Picayune Strand State Park

Another fun hike! Though I had to cut it short because like a numb-skull I forgot mosquito repellent. We have had some rain lately so the skiters were thick in the shaded areas. Fortunately I had a camouflage head net and gloves but the little buggers were biting me right through my gloves.
Picayune Strand is interesting because way back in the "60's" land developers bought the whole place (85 miles/55000 acres) to turn it into a America's largest home development project. They built canals and drained the land. Then built roads through out most of it. Long story short, the project fell through and the land was pretty much abandoned. The State and Federal government bought it back and are in the process of restoring the wetlands to their former state. Which is great for the panthers and other endangered species as well as the other surrounding parks. You can read more about that here. Now the cool thing about it right now is that the whole place is criss-crossed with access roads so you can easily penetrate most anywhere in the 55000 acres. Here is a map.



So I arrived at the SW corner of the park just after dawn and tramped around for about an hour and a half admiring the vegetation and looking for good place to hunker down and watch for wildlife. I found a large area of matted grass that a herd of pigs had trampled and hung around there for a while to no avail. The I continued on and came across a wide trail. I like to stay off the trails but this one had a bunch of animal prints on it and it looked like it was a wildlife highway so I decided to follow it for a bit.

Bobcat maybe?



Deer


So I walk down this trail surrounded by a cloud of mosquitos. Feeling like Elmer Fudd, "Shhh, Be vewy qwiet, I am looking for a bunny wabbit." It's about 10am and it's starting to get hot. I spot a nice size dead tree laying on the side of the path and stop and sit for a drink of water. I am just about to get up and be on my way when I spot something coming slowly making it's way towards me on the path. It's low to the ground and dark in color moving through the high grass. I am completely camouflaged so it doesn't see me sitting at the edge of the path. I raise my camera and peer through the 200mm lens. At first I thought it was a very large rat or an otter. But then as it came closer I realized it was a gator. It was moseying along nice as you please, out for a morning stroll oblivious to my presence.


What was interesting was that there was no water in the immediate area. I see gators just about every time I hike but they are always in or on the edge of water. Maybe it is mating season? and this one is out looking for booty? laying eggs? visiting his aunt Mabel in another part of the forest? Because he was on land and walking and because they are so prehistoric looking it was kind of a surreal experience. I was tempted let him get right up in front of me and jump up and yell BOO!! just to see what he would do. But I didn't want to ruin his morning he seemed to be enjoying himself as much as I was so I let him get about fifteen feet away and I stood up and said, "Hi there Wally, You lost? there's no water that way."
He didn't get the joke. That happens to me sometimes, others fail to appreciate my humor.
He froze and then started hissing. At this point most normal people would slowly back away but not me. I asked him to pose for a few shots. He seemed not to mind too much (maybe he liked getting his picture taken?) so I closed in on him and snapped a few. He was only about five feet or so long so I wasn't too worried the most he could do was snap off a foot or something.




He put up with me quite well for about five minutes, and I decided to give him a break and continue on with my hike.



I walked for a while longer snapping away at any beautiful thing I saw and then decided to head back. On the way I overtook my friend Wally (him being not much faster than a tortoise) meandering along the path. I walked with him for a while but he didn't have much to say so I bid him good day.


It was another fine hike and I left feeling good in my heart.

Sunrise Over Fakahatchee

Fakahatchee Strand Preserve is a stretch of forest/slough/dry uplands that is south of I75 and west of State Rd 29. It is 3-5 miles wide and about 20 miles long. It is home to many of Florida's endangered wildlife and has the largest variety and concentration of wild orchids in North America, so says "The Friends of Fakahatchee" citizen support group. I have hiked here maybe 6 times and have never seen an orchid, although I do not doubt they are there. This place has almost every type of Everglades landscape there is. I like it because it is close to my house. A 45 minute ride will get me to the north end of Jane's Scenic Drive (on the west side of the preserve) where there are many hiking trails that run through much of the Fakahatchee. If you like to experience nature from inside your car you can drive down this road and see lots of birds, gators and even the occasional deer.

