A Day Trip to the Everglades....

Every once in awhile, Sparky and Eldo get restless...we miss the traveling, RVing lifestyle, but hey....we are now off the road and that's where we are at this stage in our lives...living in Bradenton, FL, Eldy's golfing, Sparky is subbing, and the weather is relentless sunshine and plenty of warmth and heat for our old bones....Sparky still misses cooler weather and the change of the seasons, but that's where we can travel occasionally in the summer to get out of the heat....

female anhinga

Now, a trip to the Everglades in December is not getting out of the heat, but it's fun! It reminds us of the very first time traveling to southwest Florida, going down highway 41, Tamiami Trail to the Everglades...Back then, we visited Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary (north of Fort Myers) and saw our very first anhinga, a very common Florida bird with fantastic black and silver plumage. Sparky remembers seeing an anhinga drying its wings on a branch in Corkscrew Swamp, and saying to Eldy, "WHAT THE HECK IS THAT BIRD????" It was SO BIG compared to birds up north....  The first time we visited the Everglades, on the way down, we would watch the side ditches filled with water because the bushes and shrubs hadn't grown up yet, and there would be alligator after alligator after alligator sunning themselves along the banks. We stopped a BUNCH of times, because you know how Sparky LOVES to take photos. And, there were TONS of egrets, herons, and anhingas in the trees. We were AMAZED!

This week we took a day trip back to our favorite stopping points along the way to the Everglades....the Big Cypress Visitor's Center, (the manatees start to hang out there in the winter), the U.S. smallest post office in Ochopee, FL....a 7 X 8ft. building...It used to be an irrigation shed for a tomato farm. It is at milepost 72, on highway 41 and worth a stop. Get a pre stamped postcard from the smallest post office in the U.S.! Population of Ochopee is about 11 people or so....

We stopped at the HP Williams Wayside Park, another great place to talk to a ranger or naturalist and look for gators and birds....There was a BIG gator under the boardwalk, but Sparky is now sort of "meh" about gators, she sees them ALL the time in Sarasota and Bradenton....But they ARE bigger in the Everglades, she will say that! :-) We saw Florida gar and bowfin fish in the water...the gators didn't seem to care about the fish at all...guess they weren't hungry!

bowfin fish

Sparky saw the usual anhingas and gators....But then, in the underbrush, across the water canal, she saw a little green heron...his colors were terrific! The green herons are also known as chuckleheads, or little green herons. They like to stay hidden in swampy thickets, which is exactly where Sparky saw him. They are about one to two feet in length, so not very big birds compared to other FL birds like the white herons, wood storks and great blue herons....

As we came out of HP Williams Wayside Park, we saw an alligator that had been hit by a car, mangled in the road, the first time we have ever seen alligator road kill here in FL. You'd think we see that more often, but guess there are plenty of fences around to prevent that from happening. Too bad they can't help keep the panthers fenced in down near the Everglades, because a record number of panthers continue to be hit by cars, increasing in numbers every year. There were 26 panthers killed by cars in 2015, and the last number we saw in the newspaper for 2016, was over 30. :-(  They won't be around much longer if this keeps up!

One thing we were happy to see as well, at the different visitors' centers, was this.....

On to the Oasis Center in Big Cypress Preserve, between Miami and Naples, THE best place for viewing VERY large alligators, some as big as 12 feet! That one, the 12 footer, was not in the canal the day we went, but we did see some biggies....Sparky loves taking closeup photos from the boardwalk, where it's nice and safe to do so. The last time we were there, Sparky saw a young limpkin taking a nap in a tree, and a little green heron walking the swamp edge below the boardwalk..Today it was big gators snoozing, big soft shell turtles sunning, alligators swimming, just a beautiful day to be out and about...Temps in the low eighties by mid afternoon with a nice breeze....There's a ranger or naturalist here as well, to answer your questions

Gator claw

Sparky wanted to head down to Shark Valley National Park to do the long bike ride, but it was getting later in the afternoon, and so we decided to head back to Bradenton. Lots of Christmas and Etsy preparations to still take care of.... We hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season, wherever you are...Sparky's tee says, "let it snow"...But we know, it ain't gonna happen in Bradenton...Last record cold temperature was 28 degrees in 1983,  on Dec. 25-26th or something like that...That will never happen again! (Sparky needs to go to one of those fake snow events they have every so often down here so she can pretend to be a kid again, says E..... ) Send photos of snow, folks, that helps!

