop area. This entire area was security patrolled thru out the night, we came to find as we asked the security guy for permission to stay over night. He told us that it was permissible. Now the good part! When you stay in a rest area, as I am sure you all know, from having done this so many times before, trucks taking a break there (which we have to park next to because of our size and inability to maneuver thru any other portion of the parking lot) keep there very loud, when you are trying to sleep, diesel engines running while they are on said break and they only stay for a short while so they are loudly coming and going more often than one would like whilst trying to nap. In short, it is not the best sleeping place. Not to mention, all of the very bright overhead lights that attempt to make it like day when it is really night. But, I had the somewhat scary but ultimately brilliant idea to drive over to the boat launch parking area to see if it was more remote and legal to park there. Guess what? It was much more remote, it was legal to park and sleep there over night) according to the security guard who was sitting in the lot talking on his cell phone securing a date or a pizza for later), there were no overhead lights at all and there was no one else there. It was as if they built it for us for that moment in history. We extended the slide out, pulled the front shades over the massive front windows, opened the side door and windows to the screen position, called the reservation and told them we would see them in the morning, got out the provisions for our supper, cooked it, had a beer and settled in to have a comfortable quite nights sleep??? Yes, no one even pulled into that lot until after 7 AM the next morning. Not even the security guard!
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