Today I wanted to get some pictures of the sunrise so I set out early. It happened to be the coldest day of the winter so far which suited me fine for walking. I was eager to try out a new walking stick I had made from an old flag pole. I found a World War I bayonet in my cousin's pawn shop and rigged it so I could attach it to the end of the pole and make a cool spear/snake poker in a jiffy. I also put a metal end on the bottom of it.

I packed my camera, some lunch, a couple of bottles of water, my gps, extra batteries and my big bowie knife. I also packed my survival kit. some people might think I go a little overboard with my stuff for a day trip, but I have a healthy respect for the terrain I hike in. My "Survival kit" fits in a freezer storage bag which I stuff into the backpack from a "Camelback" water bag. It consists of a clean hand towel, a small first aid kit (band aids, tape and 4x4's etc..), 1.25 oz. bottle of 95% deet bug spray, rain poncho, some TP!, waterproof matches and firestarter wood sticks, fish hooks, spiderline fishing line that doubles as snare line/suture string, some pre-made wire animal snares, a small flashlight and more batteries for my GPS. Why do I lug all that stuff around with me? I know a guy that was lost in Big Cypress Preserve for two days. I just read about two guys that got lost in Fakahatchee and only got out just after dark cause they had a cell phone to guide the rangers to them. My wife told me about a physician's assistant that almost died from kidney failure due to dehydration from being lost in the Everglades. I've taken my gps out, set it on a tree stump, forgotten it was there and walked off for about 50 ft before I remembered it. I have spent enough time hiking to know that all kinds of weird stuff can happen and its the preparation that will come to your rescue when it does. One time I pushed my way through a palmetto stand and came out on the edge of a giant hole with shear sides about five foot deep and filled with water that was at least 10 foot deep. One more step and I would have fallen in and been hard pressed to get back out again. It's possible to just disappear in the Everglades, vanish without a trace.
So I set off in my jeep with my all my stuff down Everglades Blvd. to the north entrance to Jane's Scenic Drive. I arrived just after dawn and was pleasantly surprised to find out that the state had repaired the road and widened it. The last time I was here there were so many deep pot holes that you couldn't drive more than 5 mph on it and there were trees and vegetation that had fallen on it making it narrow and a mess. The road is lined with a series of access paths that used to be logging roads at one time as I understand it. They are numbered and each has a gate barring the way for unauthorized vehicles. Though many of the gates (and the paths) have now disappeared from lack of use, the swamp has reclaimed them. I found one such gate that I had always missed because the vegetation had grown over it. I only noticed it now because they had graded and widened the road enough that the gate was barely visible through the trees. Yes! this would be perfect. A small sign on the gate told me that it was number 17. I think there is 19 total.


I parked off to the side and got my stuff out of the back of the jeep. It was then I saw my briefcase that held my laptop computer in the back of the jeep. I had forgotten to take it out and put it in my garage before I left. This presented a problem because my jeep only has a "rag" top which anyone with a knife can slice through (and already had once) to take what ever I have inside. This being a lonely road that might have someone come by every 20 min. or so, it would give any would-be thieves plenty of time to make off with my computer. Hmmm... screw it, I wasn't about to go all the way home and put it away so I covered it with a towel and hoped for the best.
I approached the gate an saw that the logging road was completely overgrown and all that was left was a thin game trail with plenty of pig prints on it. One side had a narrow canal bed on it that was dried out being that it was winter and hadn't rained in a while. I was very cool out and quiet..completely still, I love being places where you can't hear any machines at all. Only the soft rustle of the leaves as a slight breeze came and went. The grass was wet and it muffled my footsteps somewhat but I still had to pick my way down the trail trying to avoid the dead palmetto leaves and branches so that everything within a mile wouldn't know I was coming.
I hiked in approximately a mile, it was beautiful terrain, cypress trees, long grass that was interspersed with small bushes, not too thick but not way open either. The walking was easy on the animal trail, a small sparrow sized bird kept me company part of the way, flying ahead of me from bush to bush and chirping away. I am sure he was trying to warn everyone around that I was coming but it was a low, friendly sounding chirping.

