Turner River Canoe Trail and Our New Beachfront Property!

One of the things we’ve been looking forward to in Florida is a chance to do more kayaking. We have a 2-person, inflatable Sea Eagle kayak that we haul around in the car top carrier. We have very fond memories of kayaking with Callie, but so far we’ve only had a few opportunities to use it on this trip. The Everglades seem made to order for kayaking so Rog did some on-line research and we headed out on Monday, 11/28, for the Turner River Canoe Trail.

The trail starts in Big Cypress National Preserve and goes into the Everglades. The really unusual thing about the Turner River Trail is that you get to paddle through three distinct ecosystems: cypress swamp, mangroves, and saw grass marsh.   In addition, you get to be up close and personal with the local alligators and see an amazing array of birds.

We started by checking in at the Big Cypress Visitor Center to ask about conditions. We learned that the water levels were lower than normal and some segments of the trail were choked with hydrilla (think invasive water weeds). We left the launch about 11:30am and started to paddle upstream. We immediately ran into thick stands of the hydrilla -UGH! I swear the smaller gators could just walk across the top of the water, while we were paddling like mad to make any headway at all. We decided to go downstream and fortunately it wasn’t too long before we hit smoother waters.

The hydrilla didn't seem to slow him down any.

Yes it's an invasive plant and a pain in the butt. Lol. 

The first section southbound had lots of alligators and all sorts of birds. The vegetation was spectacular, the trees were covered with air plants and the water lilies and swamp lilies were blooming.

This part was a lovely paddle.

That's about as much togetherness as I need, thank you very much. :)

Water lily.

Swamp lily. 

After about an hour, we got deeper into the mangroves. They crowded the waterway until we barely had room to use the paddles. The limbs arched and interlaced overhead to form a shadowy tunnel.  The first mangrove tunnel was only about 2/10 of a mile and then the trail opened up into a small pond. 

From there we entered a second mangrove tunnel, this one was even tighter and about twice as long. We had to put down the paddles and just pull ourselves through hand over hand like Tarzan swinging through the jungle, and then do the limbo to avoid low branches. It was quite the experience.

We saw a Kingfisher and Herons in the mangroves and lots of the air plants, but luckily not very many alligators. Good thing since we really didn’t have anywhere to go to give them space. In some places the mangroves literally scraped along both sides of our boat.

The mangroves were impenetrable and covered in air plants. Very cool!

Just one narrow tunnel through the mangroves.

Tarzan pulling us through the mangroves. No room for paddles here.

After exiting the mangrove tunnel we came out into an open saw grass marsh. Lots more Ibis and Herons here. We also found the only landing spot on the trail, a little section of ground with a few palm trees and a picnic table. We stopped there for a short break and a bite to eat before heading back.

Saw grass marsh. Caught a little rain here too. 

Lunch break! The only dry pull out on the trail. 

We retraced our path and then struggled through the hydrilla to go about 20 minutes upstream past our put-in spot. At this end of the trail is a gorgeous freshwater cypress forest. It was worth the effort. We finished our paddle about 3:30pm, we could have gone a lot further but four hours was plenty for us. Lol.

Cypress grove at the end of the trail.

On Tuesday, Rog hit the mountain bike trails at Markham park again. I’d done the laundry earlier in the week, so we did a few chores and started prepping for our move tomorrow.

We only had about 150 miles to our next destination – The KOA campground on Sugarloaf Key – so we decided to wash the rig before leaving Markham. We had huge flocks of birds roosting in the nearby trees and using the coach for target practice. Yuck.

The drive down Highway 1 across the keys was, ahem, interesting. Sugarloaf Key is about 15 miles from Key West and there is just one route there.  You have to cross several bridges between the various keys and, as you know, I am not a huge fan of high bridges, so I was not looking forward to crossing the descriptively named Seven Mile Bridge.  It was windy, but not too terrible and other than some road construction, I guess we can’t complain.

We arrived at our beachfront site at the KOA Wednesday afternoon, 11/30, and were greeted by the scaly welcoming committee. Iguanas! Everywhere! The big male must have been well over 5 feet nose to tail and the smaller, 3-4 foot females were quite bold. They are vegetarian and one gal flirted with Rog until he finally gave her some greens. She came right up to us – so expect to see lots of iguana pictures in the coming week. Lol. I have a soft spot for lizards, since Rian (aka the Gecko Queen) had leopard geckos as pets for many years.

Woohoo! We made it to the Keys!

Our beachfront property. Lol. The view out our front window.

Florida squirrels. They were everywhere!

Miss Personality. :)

Our plan is to visit Key West on Thursday and then take the boat tour to the Dry Tortugas National Park on Friday. After that we’d like to do some kayaking and snorkeling, but we’ll play it by ear based on the weather. The forecast is a little iffy, calling for showers and possible thunderstorms throughout the week – but it is still in the mid-80’s. Although I could live without the 90%+ humidity! Lol.