Sparky, blog author

Merry Christmas, and Happy Holidays 2016 from beautiful Bradenton to all our friends and family...May the coming year bring you peace, love, joy, and good health....

                                                                    Sparky and Eldo

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The REAL Alligator Alley!

We've heard that the interstate highway 75 is "Alligator Alley" but we can't vouch for that. What we can vouch for is the stretch of highway 41 heading east towards the Everglades. After leaving Naples and driving east, about 20 miles out, start looking to your left at the Everglades canals and waterways and you'll start seeing them.

Last year about this time, we saw one right after another. This year, because the water is so high from all the rain they've had earlier this fall, the banks are not there for the alligators to sun themselves. We had to drive much farther east to start seeing them. And see them, we did!

One of our favorite spots to stop and learn some new things is the H.P. Williams boardwalk/park. There's usually a naturalist or two there and we always learn some new things we didn't know before...Did you know the ibis has a nickname--"Chokoloskee chicken"?  They move their heads like chickens when they feed...Chokoloskee is a town/island in Florida. How the two go together, I'm not sure, but the Calusa Indians and locals use to eat ibis as a source of food.  And drum roll, please!....They taste like....CHICKEN!

Did you know alligators never sleep?  They have a highly efficient thermal regulating system that shuts down their organs when it's cool, they go into a sort of coma state...BUT THEY'RE AWAKE. Did you know they don't eat humans unless they perceive them as food? Well, DUH, Sparky! What is meant by that is, if some dumb tourist (and it AIN'T Sparky!) throws some food to them and nothing happens, it's the next person who comes along who might be in trouble. If the alligator views THEM as a food source--they might come after you. The naturalist said they can run VERY fast for only a couple of seconds...BUT at speeds up to 30 m.p.h.! But most of the time, they are very docile. Are you SURE, guys? This one doesn't look like it, although he does look like he's smiling!

Alligators WOULD go after a little dog, because it's low to the ground, moves like prey so it would be viewed as a food source. A person swimming would be viewed as a food source....If something is in the range of its ground level viewing, all bets are off! So consider yourself forewarned! Hm-m-mm..I wonder if a kayak is perceived as a possible food source?

Next, we stopped off at the Big Cypress Information Center....it's got a nice boardwalk where you can see manatees, alligators sometimes, and various birds...the manatees are just starting to come in from the gulf waters. As the gulf cools down, the manatees moved inland....There were three, one of them a baby, but we just saw one...There's somewhere in Florida where you can swim with the manatees, I'd love to do that! It's probably not an ecologically sound idea, but it still sounds cool!

Wanna see some BIG alligators? Head to the Oasis Welcome Center....there are always big gators in the canals right outside the boardwalk at the visitor center...Here are some BIG BAD boys.....The one laying his head on the other just cracks me up with his expression! Sort of like, "Duh, what's up, people?"

Then we saw something else really cool at the Oasis boardwalk...a female anhinga (brown heads/necks are females, black heads are males) was swimming underwater at our feet under the boardwalk..Up she pops out onto a branch with a fish! And we watched her flip the fish several times until she got the head first into her mouth, then she swallowed it whole! That's how they eat fish--gotta have the head first go down.

After her tasty meal, she spread her wings to dry.....anhingas don't have oil in their feathers for buoyancy like ducks do...so they have to "hang out" to dry.....

On the way home, we saw some wood storks...I think they are endangered....but there seemed to be quite a few in the waterways and marshy swamps along that same highway 41...I'm so glad I got to see them and they didn't fly away as I approached!

It was quite a spectacular nature show today.......You can't beat the Everglades for some wonderful viewing experiences!