Half Moon Cay

Half  Moon Cay

Turquoise Sea

We ride the sea

us

            We have found paradise. Half moon Cay is a small island 75 miles from Nassau with a one and a half mile long, curved “half moon” shaped beach. The water is a brilliant turquoise and throws gentle waves up on the softest brilliant white sand I have ever seen. There is nothing here, no towns, no one lives here. It’s just a place for us to come and enjoy. We went to shore very early. The beach, hours later to be teaming with 3000 of our fellow cruisers, was empty. We walked a mile in the shallow turquoise water, the waves lapping at our feet. An hour of quietness between water and the mangrove like trees that cover the island and we head for our trip. A tram takes us to the other end of the island and the horses. It’s been a while for me, but it feels wonderful to bounce, sorry, Sandy posts, I bounce. We rode along the shore on the beach and then into the thick trees, wending higher and higher, until we could see whole beach and most of the island. Back at the stable, they took the saddles off the horses and we remounted. Bare feet and riding bareback. The horses love the water; I mean really love the water. On the trail I had to prod my horse to go, now he pushed to get ahead of anyone in front of him as we ran into the deep water. They ran and swam as fast as they could and it was all I could do to stay on. I felt myself going over many times. It seems a miracle I didn’t keel over and into the water churning with charging horses. At one point, my horse decided to head toward Florida and deepest water. I pulled hard and back with the others. It was the coolest thing I had done since leaving Iowa, but I was glad to make it back to shore in one piece. For Sandy it was the fulfillment of a life time dream, riding a horse in the surf on this fabulous white sand beach. A memory from a child of 6, watching “Black Beauty” and wanting to ride there herself. She was there running through the water on spirited horse, never in her wildest imagining did she ever think it would ever come to pass.  

Two hours on the beach, swimming or lounging, chairs in the shallow water and it was time for me to go snorkeling. I could have done without more exercise, I was beat and happy to chill on the beach, man. But I signed up for it. My relief out shadowed my disappointment when I learned it was canceled due to rough seas. Today was the high point of the whole time away for both of us. An island paradise and excitement to boot. 

Grand Turk

Grand Turk

Do we eat soon?

Sandy's karaoke

           Grand Turk is 7 miles of island in the eastern area near the Bahamas. English owned and almost flat. We left very early onto a 75 foot catamaran sailboat. We stopped about 200 yards off the shore and snorkeled. Amazing! The water is 25 feet deep and crystal clear. Closer to shore nothing much is happening, but all of a sudden the bottom is teaming with life. Coral covers the ocean floor and the fish are everywhere. The fish are every color. Blues, yellows, reds, oranges, whites, purples and combinations of all. Some solid, some mottled, some striped. I saw fish from 2 inches up to 18 inches. The largest was a white fish with a yellow stripe on either side just below the back fin. The coral waves, some like giant leaves, some miniature trees. Little cities of sea cucumbers, pushing up cylinders like mini skyscrapers, 3 inches wide and 3 feet tall. There was also a funny thin walled vegetation that formed a rough circle, about 18 inches wide. The walls higher and lower around its circumference. Fish swam everywhere, most on the bottom and often kissing the coral or rocks.  20 feet of this and the reef disappears and drops suddenly to 7000 feet.

            We topped the morning sail off with a stop at a pristine beach with mostly white sand broken with long dead shelves of hard coral. The surface smoothed by the waves and the feet of many explorers. The look out into the sea is dazzling. On the horizon a deep, deep blue water, almost black, closer to it suddenly turns turquoise. Almost Day-Glo, this color indicating shallower water. The sun is intense and fries our backs and casts floating sparkles across to forever. 

Boat 2

           There are 3,300 people on board, but the ship is so huge there is always a place to be alone and stare at the vast ocean. It is calming and humbling. The wind is very strong and though the waves don’t show it, the ship rocks slightly, giving you a lurch or an extra step. Sleeping is good, the giant cradle rocking you to sleep. Food is excellent and ever-present. Up until now the order of the days is rest. Hot tubs, cards and staring at the ocean.  

