In mid February we set off from St Petersburg to explore a little bit more of Florida. We started by driving south to Fort Myers where Thomas Edison and Henry Ford had their vacation homes. These relatively modest homes are now museums and the public can explore the homes, the gardens and Edison's botanical laboratory.
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| Thomas Edison's Vacation Home, Ft Myers |
Edison was the first to visit Fort Myers and he liked it so much he had a vacation home built there. Henry Ford, a friend of Edison's, visited him there several times and enjoyed it so much that he bought the neighboring house for his use. Interestingly one of Henry Ford's early jobs, before he started working on automobiles, was working for the Edison Lighting Company in Detroit.
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| Edison's Botanic Research Lab |
The disruptions of the First World War gave Edison and Ford concern about the supply of rubber for automobile tires. Most of the rubber then was being sourced from the far east and that was a risky supply route. The two of them teamed up with Harvey Firestone, the tire manufacturer, and created the Edison Botanic Research Company to try and develop a domestic source of rubber. They built a laboratory and research garden next to the Ft Myers houses and tested some 17,000 plants as potential sources. They determined a species of flowering goldenrod was their best option but it was never commercialized. Other sources of synthetic rubber were later developed so nothing further was done with goldenrod.
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| Kapok Tree or Aceiba |
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| Banyan Tree |
There were some impressive trees in the gardens of the estate - a huge banyan tree, a kapok tree and a large ficus. What I was really impressed with was the relatively modest nature of the two homes. Here were two industrial giants of their time and they lived in a relatively simple fashion down in Ft Myers. Likely they had more a more lavish lifestyle up north.
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| Naples Beach |
We drove on to Naples in the late afternoon. Naples was quite a shock to me. There are nice beaches there with beautiful white sand but beyond that there was nothing to appeal. Street after street of extravagant large homes, manicured gardens, people driving around in expensive cars. There was sort of a main street (5th Ave South) populated entirely by restaurants, bars, galleries and expensive shops but there didn't seem to be any particular center to the town - there was indeed no there there.
The other thing about Naples was the early dining experience. All the fine restaurants on 5th Ave were full of diners at 5:00 pm. I had never seen such a thing. Apparently they were all taking advantage of the happy hour discount deals.
We should have realized we were in a different world when our usual measure of hotel prices, the Holiday Inn Express, normally around $200 a night was over $400 in Naples. Being frugal, we stayed a little way out of town at a more humble Red Roof Inn.
The next morning we drove into town for coffee. The clientele were all well healed and smartly dressed and there was not just one but two Ferraris parked outside.
We drove south-east towards the Everglades National Park on Highway 41. This is known as the Tamiami Trail, the road that runs between Tampa and Miami. Before reaching the Everglades we crossed into the Big Cypress National Preserve where we stopped at the Visitor Center for some guidance on what what we should see. Armed with a rough idea of where to go we drove on for a while before realizing we were going to run out of gas. We turned back and that brought us to Everglades City, a town we had missed while driving out. Everglades City is a small town living off tourism with a few hotels, a few restaurants, air boat rides and canoe rentals.
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| Everglades City Bank Building |
Further beyond Everglades City, further south to the end of the road is Chokoloskee Island. We dined on Chokoloskee Island at Havanna's Restaurant (spelling with two n's as in Anna) - excellent grits and eggs and plantains.
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| Smallwood's Store and Post Office, Chokoloskee |
At the end of the road on Chokoloskee is a small museum in an old wooden store - Ted Smallwood's Store. The museum is really just a collection of artifacts and memorabilia from the early 1900's. The store was opened in 1906 and served as a trading post and post office for the first white settlers in the area. It really had a frontier feel about it.
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| Smallwood's Store Rear |
It was in the store that I learned that Peter Matthiessen had written several books about the area, in particular about some nefarious goings on in Chockoloskee. I was familiar with Matthiessen but not his Florida books. I need to add his novel Shadow Country to my reading list.
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| Alligators basking in the sun |
From Chokoloskee we drove east through Big Cypress Preserve stopping at another Visitor's Center where we had an overlook from the boardwalk down to a canal full of fish and alligators. The fish were jumping but the alligators were barely moving - they just lay there motionless until something sparked them into action, which they do quite explosively, before settling down once more to a life of immobility.