I quickly realized my new walking stick was not going to work; it was too heavy and too long. Out here the vegetation can get very thick, and you often find yourself bending and pushing through bushes. If your walking stick is too long, it gets caught and stuck easily. This one was about 5ft long, which isn’t too bad but when you add the bayonet to the end, it adds another like 18 inches to it, and it was getting caught on branches in tight places. Additionally, the wood was a pretty heavy type and with all the metal I added, it was more of a hindrance than a help. So when I came to a good spot to leave the trail I jammed it into the ground, added a waypoint on my gps and left it standing there to mark the spot where I left the trail. I didn’t figure anyone would wander by that would want it.
It occurred to me for some reason at that point that I was going to miss President Obama’s Inaugural Address. I hoped that someone at home would tape it for me. I am a republican and of mixed feelings on our new president, but the one thing I am sure of is that he is the hands down best public speaker I have seen in years. He uses intelligent language, with a deep, confident timbre to his voice and delivers his ideas succinctly and with conviction but not overstated. I enjoy listening to him. He sounds sincere and proud but not prideful if you understand what I mean. If he can use his eloquence to unite congress behind some good ideas, he may do very well. If he can’t unite congress we are screwed…just my opinion.

I left the trail and headed west, I could see a clearing amidst some pines that I wanted to explore. It was a small clearing and it bordered a huge, thick cypress head that I could see and hear had a lot of large bird activity. The trick would be to get to the clearing without the birds noticing because when they see a person or any other predator for that matter they send up a cacophony (I like that word) of noise that announces your presence for miles. Herons and falcons are especially loud. So I worked my way slowly along a thick hedge keeping it between myself and the tree line. I very carefully picked each spot where I would put my boot down so as to minimize the noise of my passage, keep in mind I usually have full camo dress including a head net that not only keeps the bugs off me but obscures my shape so that when I stop moving I become almost invisible to the wildlife. I generally go by the rule that if you can see a bird or a beast, they can see you, unless you are not moving when they appear. They seem to zero in on moving objects incredibly fast but have trouble seeing you if you are very still, even if you are wearing regular street clothes. I reached a clearing of tall grass, pine and cabbage palm trees with out being noticed. I could see buzzards and some birds with long curved bills (can’t remember the name) circling and landing in among the cypress line on the other side. I decided to sit for a while and watch the clearing and maybe get a shot of a passing pig or deer. I parked myself under a tree with the sun at my back hoping to get some good light for the shot if something appeared. I waited for maybe a half an hour, sitting motionless except to change position every so often so parts of my body weren’t falling asleep, I noticed the older I get the faster that happens. While I was at it I took some pics of the passing birds I saw.

After half an hour I was getting antsy and no more wildlife was showing so I departed the clearing and moved northwest along the cypress line, still managing not to disturb the birds. At one point I saw an owl perched on a cypress branch but he saw me at the same time and took off deeper among the trees and was quickly lost to sight. Owls fly completely silent, most birds like doves, pigeons, ducks and even small birds if you are close you can hear their wings, not owls, they hunt mice like noiseless ghosts, their prey doesn’t know they are there until it’s too late.
After a couple of hours of exploring I decided to head back, I hadn’t seen anything big but just being out here, seeing the flora, listening to the forest, knowing you are totally and completely alone from human contact, quiets my mind and touches a stillness deep inside me that I can’t get to when I am in the world of concrete and noise. I used my gps to guide me back to the walking stick I had left by the trail (in case you haven’t noticed I am in love with my gps). It just amazes me that I can jamb a stick in the ground in the middle of the forest, tramp around a half a mile away and return to the exact same spot to find the stick, in a place where the land is flat, looks the same, and there are no distinctive features to guide yourself by. In 2003 I bought my son a gps when he went to Iraq because I saw the movie Blackhawk Down and didn’t want him lost in Baghdad and not know how to get back to the base. He told me that His Lieutenant had used it to call in an air strike on a mortar position across a river that was giving them a problem. The GPS is the pinnacle of modern technology..everyone should have one. I got my wife one because she absolutely panics if she feels like she is lost.

