This morning we woke up early and saw we were in the port in Fort Lauderdale.
We were surrounded by cruise ships. We even saw the shuttle to
Bimini that we took two winters ago!
We had to get off the ship early, but Travalon couldn't find his car keys. (He said I should blog about this.) A few days ago he couldn't find them and started to panic, but they were in a secret pocket inside another pocket in his small bag. He had decided that was a very safe place for them, so he left them there, but then this morning he couldn't find them again. I said, "They were in a pocket inside of a pocket - are you sure you're looking in the right pocket for a secret pocket?" He gave me the bag, which he had emptied, and I shook it and could hear the keys, so I located them in about two seconds. He wasn't looking for the secret pocket in the right pocket, just as I'd expected. So we got off the ship, which went smoothly... until we had to pay for parking. They were using their phones to charge our credit card, but they kept saying it wasn't working, so Travalon tried a different card, and finally it worked. But that took a half hour, and just as I'd suspected, both cards were charged. At least the one card wasn't charged five times.
We drove to the Shark Valley Visitor Center in the Everglades, but the lot was full and people were parked a mile away, plus they charge a lot, so we went to the Big Cypress Visitor Center, which is free. We saw alligators, an anhinga, and gars there.
Then we had lunch outside at the
Cuban restaurant in Chokoloskee where we have gone before. This was a mural they had on the wall.
Our next stop was a small boardwalk called the
H. P. Williams Wayside Park, which we go to every time we pass that way. It never disappoints. We saw alligators, anhingas, and
cormorants. Sometimes the cormorants look like they're laughing.
Our next stop was the
Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park, where we drove the
Janes Memorial Drive. Travalon had heard this was a good spot to see
panthers; we didn't see any panthers, but we did see all sorts of birds, like a
vulture.
And
snowy egrets. When he went to grab his camera to take a photo of one, he grabbed his bottle of water instead, and I couldn't stop laughing.
We saw lots of palm trees.
We saw lots of
ibises, but they are very hard to photograph because they move so quickly. This is the best shot Travalon got of one.
However, he did get this excellent shot of a
wood stork:
Our next stop was the
Big Cypress Bend Boardwalk. This was destroyed by a hurricane several years ago and only repaired a few months ago. We didn't see any panthers there either, but we did see lots of birds and a friend of Denni's who now spends his winters a few miles away. How random is that? No photos of him, but lots of birds. First, a snowy egret.
Next, a
tricolor heron.
No animals in this next photo - it's a landscape of a lake.
Next, a cattle egret.
Not much of this alligator is showing.
A place to sit partway along the boardwalk.
A strangler fig around the tree it has killed.
A bird party of a wood stork and some ibises.
This alligator was hard to spot - someone had to point it out to me.
An ibis and a cattle egret hanging out like best buds.
We drove north a while until feeling hungry, so we had dinner at a crab restaurant with really reasonable prices and a second-story balcony that overlooked a body of water with lit-up tiki bar boats on it. Here's my photo of the boats.
And here are a couple of shots that Travalon took.
Now we are in Port Charlotte, Florida for the night. Check back tomorrow for our further adventures in Florida, when we plan to go to Siesta Key.
Famous Hat
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