6 April 2019
Hi there !
This is our first post of the year… yep it is April 2019, where has the time gone!
We have been chillin out in Key West for the last 99 days, and it is time to leave. It was a good break, the Sigsbee Shufflers and the weather are just awseome, but we are aintsey to get back on the road and start exploring. Here is our lodging stats for the winter:
Our first stop will be Midway Campground, at Big Cypress National Park, bordering the Everglades.
So utr (up the road) we go. We had a 20 mph head wind most of the way up, light traffic, and sunny (no kiddin).
We arrived at Midway about 1:30 in the afternoon. A 26 site campground that surrounds a pond with signs all over the place warning everyone to stay away from the Alligators. Really? I don’t need a sign to tell me that, but just in case, we asked the Onsite camp host if there “really” were gators here, and he said “yeah, there are a couple”.
OK, good to know, so we got our home set up and head over to Delores and Virgil’s for dinners. Yep, they are next door. This was the third winter we have hung out with the Lannings. We all have a great time together and all enjoy exploring this great country of ours.
On Friday, we took off for the Visitor Center, walked their boardwalks that parallels the “canal” that runs from Miami to Naples. Lots of gators, fish, and birds. I could tell this was just the beginning of our journey through the swampland.
We took the BFT on a 21 mile loop road through Big Cypress. The first 15 miles or so is a very dusty, dirt road. Hell Yeah, DIRT! Just what we like. Swamp on boths sides of the narrow road, we stopped numerous times, to see gators, and birds. The koolest was we saw a mama gator, floating next to her 12 or so offspring who were sunning on the grass. We respected her for sure and while she watched us, left us alone. Then, down the dusty road a bit, we saw another gator, floating in the water, with head looking towards the road, and a gaggle of her babies were sunning on her back. Again, we looked but did not touch, all though I’m feelin like I could be the next “George the Gator Gitter”. Wow it is pretty kool to see all this in the “wild”.
We get back home to Midway, and its our turn to cook dinner. So Ann Marie did what she does best… Hmm, Hmm, good. After dinner, we are all sitting outside looking over the pond, and Virgil notices a guy (from Britain) who was sitting in a lawn chair fishing, now getting up and backing away from the water rather quickly .
We mosey’d over to a covered picnic table close to the water, right across the pond. Well the Brit is no longer there, but instead there is a gator, eating the fisherman’s bag of bread, and after a few times of the gator dragging stuff into the water, the gator then drags the baby’s blanket, (without the baby). It was quite the show, and we hope the gator can digest that plastic bag.
The gator played there for about an hour before he was tired. The Brit and his family were visiting from London, and retrieved their chairs and gear that the gator did not want.