“I’m on a Boat”

          Well, we started our cruise with intrigue on the high seas. Checked in and exploring the ship, we found the voluminous amounts of food to be consumed. 4 enormous buffets, 2 more orderable sandwich shops, and an amazing array of incredible pizzas. (Or stay in your room and order room service.) Take as much as you want and go back for 3rds, 4ths, 5ths, etc. We did. Back at the cabin, we got the call. You are ordered off the ship. Something in your luggage. Please go to security. I was nervous, but more, upset. I thought I was finally on the ship. Back all the way to step one. There’s my bag and the man opens it up and shows me… my pair of pliers. Sorry Randy, I had brought trees to make and pliers to make them with. We put them back in the RV. And back on the boat. 

We leave the Everglades

Leaving at dawn

Miami

Our new home for 5 days

We finally have left the Everglades. The quietude of the wilderness is so profound and silent. The glades are an amazing place. The birds are ever-present. Look up anytime and you will surely see a murder of crows or a sky full of pelicans or a hood of vultures or maybe a lone great white heron. There are also always sounds from the birds. They chirp starting about 3:30 am. The egrets and herons and ibis's are always squawking. Even in the dark of night, the great blue herons and anhingas would scream at us if we got too close. Now I sit, a hundred yards from a billion tons of metal which will be our home for the next 5 days. The Carnival cruise will go to the Bahamas and I may not talk to you all until we return. The pup was not pleased when I handed her to the kennel handler.  She looked back at me as they disappeared through the door. I hope the soulful distraught eyes will not haunt me on our trip. When we left, different people told us what we must do in the cities we go through. I think I have had my fill of cities, growing up north of Boston, I enjoyed the city, but I was always more comfortable in the woods behind my house. It is still true, the wild has a call that I respond to. Also, howling at the moon on Bourbon Street will send you to jail. The cruise will be civilized, but relaxed. Also, we hope to get off the ship at the ports and venture into what wild we can find.

Later that night

Wow! What an evening we have had. 7:30pm and pitch black we joined a ranger to walk the Anhinga Trail again and it was fantastic. The gators, earlier docile and lounging, were up and very busy. 2 minutes into our walk and we witnessed a fight between 2 gators, one 12 foot and one 14 foot. The went at each other, splashing and jumping in the swallow water, just 15 feet away from us. The smaller one won and chased the other away. As we continued, we surprised many great blue herons. They squawked a nasty course growl and flew away. The Anhingas sat in the trees and yawned as we flashed our flashlights on them. It would seem that it might be hard to see a gator at night, dark as the black water and mostly submerged. In fact with a flashlight it is quite easy. There eyes shine back a perfect red spot when the light hits it. Looking out over the water, flashlight beam washing over the surface, the red dot appears, sometimes singles, sometimes half a dozen. When we came to the place where we saw the 22 gators earlier, they were gone. We stood and listened and soon heard loud splashing. The gators were in the thick swallow bush, some 20 feet away and fishing. A dozen red eyes shine back at us through the short trees and bushes. They fished together, all 6 to 8 of them herding the fish into the swallow water and then they pounced. The ranger called it a feeding frenzy. Loud splashing and the thrashing of giant bodies throwing themselves around. He said it was very rarely witnessed and we felt lucky to witness and even luckier not to be the main course. Dusty has been very nervous however, since we got back. We made the mistake of telling her the story that the ranger told us. A dog, loose, went into the water just 20 feet from the visitors center today at noon and 2 gators made a meal of him. Not the best spectacle for the tourists. 

