Musings From Paradise

It’s interesting how unplanned events somehow fall into place in the general scheme of things, and our visit to Shark Valley was no exception. We’d planned on exploring the 15-mile tram road at 4 p.m. in order to catch the wildlife returning to their roosts and illuminated by the warm light of sunset. An early arrival at 11 a.m. was planned in order to obtain tickets for the tram (as we’d been unable to make reservations on the phone).
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What started out and ended as a peaceful canoe ride was punctuated by a most remarkable event. The canoe with Jim and Chris was 20-30 yards away from the 5 other canoes hanging out in calm water near the mangroves. They were in somewhat deeper water when the sea suddenly began churning and boiling up directly beneath their canoe, nearly capsizing them.
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Travel day from Key West back home in Coral Gables. As usual, we packed several stops along the way, including 3 state parks: Zachary Taylor State Park (Key West), Bahia Honda State Park (Big Pine Key), and John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park (Key Largo).

Sightings for Feb. 19

Palm Warblers! Magnificent Frigatebird, Black and White Warbler, a female <American Redstart>

First time sightings: 1
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After a day on the water, we chilled on Saturday and visited the Key West Tropical Forest & Botanical Garden, the only “frost-free” botanical garden in the continental United States. In addition to this “one of a kind” tropical forest and garden filled with butterflies, birds, plants and beautiful flowers, a special section is reserved for a half-dozen dilapidated makeshift boats tucked away in a shady corner and dedicated to the bizarre exodus of refugees fleeing Cuba in the spring of 1980.
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Oh, what a day. It started at the marina loading Captain Victoria’s boat into the water and finished at the fire ring in her backyard. In between was magical: eagles, snorkel-boarding and doing barrel rolls among with the dolphins, meandering among the mangrove islands and learning about the tree house she and her brother built at age 10 (they climbed completely across the island without ever touching soil).
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En-route to Key west, we stopped along the way to slowly introduce the rookies with the beauty and diversity of the Florida Keys. Dropping off the bridge onto the first key, we stopped at Dagny Johnson Key Largo Hammock Botanical State Park hoping to see the elusive saltwater crocodile amidst the largest continuous tract of tropical hardwood hammock left in the US.
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Sooney keeps saying it’s an honor to pay taxes, especially when they help support our National Parks. Today was payback. We left Jim and Carol’s at dawn and drove west on the Tamiami Trail (the original road between Tampa and Miami) and a little over an hour from Coral Gables were in the Big Cypress National Preserve.

The National Park service provides ranger-led canoe trips in the mangrove swamp and we set out at the Turner River Canoe Trail gathering area.
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After a day birding in the Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge, we headed south to Chokoloskee Island for an overnight in southern Florida’s ten thousand Islands, a frontier world long attractive to outlaws and outcasts. Chokoloskee was selected because of its historical importance as the place where Edgar “Bloody” Watson was gunned down by a fed-up bunch of locals way back in 1910 and immortalized in “Shadow Country,” the wonderful 900-page rewrite of Peter Matthiessen’s linked novels “Killing Mr.
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Darling’s Design for the First Federal Duck Stamp, issued in 1934, is especially significant to conservation. After he had guided the funding for the Migratory Bird Hunting Stamp Act through Congress, Darling sketched his concept of a suitable image for the First Federal Duck Stamp. With its enthusiastic adoption, a remarkable program of stewardship was born that endures today, more than a half-century later.
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Audubon’s Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary is a 14,000 acre preserve located near Naples, Florida in the heart of the Western Everglades. It is home to the largest remaining stand of old growth Bald Cypress forest in North America, and features a 2.25 mile boardwalk trail that winds its way through 4 native habitats.

Our only disappointment was pressure to complete the walk before 5:30 p.m.
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