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| Clyde Butcher's Photography |
Further along highway 41 we stopped at the Clyde Butcher Gallery. Mr Butcher is the Ansel Adams of the Everglades. He has taken many beautiful pictures of the Everglades with his large format camera - all black and white, all quite wonderful photographs.
We moved on east to the Shark Valley entrance to Everglades National Park. The parking at this entry point was full so it was one car in for every one car out. We had to wait a while at the entrance alongside a narrow canal. Of course there was the odd alligator cruising up and down the channel.
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| Great Blue Heron |
In the park we got the last two tickets for the next departure of the tram tour around what was a 15 mile loop trail. It was a great way to experience the Everglades with stops along the way and narration from a naturalist. Of course there were the usual alligators and snakes but also many fine birds - anhingas, double-crested cormorants, egrets (great and snowy), white ibises, herons of various varieties (great blue, tri-colored), a purple gallinule, several wood storks.
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| The Everglades Prairie |
I had expected the Everglades to be all green wetlands but no, it was mainly brown prairie that looked quite dry. However, up close you could see that the ground was indeed wet and swampy. In the winter the area is usually flooded, in the summer it is drier but still a bit soft and squishy. Hammocks of trees were scattered around the prairie. The trees grow where there is a depression filled with water. This encourages the growth of trees and vegetation and these little mounds of vegetation dot the landscape. Some are anchored around cypress trees, others around willows. Of course there are palm trees everywhere amongst the other trees.
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| Wood Stork |
Leaving the park and heading back to the Tamiami Trail, we continued our drive to Flamingo where we were staying that night. Flamingo is at the end of the road at the southern tip of the park - the most southerly community on mainland Florida.
Our route skirted the edges of Miami and traveled through land devoted to plant nurseries. Most of the nurseries, and there were mile after mile of them, were raising ornamental plants and palm trees.
Close to sunset, we drove into the National Park again. We had the pleasure of being stopped by the Park Ranger for speeding (allegedly). They checked us out before finally letting us go with a warning. We drove on to Flamingo at a slightly reduced speed. It was dark when we arrived at our hotel, the Flamingo Lodge. A nice modern hotel with a pretty good restaurant.
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| Mangrove on Buttonwood Canal |
Next morning, Saturday morning, we got up and after coffee on the veranda looking south towards the Florida Keys, we bought tickets for a boat tour of the inland waters to the north of Flamingo. The boat first went up the Buttonwood Canal to Coot Bay. The on-board naturalist pointed out various sights along the way - a crocodile (called Fred) in the harbor, an osprey nest also in the harbor, various types of mangrove (red, black and white), gumbo limbo trees, tri-colored herons, anhingas spreading their wings out to dry in the sun.
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| Oysters growing on Mangroves in Tarpon Creek |
We crossed Coot Bay and went up Tarpon Creek to enter the large expanse of water in Whitewater Bay. In Tarpon Creek, a natural waterway, the water is flowing so it can accommodate filter feeders like oysters. All the roots of the mangroves there had oysters attached.
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| Fred the Crocodile, Flamingo Harbor |
Back in the harbor at the end of the trip, we found Fred, the crocodile still swimming around. All in all, a nice trip into yet another different environment in the Everglades.
Back on shore we stopped to observe the manatees floating around in the harbor. The water was not very clear there so the viewing was not optimal. We followed this up with a walk along the coast to the west. It was quite windy so the temperature and mosquitos were moderated. I imagine it would be quite unpleasant in the heat of summer in mosquito season.
To the west of our hotel, there was an area where some nice tents had been located for those who wanted to camp - the so-called glamping experience. I can't imagine that being much fun in the heat of summer either.
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| Dead Mangroves |
Leaving Flamingo we came across a large swath of land covered in dead mangrove trees. It was just like the burned out tree stumps we see in California after a forest fire. Apparently, in the aftermath of a storm there had been an inundation of the land with sea water, and while mangroves do tolerate a certain amount of salty water, they cannot live if totally immersed in it. It looked like the recovery might take quite some time. Unlike after a forest fire, there were no green shoots appearing.
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| The impenetrable thicket of a Hammock |
On the way out of the park, we stopped at two or three spots where the Parks Department had created boardwalks into the wilderness. The first was an example of a Mahogany Hammock. The Mahogany trees provide a foundation for other trees and growth around them that result in these islands of impenetrable vegetation sticking out on the flat prairie. The boardwalk made a circular route through the middle of the hammock.