Everglades 4 Wild Dolphins

3 Crocs basking

Really Big Croc

Dolphin

 This Croc has no teeth- Rangers named him Gummo



      Today we left home early and ventured way into the interior of the Everglades. We chartered a boat and traveled up Buttonwood Canal to Coot Bay further still through a channel in the Mangrove forest to Whitewater Bay. There are literally thousands of miles of mangrove forests. Mostly red mangrove. They are also called the walking mangrove. A branch will overhang the water, maybe 20 feet high, when it will start a shoot growing down. It looks like a leafless branch. Each tree will have hundreds of these shoots. They grow down and down into the water and take purchase onto the river bottom, thus adding support to the branch and allowing the tree to walk across the water. 2 alligators basked in the sun by the shore on our way out. We saw hundreds of birds, from the cattle and white egrets to the red shouldered hawk, anhinga, tricolored ibis, and hundreds of coots. Often the water would shake with jumping mullets. We were returning when two fins appeared, 20 feet off the bow. Bottle nosed dolphins. There were 4 of them and they swam around the boat for a while and darted off in search of lunch.

            The trip was magical, tasting one more flavor of the Everglades.

Everglades 5

Vulture

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The Anhinga

The walk through Royal Palm is amazing. The Anhinga trail, named after a bird by the same name, very similar to the Cormorant, but with a wonderful white striped pattern on the wings, is rich. A strangler fig tree, sits, its intricate layers of trunks laying smashed together, like someone twisted them tight. The trunk is 5 feet wide. The alligators are plentiful. They bask in singles and doubles and at one spot there are (Sandy counted 22). They lay in the sun, mostly with eyes closed, some with mouths open, many laying over each other. Birds, large and small, walk among them, unhindered. Some swim from place to place, (do they have reservations somewhere?) The birds are incredible. Whites, browns, blacks, blues and grays. The most plentiful are the vultures. They stand, mostly in groups of 3 and 4 and wait for something to die. As we leave, we catch sight of the grandfather gator, must be 14 feet long. 

Everglades 3

Must be 80 today. We started with a bike to the channel inland. Dusty on leash running beside me. I pushed as hard as I could, but she could always pass me. She runs like a cheetah. Pushing easily, low and fast. 3 miles of that and she may sleep awhile as Sandy and I head out for Snake Bight. The bike ride is 7 miles one way, hot and neither of us has biked in 5 years. We push to make the 1:30 ranger led walk. He talks of the biology of the everglades as the mosquitoes swarm by the thousands. We try to keep or attention on the Button tree and the limbo Gumbo and how great it was for the people that lived here hundreds of years ago. We give up half way through and head back, too many biters. We stop at every lake on the trip home. Telling ourselves it is to see the nature. Really it is to rest at any possible moment. On the edge of a close lake we sit on the grass and watch the grebes and egrets fish and eat in the small lake. I see movement 30 yards away and watch a crocodile float out from the far shore. Another one basks in the muddy shore 20 yards from him. Little brown birds are drawn to the croc and swim closer. The floater starts to move toward us and we laugh and pretend to be nervous. When he is within ten feet of us, we don’t need to pretend anymore. He stops dead on, facing us and stares. I am ready to bolt, but he drifts off for another shore. The next stop a crow makes noises I have never heard from a crow. Puppy is very glad to see us and the three of us fall asleep soon after arriving home.

Everglades 2

Miles and miles of grass, some dry, some wet, interspersed with forests of tall trees and long thin lakes. Finally the grass gives up its endlessness and the bay appears in front of us. Nothing but water broken by dozens of heavily treed islands. Somewhere in the far distance beyond the thousand islands runs the line of keys pointing its long thin finger at Cuba. Jet black vultures with white wing tips wheel over the campground. Dusty and one of them goes nose to nose. The pelicans glide in groups of 10 and 20, big moving van bodies with rough wings and crooked necks and long grey beaks, sail to the new congregation point just in front of our walk. The walk, which would have been waters edge last night, is now 100 yards of muck from the channel. Dust and I try to reach the birds, but give up 20 yards in as I sink to more than 12” deep into the thick grey mire. Crocks bask on the shore, must be a crocks, its salt water, and one swims to the boat dock where a man hoses off his boat. The crock lifts his head out of the water leaning against the wood, the water trickles down and he opens his mouth to taste the fresh water.  The walk along the shore has palms and mangroves. Many small white birds, miniature cranes, feed 5 feet away. A small field of pods, mouths open, they look like giant black fury Venus Fly Trap heads eating cotton. A manatee, lurking in the murky water rises up and its nostril breaks the surface. A breath of air and we wont see him for a quarter hour. Gator tail for lunch. Does not taste like chicken. Tastes like… tastes like… gator!

