Day 202
Friday 1/29 –
no boat travel
During the
night a cold front came through so miracle of miracles – it stopped raining! We
woke to a temperature of 58 degrees with a predicted high for the day of
61. We planned for a day of biking, so I
had to pick out layers of clothes to allow for ranging from being hot to being
cold as we biked.
Clark needed
to mail a letter; I needed to buy something in the way of breakfast food from
the sparsely-stocked grocery store. We ate breakfast and prepared to go out on
our bikes. As we got ready to pull away from the boat, Clark noticed that his
back tire was flat – to the rim! I had biked on ahead to the end of the Rod
& Gun Club driveway and waited and waited for him to come along. Finally I
went back to see what was holding him up and found him using a hand pump to put
some air in his flat tire.
He managed
to get air in the tire, and it looked like it would hold, so we set out for the
post office as planned. At the post office we got a big surprise. A produce
stand is setup in the post office parking lot every Thursday through Saturday
morning. This week, due to the lousy weather yesterday, the days were changed
to Friday through Sunday. Either way, we hit it on a Friday morning.
They had a
mix of fruit (grapefruits, oranges, strawberries, blueberries, melons and
apples) as well as a variety of fresh vegetables. I hadn’t planned on buying
produce, but I could not resist the temptation with it spread out right there
so conveniently. Fortunately Clark had his backpack with him, so I filled it
up! From there we headed over to the grocery store, and I found some
interesting-sounding Post cereal with walnuts, raisins, dates and grain clusters.
Except for the quantity of sugar included in each serving, it might actually be considered healthy.
I threw the
cereal box in the backpack as well, and we headed back to the boat to drop off
our goodies. Our plans for today included lunch at the Rod & Gun Club
restaurant. Even though it was a bit chilly we sat on the screened-in porch to
eat our lunch. Clark’s broiled seafood platter included frog’s legs. He said he
liked them. I sampled a bit and decided I could do without that in my dietary
plans. It tasted a little “gamey” to me.
When we came
back to the boat to get the bikes for part two of our two-part bike ride
adventure for the day, Clark’s tire was very low on air again. He pumped it up and we
set out to explore. This time our plans included a visit to the airport and the
Gulf Coast visitor’s center at the very edge of town. But first, we went to the
hardware store and bought a patch kit for the bike tire. We had patches but all
the glue in our repair kits had dried up over time, so we needed to buy new.
The ride to
the airport was relatively short as compared to Monday’s ride to the airboat
adventure. When we got there, however, there was almost nothing to see. One small
airplane that looked like it could hold two people maximum sat there alone. We
decided to go see what the next stop had to offer. At least here we found lots
of people milling around as it was the visitor center at the entrance to the
Everglades National park and a place where folks could take boat tours.
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| Gulf Coast Visitor's Center |
After seeing
our two main attraction objectives (airport and visitor’s center), Clark said he would
like to visit Chokoloskee Island. When I
looked at the map before our ride to see where the airport was located, I
spotted Chokoloskee, and it looked like a rather long bike ride across part of Chokoloskee Bay. However, since the other part of the bike ride had been so much shorter
than I anticipated, I agreed that we could try it and see how far we got.
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| Beside Bike Trail to Chokoloskee Look closely and see the sleeping Pelican in the front of the picture |
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| Welcome to Chokoloskee |
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| "You are here" map of Everglades National Park |
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| Fishing is Great in Chokoloskee Island, FL |
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| At least the Pelicans think it is. |
Of
course Clark took me all the way to the end of the island and then some as we
toured around. We found Smallwood's Store which was originally a trading post and over time was converted into a museum. At $5 per person entrance fee, we decided to pass on the opportunity to look inside.
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| Smallwood's Store Museum - originally a trading post in the early 1900s |
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| Scene Near Smallwood's Store |
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| Except for this One mansion on the Island |
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| With more "keep out", "no trespassing" signs in one place than I have ever seen before. |
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| and This Beautiful Log Cabin with a Stained-Glass Window |
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| And then, to make it interesting, a Few of These Thrown into the mix |
The log cabin and the run-down trailer (both shown above) were only a few hundred feet from each other.
On our way
back to the boat, we stopped by the Chokoloskee Mall which includes the
Chokoloskee post office, a restaurant, and a “gift shop” which appeared to be
an outside sales area where an artist was selling her paintings as she painted
more pictures on the spot. I went into the restaurant to buy a bottle of water as I
could feel a headache coming on – generally a first sign of dehydration for me.
They had no bottled water, but she gave me a cup of water for free to take with me.