I made my way back out to my jeep, and yes my computer was still there. I decided I didn’t want my day to be over yet so I drove down Jane’s Scenic Drive to SR29 and then back north on SR29, stopping to check out places that interested me the whole way. I was hoping to get a picture of a Water Moccasin but I think it was a little too cold for those guys.

These gators are living the life!
By the time I even bothered to look at the time it was 3pm. I had talked to my wife twice during the day and would call her when I got home. I was getting hungry again and needed to be home to cook the kids supper so I packed it in. I was thoroughly satisfied with my trip, I had gotten my exercise, got some good pics, got my quiet time and got to see dawn over Fakahatchee.

04.05.08 Florida Trail, Big Cypress - Dan was almost gator bait

Our first hike is going to be in Big Cypress National Preserve. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it I’ll give you a little info. First of all, when I say Everglades in this blog you can take it to mean any or all of the state and national parks/preserves/management areas that are part of the giant "swamp" of South Florida. These include the aforementioned Big Cypress and Everglades National Park, Fakahatchee Preserve, Picayune Strand, Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge and there may be one or two more that I can’t remember just now.
Big cypress is mostly North of Everglades National Park, between Collier County on the west and the Miccosuki Indian Reservation on the east. It straddles I75 also known as Alligator Alley. It is 2400 square miles of absolutely gorgeous subtropical forests and marsh prairie along with lush green pine forest and waterlogged cypress forest.

Yeah so at 4:50 am I rolled my tired butt out of bed, scarfed down some breakfast and sort of fell into my jeep and rolled off toward I75. I wanted to be at the rest area/Big Cypress access gate at mile marker 63 by dawn. The first misty rays of light were slanting through the cypress trunks as I dawned my camo gear and took up my camera. For those of you who are interested, I used a Canon 30D body with a 70-200 mm USM lens with a 2x extender for most of the shots today. It was not the usual forest quiet as the cars whizzed past me the noise carried well into the forest, in fact, I know I penetrated almost 2 miles into the forest during the day but never really escaped the sound of the highway in the background.
I had picked a spot to hike out to last night on Google Earth (that program is freakin’ amazing) and it was about 1.08 miles into the forest and east of the path. As I entered the beat up chain-link gate I saw a sign that said “Florida Trail”. I put a waypoint in my gps and started off at a good pace. I didn’t see much except a crane and a big old hawk in the distance that may have been an eagle.

At what I judged to be about a mile up the trail I decided to check my gps and see if I was nearing the point where I would turn off the path when I realized I had screwed up. I somehow didn’t press the save button on my first waypoint and so I had lost it. That would mean I had no reference point to judge the distance I had traveled so far. “Hmmn” I said, “Dan you’re a Dumb-butt.” But then I remembered I had printed out the Google earth picture of the area. I looked at it and sure enough I could judge my position by the twists and turns the path had made and I located myself. I had also put a distance indicator on the google picture last night just for good measure and I realized that I had already passed my 1.08 proposed turn off point. I was approx. 1.5 miles in. I noticed a path up ahead leading off to the east with a sign that read “Cocoa Piggy” and decided that this was as good a place as any to leave the trail. So put another waypoint in, then checked it to make sure it was in there and called my lovely fiancé to let her have the coordinates of where I was leaving the path. This was my back-up in case I broke a leg or what not. We agreed that I would call her at work (she’s an ER nurse) later but I knew she would call me continuously all day. (she did, like, 4 times)