The Everglades

We actually put the air conditioning on a bit on the ride down. 5 below is a faint memory. It is 72 now and a cool breeze pushes through the rv. This is what we came for. The cold and snow forgotten I look out across acres of red pine. 50 foot redish brown sticks with puffs of green on the top. On the floor of the flat flat plain of national park there are short palms, their chris cross compound leaves waving in the wind.

It was a long drive in the giant vehicle. We spent the night near Tampa, night before last and saw the Tampa Aquarium and then across the city to Clearwater. A state park called Honey Moon Beach. There Dusty found, I think, the only dog beach in Florida and discovered salt water. This dog, who hates water, jumped and barked at the breakers and ran into the sea and swam. It felt like we had finally started the vacation. Up until now it was, “Driving is my Life.”                                                                                           

The drive across Alligator Alley, (the road through the Everglades from Miami to Ft Meyer ) was wonderful. The strip malls gone, civilization shrunk to its minimum, we drove across tens of miles of wilderness. Looking across the grassy plain, it looks what I would expect Africa to look. Except the trees off in the distance are palms. There is a channel of water following the road. Trees line the opposite side. There are hundreds of tall birds in the water and on the banks. Small white, large white, brown, black, blue, short neck, long neck, curvy neck, short beak, long beak, really really long beak.

Off in the distance I see a flock of smaller birds. They create a giant cloud in the sky. High in the low clouds thousands and thousands of birds wheel around, creating fantastic shapes.  We approach as the bird cloud floats lower. Lower and lower and “my god they are going to hit us”. The cloud rises, but not before leaving a dozen dead birds in our grill and windshield wipers.

I see two dead gators by the side of the road, a group of large black vultures stands next to one, waiting as if for the early bird special to begin.

At a roadside attraction I hold a small alligator and we see birds and snakes of all sizes and colors. The gator looks blankly in my eyes and I get very little consciousness.

Now we sit, our destination arrived and there is an inner silence that is compounded by the deep silence that this pristine wilderness conjures. 

The Manatees

In the Cypress swamp in search of Mannatees!

The small white spot in the middle of the picture is a Mannatee!!!!

Cheap Camping – Fairfield 8 degrees- Florida 62 degree

I sit now surrounded by some of the most beautiful asphalt I have ever seen. Flat as glass and covered with bright patterns of white lines all leading up to the big welcoming door of the Wal-Mart Super Center. This was our home last night, turned away by the closed gate of the Manatee Springs State Park. We spent the day singing “Way down upon the Suwannee River”; sorting all the stuff we threw into the RV in the blistering cold of Iowa. We flushed the antifreeze and filled water tanks. It had been hard to walk inside, everywhere was filled with boxes and bags. Now with things put away it seems a home. Also we walked to the Suwannee River and learned of its rich history.

            It was late in the day when we headed south. South- ever south. Too late for the state park, we settled for the Wal-Mart Parking lot. There was really nowhere else to go. It was cheap and the food they have for breakfast- WOW what a spread. I am really quite disappointed at Florida so far. It is quite cold. Sleeping last night there was only one warm spot- where Dusty lay against my leg. What’s up for today? - I say again, South- ever south.