Nice!
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| Chokoloskee Mall - Post Office |
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| Chokoloskee Mall - Havana Cafe |
From there
we stopped at the Observation Tower for a from-high view of the surrounding
area. The tower is 80 feet high. The boat captain standing there who asked if
we wanted a tour of the Everglades said that the tower had 108 steps. Clark
went up in the tower, and when he came back he said he had counted 120. I was
not overly enthusiastic about climbing up the tall tower. Once we found out it
cost $2 per person, I decided to stay at the bottom and let him go explore up
there alone. The $2 fee was just the excuse I was looking for not to climb!
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| Everglades City - Observation Tower Built in 1984 |
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| Hmmm - the sign agrees with the boat captain. |
Views from the top of the tower ...
While Clark
went up the tower, I talked to the boat captain. We were not in the market for
a boat tour, but I have to say that if we were, I would want him as my guide.
He grew up in the area and, after years of living elsewhere including Egg
Harbor, NJ and Tennessee, he moved back home. He is a licensed captain and a certified
naturalist and has a lot of interesting stories to tell and knowledge to share.
The boat
captain told us that Chokoloskee means “Big House” in Seminole and gave a
little background related to native Indians in the area and why they named
the island that. Then, as he showed us the tour boats they use, we talked about boat tours in the Everglades. He said
that no airboats are allowed in the national park itself. I had asked if much wildlife
could be seen on the tours, and he said that since they are “wild” life, it is
a crap shoot as to whether they are seen or not. He made of a point of saying
they do not feed any animals and told a story about an airboat captain that did
feed alligators.
As the story
goes, the captain of the airboat fed something to an alligator and then turned
to talk to the guests on the tour boat. Apparently the alligator wanted more
and climbed up on the airboat and bit the lower half of the man’s arm clean
off right there in front of the tourists. Since feeding alligators is against the law, he not only lost half his arm,
he got hit with a $5000 fine and 10 months in jail as well. The awful
joke around town at that time …
“Need a job? Captain Doug is
hiring. He could use a ‘hand’.”
While we
were talking a small plane flew over which led us to discussing the local
airport. The boat captain said that one-to-two crashes per year happen there. I
asked if it was due to the short runway there, and he said it was more often than not
the gusty winds. He proceeded to tell me about a famous fisherman (he did not give his name) who was doing
a documentary on the Everglades and leaving the area by plane. With 30 mph wind gusts, his
camera crew, etc. refused to fly out with him due to the conditions. They said they
would drive and meet him at their next location. He said he had no choice but
to fly because of a prior engagement he could not miss.
The plane
appeared to take off with no problem, and then when the plane reached an
altitude of around 200 to 300 feet, a gust of wind caught it and flipped it
over causing the engine to stall whereby the plane fell out of the sky and
burst into flames upon impact. The boat captain said that fuel and smoke could be smelled
in town for three days after.
We chatted some about the Great Loop and our plans, the
type of boat we are traveling on, etc. Eventually we said our farewells and got
back on our bikes to come back “home” to the boat. I checked when we got back. Google Maps calculated the distance to be just over four miles each way from the boat to the end of the island, so with our earlier biking, I guess we must have covered at least ten miles on our bikes today. It felt good to be out and about after being on the boat all day yesterday.
As soon as
we got on board, Clark pulled out the bike tire repair kit we bought earlier today and his tools to see
what could be done about the flat. He has fixed a large number of bike flats in
his time, so he knew the procedure. After he had the inner tube pulled out, he
could hear the leak hissing, but he could not find it. He asked me to join him on the
salon floor to see if I would have any luck. Eventually I felt the air coming
out of the tire with my finger as I passed it over the inner tube. Using a soapy
mixture, he rubbed it on that spot and we saw bubbles, so now we knew where to
repair.
Having had
the bad experience in his youth of having his bike tire punctured
multiple times due to the same sharp object being lodged in the tire
itself, Clark ran his finger along inside the tire and found something sharp. He
tried to push it out through the tire, and it would not budge. He finally
managed, using pliers, to pull it out towards the inner tube and found it to be
a piece of metal resembling a thick staple in shape and size. How it got on the
inside facing out, we will never know.
After finding the hole and the culprit, Clark
let me go back to working on my blog while he did the actual repair work on the
tube and reassembled the tire. We are hoping that is the last of that problem! The bike repair took quite a while, so we ended up with a late dinner as a result. Fortunately I had some leftover veggies so I could pull together a quick meal.
Thanks for such a wonderful post.
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