Wanderung 1

Key West or Bust

Holts Take Time in Toyota Truck to Tramp Together in Tepid Temperatures!

January-February 2003

Sunday, January 26, 2003
After a pretty good night’s sleep, I awoke with a little more energy and we had that pancake breakfast in an indoor presentation area nearby. Due to quirks in the Florida reservation system, we had to shift our campsite between 1 and 3 p.m., but our morning was free. Originally we wanted to do a Volksmarch in nearby Naples, Florida, but we found out that the starting point was not open until noon so that became impossible. Instead we drove back down Route 41 to walk a nature trail in the Everglades.

The nature trail was a really good one with a boardwalk that extended at least ¼ of a mile into the Bald Cypress swamp. The plaques had nice legible descriptions of the various flora and fauna of the region. The plaques describing plants were all situated by really prime examples of each plant so you could see the details of the living organism. Often on nature trails I am trying to figure out which plant is being described by each plaque and end up more confused than educated. Not so with this one; we had a nice walk, learned a lot, and took many nice pictures.

From the nature trail we continued on a bit to Everglades City, which is at one end of the Everglades National Park. The park had a Visitors Center that was pretty minimal but did offer a variety of eco-tours of this part of the Everglades. We had just missed the departure of one, so we signed up for the 10 a.m. departure of the “Skimmer”, a smaller boat which turned out to be a big advantage.

The eight passengers and two crew set off for a trip across the Chokoloskee Bay and passed an osprey nest on a channel marker. The nest had eggs and the male landed to relieve the female as we were passing by. The parents didn’t seem startled or disturbed by us, but they did keep a close eye on us as we passed by the nest. We continued on our way and saw other waterfowl, but then the Captain spotted a couple of dolphins ahead of the boat.

He tried to entice them to play in our wake by getting the boat up to top speed where it created a big wake and then running directly over them. This sounds impolite, but he said that there was no danger of collision with their echo location abilities and they often liked to play in boat wakes. In any case, it worked like a charm. The dolphins popped up in our wake and swam and jumped with us for at least 15 minutes. We were clustered in the stern and the three dolphins were basically at arm’s length, so I was taking pictures like crazy. They were clearly having fun and seemed as interested in us as we were in them. In particular I remember a dolphin coming up in the smooth water in front of the wake and then rolling on his right side and keeping pace with the boat so that one big eye was looking directly up at me. This unblinking stare was somewhat disconcerting because the animal was clearly sentient, and it gave me the distinct impression that he was trying to get a good look at me. Of course, I was leaning over the rail with my red hat with sparkling medals and was gesturing with the camera, so I probably was quite a sight for the dolphin.

Our guide mentioned that diving in the wake was probably pleasurable because it would help them get rid of some parasites, but they surely did seem to just have fun with it. I mean, they were jumping every which way across the wake, not just swimming in it. I even saw one just open its mouth and stick its tongue out as it jumped at us--if that wasn’t some kind of dolphin grin I don’t know what is. Well all good things must end, so the Captain powered down the motor and after hanging around a while just as if they were kids saying “Can’t we do that some more?”, they finally wandered off.

We saw a lot more waterfowl on the way back, and found that another advantage of the small boat was that the Captain could edge in closer to the nests to give us a good view. We got a great look at a tree full of pelicans that were apparently waiting to steal fish from the hard-working cormorants. We also passed by another osprey that was eating and another osprey nest which involved a prolonged struggle between the osprey and the Coast Guard. The osprey had built their nest on top of the battery case that powered the channel marker and the Coast Guard would take down the nest each year when they serviced the battery pack. The next year the osprey couple would rebuild the nest even bigger than before. After three years of this, the Coast Guard installed a new battery pack at the other end of the platform so the osprey could have their nest undisturbed.

After this thrilling ride, the rest of the day was decidedly anticlimactic. We returned to the campground to change our campsite and had to wait and wait and wait for the other people to vacate our next site. But they finally did and we disassembled the tent as little as possible to toss it on the back of the truck and move to our new site. It worked, after a fashion, only blowing off the truck twice during the 10-minute drive. Setting up the tent at the new site was in fact quite fast, so we had time to do another load of laundry and do some writing. But nature had one last surprise in store for us—while we were eating dinner at dusk a large hawk swooped low over our campsite and then perched in a nearby tree. There he preened his feathers for a bit and then seemed to settle down to roost for the night, and after I tried to take some pictures, so did we.

Copyright 2002 by Robert W. Holt
Prolog
January 2003
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