"Way down upon the Suwannee River"

Silence in Florida

I sit now, an early Tuesday morning finally in silence. There is thick treed forest surrounding me, Sandy and Dusty are asleep. The small state park- called Suwannee River State Park is 20 miles from the Georgia border and so quiet it makes you want to breathe without sound. The trees are mixed leaf and needle. One is like a red pine, but the needles are 12” long. There is something flowing off many of the trees. On the ride through the forest to the park at the 2am last night, I watched it wave in the breeze off the trees as they over hung the road. It instantly reminded me of the rain forests of Vancouver Island. Most of the trees carried a thick flowing moss. As I see it closely now it doesn’t look like moss.

            We drove yesterday through the entire state of Georgia. At a gas station I walked the pup and found a huge field and let her run. She took off like a shot and not listening to my calls made a grand circle through the grass and started to return. She was so into her run that she didn’t see a 40-foot high netting fence. She hit it full tilt and bounced, into the air and hit the grass on her back. She got up and looked at me as if to say, “Did anyone get the license number of that Rottweiler?” It started to get late, but somehow I really wanted to make it onto our target state. We drove realizing that of the 25 books we got from AAA, none of them covered camping. There is supposed to be a state park nearby, but the maps are not clear. We stopped at a rest stop and of course everything was closed. We peered into the glass doors of the 20,000 square foot information center to no avail. I was walking out when I asked a maintenance worker if it was okay to park and sleep in the lot where the trucks park. “They do it all the time,” She said. And so we moved the RV to the edge of the parking lot, locked the doors and pulled the shades looking forward to a fine night sleep. There were a few trucks; there engines idling as they do, on the other side of the lot, but things were good and we hit the sack. Sandy and I both woke at the same time- 2am- with the sound of jet engines. The parking lot of semis had filled up. It was pretty clear that there was no more sleep here. 

Dashboard Dog!

     We drove off; blinking off the sleep we had had in search of more. 20 miles later we drove into this beautiful state park. At 2am it was beautiful because of its solitude. Now in the morning I see its visual beauty. We will sort our stuff today, all the boxes and bags thrown into the RV in the cold Iowa winter. Now in the warm Florida winter we will set up water and make order for the months ahead.

60 degrees and 8 hours of driving

Day 2- Not much sleep last night, Dusty barked at any and all noises and the highway noise seemed close. I think the truck's mirrors were actually scraping the motel door. Yesterday the view was snow on fields. Today the fields gave way to thick forest and the snow disappeared at the Kentucky border. I saw three steers with 2 foot long horns. I looked off into one forest and there in the middle of the thousands of black barked trees was one huge snow white  sycamore tree. We broke up the day with a wonderful visit to Sandy's room mate from college- 45 years ago. (Do we feel old?) Just into Georgia we are staying the night.

10:03 ---2/5/2011---We Drive Away

It was a half an hour out of Fairfield, we were heading south on 218. I have been in "Git er done" mode for months now. Now I am gittin' it done on the driving front when I realize. We've done it!!! We actually left!!! A burst of adrenaline pushed through me and I goosed the accelerator. (To 56 mph.) It is a dream that we have finished everything, stuffed bikes and camping gear in outer storage compartments, thrown pillows and blankets on the bed, thrown boxes of food and clothes in the aisles of the RV. Sat down and drove away.

We couldn't have left 2 days ago??

You Did Pack the Passports didn't you???

We sit now listening to the trucks drive by in our motel in... um... I don't really know where we are. Somewhere just before Kentucky, in Illinois. We had hoped to drive to Nashville tonight, but in the spirit of the theme of our trip --- "Chill"--- we pulled off here, where ever we are and I sit, freaked out dog at my feet and do not think about yesterday- the lost cell phone- (found), this morning- the missing safety deposit box key, (found), in the first hour of the trip- the too well packed "all the money" and the passports, (found 7 inches from where we sat), and the one hour it took to figure how to post this blog.(If you are reading this, it worked.)

We will start again early tomorrow in hopes of making it to Florida by dark. 

Fine. There's the Arch, so we must be in St. Louis- Just keep driving!

What we stared at for 7 1/2 hours today.