I’ve been spending some time looking back through some of my earlier work with intentional blur. This is one from 2007.
Fuzzy Concepts
All posts by Tom Dills
More From The Everglades
I had always thought of the Everglades as a swamp, but it’s not. While there are swamp areas in and around the park, the Everglades per-se is actually a 60-mile wide freshwater river, running from Lake Okeechobee to Florida Bay, and eventually to the Gulf of Mexico. It is only a few feet deep in most places. Because the water flows across a limestone shelf, there is little or no silt or sediment, so the water is remarkably clear. The flow of water has been greatly impacted over the years by development and diversion of the water to major cities, but recent efforts to stem the loss of wetlands has at least slowed the loss of this ecosystem.
For our visit, we wanted to see as much of the park as possible, so we didn’t really spend a lot of time in any one place. It would be possible to spend weeks in any one area, but to get a good overview we concentrated on three main areas. We stayed in south Miami near Homestead, so we had a good bit of driving to do to get anywhere, especially the second and third areas mentioned below.
The southernmost part of the park starts near Homestead and stretches from the Ernest Coe Visitor Center down SR-9336 to the Flamingo Visitor Center. We spent time on the Anhinga Trail, which is an easy 0.8-mile path and boardwalk through an area that is home of a large number of wildlife.
The section that is probably most familiar to visitors to south Florida is the section that is bisected by US-41, known as the Tamiami Trail. Because the Tamiami Trail only borders the National Park on the south side, and only in a relatively small section, this is the place where all the air boat rides, ‘gator rasslin’ places and trinket shops are located. The Shark Valley visit center is probably the most visited center in the park, and unfortunately has the smallest parking lot. It’s not unusual to have to endure long waits to get into the parking lot, with the alternative of parking on the road and walking about a half mile in to the visitor center. That wouldn’t be bad in February, but I wouldn’t want to do that in August! Then again, I want very little to do with south Florida in August!
We were fortunate to have only a relatively short wait to park, then lucked into a tram tour that left about an hour after we arrived. The “loop road” that goes to an observation tower is a 15-mile round trip. Walking it would be the ideal way to experience the trail and the wildlife, but 15-miles is a long way! It’s also possible to bicycle the trail, and it’s possible to rent bikes there. But the tram tour goes slowly enough and stops whenever wildlife is encountered, so for tourists like us it’s a pretty good way to get around.
The third area, which is probably more a sub-area of the second, is the area around the towns of Everglades City and Chokoloskee. From Chokoloskee we took a boat tour through the Chokoloskee Bay toward the Gulf of Mexico. We opted for a tour in a small motor boat rather than an airboat, since the motor boat is slower and quieter I think we were able to see a lot more wildlife. Airboats are not allowed in the National Park, so any of the airboat companies up along the Tamiami Trail don’t actually take you into the National Park. Not a big deal, but I wanted to experience the park proper, not just the Everglades in general. We lucked out and only had 4 people on our tour plus the guide. Compared to the option of the airboat I think we made the right choice. I’d love to take an airboat ride sometime, but I think of it as more of a thrill ride than a way to see wildlife up close.
I’ve got plans for a few more posts detailing some of the highlights from these various areas. I didn’t want to clutter this post up with too many more words or photos, so those will come later.
Mexican Weather Station
No need to track the temperature in Costa Maya – it’s always warm!
Thoughts on Three Cruises In Four Weeks
We didn’t set out to book three cruises, honest! It just sorta…happened. 🙂
We had previously booked two weeks on Royal Caribbean’s (RCCL) Freedom of the Seas out of San Juan in January. The ship was scheduled to go to drydock for extended renovations the week after we were due to get off. But due to lots of reasons irrelevant to my post, Royal Caribbean needed to move the drydock back one week and cancelled the second of the two weeks. We didn’t want to travel all the way to Puerto Rico for just a week (our preference – lots of people do it), so we decided to cancel the first week, too. We re-used the plane tickets to go to San Juan this past November instead.
Because of the cancellation of the first week, we ended up with a credit that needed to be used by February, so we found a 5-night cruise on Brilliance of the Seas, another RCCL ship sailing out of Tampa. We had never sailed out of Tampa before, and figured with our credit that this would be an inexpensive way to take a short cruise and check out Tampa.
Meanwhile, friends of ours had booked a Carnival cruise out of Port Canaveral for the following week and “suggested” that we might want to go along. It doesn’t take much “suggestion” to get us interested in a cruise! So, we booked a cruise on that ship for the next week.
Our son Kevin likes to cruise also, and he has been sailing with Norwegian Cruise Line (NCL). He mentioned that he wanted to take a cruise in February and suggested (there’s that word again!) that it might be fun if we went together. So we checked around and found a cruise on Norwegian Dawn out of Tampa. But the catch was that there was a week’s gap between the two cruises, so we would need to find something to do for a week. In Florida, in February? Not hard to do.
We have been working on visiting different National Parks, and had never been to The Everglades. So we decided to find a place to stay in South Florida for a week, where we visited Everglades National Park, Biscayne National Park and drove through some of the Florida Keys. More on those later. Then we drove back to Tampa to meet our son and take the third cruise. When it was all done we had logged about 3,000 car miles, who knows how many cruise miles, and about 4,000 photos!
