Day #2: Thursday - January 3, 2002

“Good morning and welcome to Florida!”  It was like music to my ears, although looking out the window, it was hard to tell that we had actually arrived in the proclaimed tropical climate.  The surroundings that passed us on both sides resembled Michigan in the springtime at best, but if nothing else, it was nice to see real, live grass for a change!  Oh yeah, and the palm trees were a nice touch, too…

We stopped at the nearest visitor’s center shortly after crossing the border, all in desperate need of a little cleaning up!  I don’t know what I was thinking when I packed the night before (other than “Hurry up – gotta get a couple hours of sleep!”), but of course I had packed just about anything which could’ve been deemed useful after a night of not sleeping safely underneath the bus.  Luckily the other guys were more than happy to donate the basic necessities of toothpaste and deodorant to my cause and after a quick bout in the bathroom, I’d felt I’d done all that could be taken care of, given the situation.  I left the sanctuary and followed the rumors to be greeted in the center itself by a smiling face and a complimentary glass of orange juice – you’ve just gotta love this place!

Side-Note: If I ever actually move here, I might very well come to this place every single day simply for the free orange juice…

We mustn’t forget, however, the tale behind the tale of the great snowstorm we had endured through the night and exactly how we did manage to actually end up in Florida!  Various recollections of the night wandered around the bus and it was soon common knowledge that we had taken about ten hours to get through the state of Georgia, which is just about double what it should have been!  Although one may at first wonder if our bus drivers had simply opted to pull off at a local Waffle House to grab a quick snack somewhere throughout the night, and I’m sure I could pen quite the intriguing fictitious adventure about why such a stop would take some five hours, but instead here’s what really happened…
 

We just can't get away from the stuff!!!! (Note the large band directly through our route...) [Photo Courtesy of News4Jax.com - WJXT]

As I mentioned earlier, Georgia got a bit of snow during our travels through their neck of the woods and we were very lucky to even make it to Florida in the first place!  The night had been filled with accidents and sirens and a whole lot of standing still and waiting, but we were fortunate enough to have two of the best bus drivers in the business who managed to keep us on the road and out of harm’s way throughout the night.  Bill and Ruth Ann, who I’m actually surprised that it took me this long to introduce, would quickly become much more than just bus drivers to both the trip and my personal experience!  Not only were they more than willing to provide the very important service of keeping my laptop and camera batteries charged and ready, but they even found themselves in somewhat of an unexpected parenting role later on in the trip – one that they might even be surprised to read about now!  Needless to say, though, their accident-free driving alone was enough for applause from me and pretty much anybody who can transport me two thousand miles without threatening my life in ok in my book!

The remainder of our traveling time that morning and afternoon was pretty much spent in the same manner as the day before – we would all talk and play games and try desperately to come up with things to kill the boredom, then Kathy would put on an entertaining wildlife video and I’d fall asleep.  There was actually one particular video which I made an extra-special attempt to remain awake for, that being the one about Manatees, but unfortunately my lack of sleep from the night before got the best of me and I was gone before the opening credits had passed.  I blame the state of Georgia and the manufacturer of the buses’ seats for my loss, although I’m sure it’ll be on Animal Planet one of these days.  All in the same, I’m still holding them responsible…

Luckily the monotony was soon broken as we approached the thriving area of Homestead, the land of a thousand fruit stands.  It was here which, although we were already running extremely behind, we would make our famed stop at Robert is Here, a personal favorite stand of Kathy’s and the bearer of many of our future meals.  We all felt that eating was a pretty important aspect of the trip and life in general, so for that reason alone it was cool, but I must say that even I was impressed when I stepped from the bus.  I’ve never been much of a fruit and vegetable person – if it doesn’t have the ability to run away, I’d rather not see it on my plate – but this particular stand was enough to even spark my eye.

After my initial walkthrough of the facility, I came to the conclusion that Robert, the man behind Robert is Here, had taken the liberty of gathering up every single fruit and vegetable on the face of the planet and stocking them there in his store; something like a herbaceous Noah smack dab in the middle of paradise, if you will.  For all I knew, he could’ve thrown in a few that he’d completely made up and I wouldn’t have known the difference!  Making the place even another notch cooler, he had a special area fenced off out back designed to hold his collection of turtles, tortoises and iguanas – how cool is that?!?!?  K.C. and I spent most of out allotted time searching out the occupants of this reptilian wonderland until it was made verbally apparent that it was time to get on our way again!

From this area, our destination was only a clean forty-five miles away and signs that we were truly in the Everglades became abundantly clear!  As we drove down the main road that would lead us to Flamingo, deep in the heart of the ‘Glades, the best comparison I could make was that to the sights observed by the tourists of Jurassic Park, before the carnage and T-Rex were introduced, of course!  We watched out the windows of the bus as we whizzed by countless numbers of creatures which we’d never seen before and by now we were all more than ready to get out there and do some exploring!  I quickly lost count of just how many alligators we saw along the way, but I’m pretty sure it came frighteningly close to the number of Cracker Barrels and Waffle Houses we had counted earlier throughout the trip!

The sights were simply amazing and after a short while I grew tired of flipping furiously through my books attempting to identify a bird before another came along and just sat back to enjoy the ride.  As Tony, Kathy and Laurie all informed us, there would be much, much more of this in the next several days!  Surprisingly those forty-five miles went by rather quickly and after a long 33 hours of bus riding excitement, we finally pulled into Flamingo and got the first look at our new home.