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| Pah-Hay-Okee |
The next was Pah-Hay-Okee, a nice viewing platform for looking out over the sea of grass and cypress trees.
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| The Gumbo Limbo Tree |
Finally the Royal Palm area where there were magnificent royal palm trees as well as a lot of gumbo limbo trees. Gumbo limbos are beautiful red/orange skinned trees with a soft flaky bark. They call them tourist trees because they resemble the burnt peeling skin of a tourist who has indulged in too much sun.
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| Purple Gallinule |
At the Royal Palm area there was a bi-crested cormorant, a great blue heron and a crocodile all posing for photographs as people walked by on the trail. However best of all was a beautiful purple gallinule, a rarer bird, my favorite bird, that also didn't seem to be bothered by people.
We left the park and drove on north along the west side of Miami. We weren't sure where to stay that night but we wanted to end up near to Lake Okeechobee. It was Saturday night on a three day President's Day weekend and our choices of hotel were few and far between. Also we were seeing expensive hotels again - $400+ Holiday Inn Expresses. We settled for a Best Western in Clewiston on the south west side of the lake.
We arrived in Clewiston after dark. It was not a particularly attractive town. Nothing much to see - gas stations, fast food outlets, convenience stores, Dollar Generals and a Walmart.
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| The Southern End of Lake Okeechobee |
The next morning, Sunday morning, we went for a drive around Lake Okeechobee. Lake Okeechobee is a huge lake, the largest in Florida, some 730 square miles. It claims to have the best bass fishing in the world but I wouldn't know. There was a lookout tower on a place called Torry Island at the south end of the lake that we visited. The lookout provided a view over the southern end of the lake that was mainly covered by reeds and grass. There were hints of the lake's water in the far distance.
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| The Armored Cat Fish |
There were dozens of dead fish lying around on the trail and in the grass. They were all armored cat fish - nasty looking black fish with armored skin. Apparently the Ospreys, of which there were several in the area, are great fishermen, but they cannot tear into the armored cat fish's skin. Unfortunately they cannot identify the armored catfish until they have snatched them from the lake. So whenever they catch one they just discard it and go out to find another fish that is less well protected. The armored catfish is a non-native invasive from South America.
There is a lot of sugar cane grown in central Florida. One of the ways that they harvest sugar cane is to burn off the foliage from the stems before cutting the cane. This causes a lot of smoke pollution with all the associated health risks. We drove along the road and saw a tractor-drawn flame throwers driving along the edge of the fields setting fire to the leaves of the sugar cane plants. The burning must also bring lots of grubs and insects out into the open because following the flame thrower were hundreds of egrets feeding off the remains. A remarkable sight.
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| Fishing for Speck |
Along the west side of the lake we stopped at one of the points where a canal enters the lake (there are several canals running from the Atlantic north of Miami to the Gulf of Mexico side). There were lots of people fishing, nearly all of them black people. They were fishing for Speck or Speckled Perch apparently - a fish that is good to eat. The Bass Fishermen fishing from their boats on the lake who were more white were likely fishing for sport and trophy fish.
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| Lake Okeechobee |
We drove through the mainly agricultural land with very poor housing to the city of Okechobee where we stopped for lunch.
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| The murals of Lake Placid |
Driving on towards home we headed to Lake Placid which is not a very big town (just over 2,000 people) and not all that remarkable except - it is decorated with some 40 or 50 murals; it also has a 240 ft tall concrete observation tower, once the tallest cement block building in the world and also once housing the highest public telephone in the state of Florida; the surrounding area is also the source of 98% of the world's caladium bulbs. Lake Placid was originally called Lake Stearns but a Dr Melvil Dewey from Lake Placid, New York petitioned to change the name to Lake Placid in 1927. Dr Dewey just happened to be the creator of the Dewey Decimal library classification system. Who knew such a small and insignificant town could have so much to offer. Oh and it also is the home of the American Clown Museum and School where you can learn the history of clowning and take classes to become one.
On a Sunday afternoon, the town was almost deserted and not a business was open in the old part of town. We toured around taking pictures of the murals and then went on our way back to St Petersburg.
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