In the Florida Tropics (the Everglades)

We’ve been at the Collier State Park (near Marco Island) for the past 2 weeks. Our first impression has really stuck with us --- this place is beautiful! It has some of the pristine beauty and wildness of the Boundary Waters and some of the colors and feeling of the Caribbean. One of the first mornings we were here, we took a long walk at sunrise. There was a slight mist in the air and the palms looked just beautiful against the morning sky. This picture only captured a small part of the beauty, but it’s at least a representation of what we saw.

That night we took a walk at sunset and saw more beauty. The Royal Palm is just spectacular! I can see why Barron Collier decided to do what he could to preserve this tree.

I celebrated my birthday here on Dec. 8th and got a wonderful surprise from Sarah Kinney. She sent me a big bouquet of flowers --- right here at the campground! Not sure how she got that worked out, but it sure was a great surprise! I also got birthday phone calls and e-mails from family and friends and even got a couple of birthday cards in the mail. Yes --- our mail service even delivers to state parks. It was so nice to be remembered! It was also nice to turn 57 in December wearing flip-flops and shorts.

The first beach we went to here was on the north side of Marco Island. When we first stepped out on the beach we were a bit surprised. The beach had actually been dragged with a tractor (like a horse arena). These folks are serious about having a groomed beach!

We decided to walk south to the beaches that were quite a bit more natural. The south beaches have tons of shells that wash up on the shore and is a great place for beach-combing. The water was a bit chilly --- but warmer than further north --- so Jeff went in and did his “fish thing”. He said that the body gets used to the cold water pretty fast. I cooled off by just doing some wading. Actually, just hangin out on the beach was pretty darn nice.

The homes in Marco are incredible --- big, beautiful and they are all the colors of the insides of the various shells here --- pink, turquoise, salmon, pale blue and shad

es of yellow. Most are very large homes with screened in back yards! Seriously --- they don’t just screen in their back porches --- they screen in the entire back yard. Check this out!

Jeff had fun the beach birds. You can tell these birds are used to people --- -they let you walk right up to them. Jeff and this bird walked the beach together for a quite along ways.

We have taken lots of hikes through the everglades, Jeff took his kayak into one of the tidal rivers for a day and I drove the Tamiami trail to Miami one day to see what that was all about. This trail cuts right across the Everglades from Marco to Miami. It is completely natural out there. There are tons of big birds and I saw about a dozen alligators in the wild --- in the big ditches along side the rode I was traveling. I got out a few times and just stood there and watched in amazement. Sorry I don’t have any pictures --- I didn’t have my camera with me that day. Jeff didn’t have the still camera with him on his kayak trip, but he does have his entire voyage on video. He figured out how to mount the camera on a tri-pod on the front of the kayak and filmed the whole thing.

In closing, I just want to add a picture of something you don’t have up in Minnesota that we have down here --- yellow rat snakes. Snow doesn’t seem so bad now, right? We had to stop the car to let this snake cross the road on our way out of the park one day.

Cheers!

Wendy