“There used to be a lot of plants here!” Kathy told us, a bit puzzled herself as to why the park had been apparently clear-cutting the area.  We later learned that a foreign species had been introduced to the Everglades, the Brazilian Pepper, which had become quite a problem and this was their best attempt at controlling the beast.  Even with vast holes in the scenery, however, the landscape looked absolutely fabulous and after taking that first gaze out across Florida Bay after stepping off of the bus, it was obvious that this was a special place…

It wouldn’t be long, however, before darkness had completely overtaken us, so we were quite rushed to get camp set up in a hurry.   I must say that personally it was a very interesting experience for me, considering the fact that in all of the ten years that I’ve been camping (not constantly, of course…), I’ve never ever been in a group with so many women before, not that this was a bad thing!  My camping memories pretty much always consisted of six to ten guys, who knew everything, sitting around because nobody actually wanted to do any of the work!  Here, however, it was quite the opposite and it was refreshing to be able to step back and, if nothing else, simply carry equipment and let other people do the thinking for a change…

Things came together faster than anyone would’ve expected and soon we even had the right ground-cloths underneath each tent and everything!  Better yet, a few bright individuals had taken the liberty of getting dinner started as we were finishing up with camp, so that by the time everything had been taken care of, a nice, warm meal was just waiting to be eaten – a meal that absolutely did not consist of neither ham nor turkey!  We were all instantly sold and quickly consumed nearly everything in sight – apparently being trapped on a bus for nearly two days straight tends to have somewhat of a ravenous effect on people…go figure.

The sun had long since gone down by the time everyone had finished dinner and the kitchen was cleaned up, and we had already missed the ranger program that had been scheduled for that night, but Kathy deemed it necessary to give us the grand tour regardless and we were all more than eager to do a little exploring!  Our tribe quickly gathered and we were soon led to the main shower building, although torture chamber might have been a more appropriate term!  Words cannot describe exactly how cold the water coming from these devices actually was, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they were piping it in directly from the Great Lakes…

On that depressing note, Kathy mentioned that warmer water for bathing purposes was available for purchase at the marina, although we would later learn from several of our classmates that the same effect could more or less be replicated by taking your shower during the daytime – when it was warm outside!  Nevertheless, we all were curious to see what else was available for our entertainment and to commemorate the occasion, the phrase ‘goin’ to town’ was coined.

Anyone who has ever visited Flamingo knows that it pretty much consists of a gift shop, a small convenience store, a combination bar/restaurant and the Flamingo Lodge hotel itself, and that’s about it!  Although you’d be hard-pressed to go maybe five minutes without running into at least a few people, the nearest source of actual civilization is Homestead, which is a good 45 miles away.  Needless to say, McDonald’s wasn’t exactly around the corner if we weren’t satisfied with Kathy’s idea of dinner!  All in the same, though, the area has a very quaint feeling to it and really tends to grow on you as the time flies by…

And for the next week, it would be our quaint little gathering place, providing somewhere for us to hang out if (for some odd reason) the animals needed to take a break, a prime hacky-sacking area once the sun had left us for the evening and enough ice cream to block out any previous intentions of ever returning to Michigan!  Between the musical renderings echoing across the water, audible from nearly every nook and cranny in the vicinity to the ever-present groupings of fish, birds and crocodiles that called the marina area their home, the land’s nearly magical powers quickly had us within their grasp and soon left us free of any past burdens we might have carried before the trip – free to fully enjoy the Everglades in all of their splendor and glory…

On our return trip to camp, a small group of us broke off from the rest of the clan and took it upon themselves to scour the shoreline for whatever creatures in may have been concealing.  We came across shorebirds by the dozens (one flock damn near ended the trip right there as they slightly miscalculated their flight plan and barraged us!), and we also came across a variety of smaller water-dwelling creatures, including shrimp, snails and scads of tiny fish, but the alligators which we sought had obviously taken the night off.  As the night grew later and the abundance of spider webs engulfing our path increased, the group’s numbers dwindled until it was down to only three – K.C., Amber and I – a team that would prove to be amazingly-similar to The Three Musketeers, that is, had they actually been studious and energetic biology students instead of the legendary swordsmen that the media depicted them to be.

Each came from separate backgrounds: K.C. had previous wildlife experience from a local pet store and was more or less the brains of the operation, I was the self-proclaimed funny man whose sole purpose was to discover humor and comical entertainment in the Everglades, even at the expense of an alligator or two if necessary, and Amber was there because…well, Amber was there on a free ride because she worked for Hartzlers, the tour company providing our charter bus, but we accepted her as one of our own anyways!  She would actually prove to be quite a valuable asset to our posse by providing artistic insight and photographic know-how, plus she played a major part in keeping me in line and out of trouble, which is no easy task in and of itself!

Over the next five days, they would be swept away by the sheer beauty of sunsets and the glow of Florida Bay shortly after, the peaceful yet fierce presence of basking alligators and crocodiles, and overall the complexity of wonders that makes the Everglades one of the most unique and fragile ecosystems on the planet.  They would witness a larger variety of birds than anyone could ever imagine and go through film at a frightening rate, capturing many accidental pictures of thumbs and feet in the process.  Before any of this, however, they would experience their first night of sleep on a both flat and stationary surface in days – their first night in the Florida Everglades.  Each of them slept very soundly that night, and not just because of a previous lack of sleep – they all new that the following day would be like no other…
 

For the next five days, this would be our playground... [Image Courtesy of Flamingo Lodge Outpost Resort]