A few thoughts:
– People ask us about the different cruise lines, and although it sounds like a cop-out, they are all good. Different lines tend to cater to slightly different demographics, but things like ship size, home port and cruise length tend to make a bigger difference than the name of the cruise line.
– We tend to prefer smaller ships and this was borne out on these cruises. The RCCL and NCL ships were each about the same size – approximately 2,000 passengers, while the Carnival ship was about 4,000 passengers.
– We’ve always assumed that shorter cruises would attract more of a party crowd, but the 5-night RCCL cruise was one of the most laid-back we’ve done, and seemed to have a very high number of repeat cruisers. The Diamond Club, a lounge for passengers with a certain level of cruises with the line, had so many people that it overflowed into an adjacent lounge. The Carnival and Norwegian cruises each had a high number of first-timers – a very interesting contrast.
– Cruise line food is very good regardless of the line. Dining choices are either fixed, with the same table and waiter at the same time each night, or flexible, where you eat where ever you want each night, but with a different waiter and different table each time. We have always preferred fixed seating, as we like to establish a relationship with our waiter. But one of the disadvantages of fixed seating is that a lot of the food has to be prepared at once and can sometimes be overdone. Flexible seating tends to be more cook-to-order, so the food is often fresher, hotter and usually properly done. This is especially important with fish!
– We really liked cruising out of Tampa and did it twice. The city is nice – much like Charlotte in terms of age and size, but on the water. The port is very easy to get in and out of, and parking is a snap.
I’m sure that’s more than anyone wants to read about my vacation, so I’ll leave it at that for now!
Big A$$ Yachts
One of the things I enjoy while cruising is checking out the huge yachts that appear in Caribbean ports. They can be seen year-around, but mostly during the winter when it’s too cold for the French Riviera or Monaco, I guess. They seem to gravitate toward St. Thomas, St. Martin and San Juan, probably because they have harbors and marinas large enough to handle ships their size, and airports to handle the private jets of the owners. My understanding is that the owners don’t actually sail on them, they just have crew to take the ship to whatever port they wish to sail from, then the owners hop in on the private jet for a long weekend or a week.
Here are two of the notable spottings from our recent cruise.
From Wikipedia: M/Y Eclipse is a superyacht built by Blohm+Voss of Hamburg, Germany. Her exterior and interior were designed by Terence Disdale. The yacht was delivered to Russian businessman Roman Abramovich on 9 December 2010. At 162.5 metres (533 ft 2 in) long Eclipse was the world’s largest private yacht until the Azzam was launched in April 2013, which was 17.3 metres (56 ft 9 in) longer. The yacht’s cost has been estimated at €340 million. (Note: the Carnival ship we were on was 306 meters or 1004 feet long, but carried 4000 passengers and 1400 crew!)
From Wikipedia: The 80m Excellence yacht was built in 2019 by Abeking & Rasmussen. She features an exterior design by Winch and an interior by Winch. She cruises at 14 knots and reaches a top speed of 17.0 kn. She can sleep up to 14 guests taken care of by a crew of 20.
Oh, and while not exactly a superyacht, a properly-equipped catamaran is always a pleasant sight. 🙂
Optimistic or Determined?
We never actually saw whether he met with success or not, but this guy was definitely working hard to get his dinner down the hatch!
An Unexpected Place
When Kathy & I were looking over information about the Everglades, we had noticed several references to a Nike Missile base located within the park. There wasn’t a lot information online, but once we got there we saw signs directing us toward the location and indicating that there were “open house” hours daily. So we decided to check it out.
As it turns out, there had been three Nike sites located within the Everglades as a result of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the close-the-barn-door approach that was taken after the fact. There are several abandoned bunkers that are inaccessible due to asbestos contamination, an unused hanger and one that houses an actual but de-fused Nike missile.
It was an interesting side trip on an otherwise nature-oriented visit, but it was something unexpected in an otherwise natural habitat.
Slowly But Surely
Kathy & I returned to home base this past Monday, and I’m currently halfway through the nearly 4,000 photos from our month-long adventure. I’ll be posting galleries to my Adobe Portfolio site (keep checking for updates!) and expect to have some more stories to tell here on the blog in the near future. Hang in there – I’m working on it! 😉
A Few Days in The Everglades
Kathy & I are wrapping up a short week in south Florida, where we spent three days in various parts of Everglades National Park. I’ve got a ton of photos to process when I get home and we’ll be on a cruise ship next week. So my postings may be a little thin over the next week or so. Here are a few photos in the interim.
Elvis Didn’t Sleep Here
Spotted enroute to our cruise ship in Port Canaveral, Florida.
According to several sources, the tie to Elvis is a tenuous and indirect one. The song “Heartbreak Hotel” was co-written by songwriters Mae Boren Axton and Tommy Durden. Durden possibly did stay at this hotel, and was possibly inspired by a local newspaper article about the suicide of a lonely man who jumped from a hotel window. Although not this one.