So the plan was to find a spot and hunker down and wait for the animals to come to me. Mean- while I would try to avoid being shot by hunters because this was the second to last day of Turkey hunting season. They would all be out this weekend to get their last hunting in before next fall.
After about twenty minutes of walking through tall grass interspersed with palmetto bushes and pine trees I came to a line of tall dark cypress. Every time I see cypress trees it reminds me of the Okefenokee and that movie where the National Guard guys were lost in the Louisianna swamps and they all got murdered by the French speaking Cajun swamp people.
The ground started getting muddy and I noticed a lot of pig tracks running back and forth. The closer I got to the cypress the wetter the ground became until I was slogging through about six inches of water. I kept going and finally came to a very large grassy clearing, this would be perfect. It had cypress forest to the north, west, and south and palmettos and palm trees to the east. The sun was shining in my eyes and obscuring my vision. I reasoned that if I were a deer or some other animal and I wanted to go out on this prairie I would want to stay close to the trees and out of direct sunlight until I was sure the coast was clear and then stay near the edge just in case I needed to duck back in. So if I picked a spot on the east side by the palmettos, kind of toward the southern end of the clearing then I would be more apt to see something coming out of the dark line of trees to the south. I sat myself down at the base of a palm tree and waited…..and waited….and waited some more until finally I started getting antsy. I’m thinking, “This was a dumb idea Dan, this is, for some reason, probably like the last place these animals want to go, you somehow found the butt hole of the forest that none of the animals want to go to. I decided to try another place. BAD FREAKIN’ IDEA!!! As soon as I moved from my spot a big old buck turned tail and ran back into very line of trees that I reasoned he would come from!!! “You knucklehead!!” If I had waited another couple of minutes for him to ease his way out where I could see him I would have had a great shot of a majestic buck. “Damn!”

wild pig footprint

Ok, so I learned something, trust my instincts and be more patient. I went into the line of trees to investigate but he was gone. I walked around in there a while and came upon a line of tracks going back and forth. Both deer and pigs and some I couldn’t identify. So I hung around this little animal highway and waited. I noticed some of these cypress trees go up a ways the start twisting into like a corkscrew shape. I thought that if I could get up there it might not be a bad place to sit. You are not allowed to place tree stands but I wondered if I got pole climbing spikes like the telephone guys have, I could climb right up these biotches and sit up there where the deer won’t look for me. How cool would that be? Mental note to self: Check out the pole climbing spike idea later.

Ok so I didn’t see any more animals, I tried a few different spots then decided to head back. The walk back was pleasant but uneventful until I got almost all the way back to my truck, then things started getting interesting.
Along the west side of the path back to the gate is a thin canal, maybe twenty-five feet across at the most. I stopped here and there to shoot pics of birds and small gators which all took off as soon as they saw me. Then about maybe a quarter mile from the gate I came upon one of the biggest alligators I have ever seen. He was ten or eleven feet long if he was an inch. He was sleeping peacefully across the canal only about thirty feet from where I was standing. After a small gasp at the size of him I began clicking away with my camera.
Then, to my surprise and consternation he picked up his head and opened his eye and looked directly at me. He then launched himself (with speed that belied his huge bulk) into the water and began swimming across the top of the canal towards me. Now I am not the skittish type and had he been a little bit smaller I probably would have laughed at him. But this guy came straight at me and the look in his eyes and the predatory sway of his body told a chilling tale of my fate if he got a hold of one of my legs. He was easily big enough to drag me back into that canal, (and yes I saw that National Geographic special where the croc drags the animal under and spins himself around to drown it) so when he started moving in my direction I took one more shot and let him have the peace and quite an old gator deserves. I figured discretion was the better part of valor. You’ll notice the last picture of him is kind of blurry…..yup that’s ‘cause Dan was moving the other way as he took it. :0 That was the first time a gator ever bestirred himself from his muddy bank to come after me. Truthfully, it was a little scary.

Gator dreaming peacefully of nice raw meat.





OK, extremeley large, dreaming gator.



Gator's nap is interrupted by thoughtless man making clicking noises, his eye opens slightly.




He begins to notice how yummy the thoughtless man looks as his snout lifts out of the water a little.


Hmmn, " What large teeth you have" said Little Red Riding Hood.



"The better to latch on to you, drag you down and eat you with." Said the giant gator. ......
Ah, yeah, time to go I think.


The day’s fun wasn’t quite over yet , I decided to do some driving around on some of the roads out there in Big Cypress and came upon a flock of buzzards gorging themselves on a dead, bloated pig. Man, you never know what you will run into out here. I had no idea how, when or why the pig met his demise or why the gators didn’t get him first but the buzzards were enjoying themselves.








So that’s hike number one, hope you found it interesting, I did. Just from the pictures I took today you can see the beauty, the danger and the gritty edge of death that are the hallmarks of Mother Nature. This place has it all and when I go home to the safety and cool quiet of my house , there is a part of me that wants to stay out there in the Everglades.