January 30-February 1, 2018 Everglades, Florida

It only got to 70 degrees today, sunny and windy. We hiked the Bay shore trail. It was very pleasant. John in a tree tunnel. Mangrove roots from the land side. Most of my photos have been from the water side. I love their prop roots.

Bumpy berries, some kind of critter home near the shore, pink  flowers. Red flowers, lantern seed heads, yellow pea flower, purple flowers.

Purple flowers, white spiky flowers, furled up moon flower, they bloom a tight, kind of collapse during the day. they have had the boil water notice in effect signs up for a couple days.  Looks like a water main broke down the line. We have a full water tank so have not been drinking theirs.  Snowy egrets along the shore. We have not seen as many birds here as before. We heard they still have not come back since hurricane Irma.

Sunset in camp. Our original reservation had us leaving yesterday. They won’t let you reserve any days here at camp on the electrical sites. Our next reservation is in the keys starting the first. So we had to move to a first come first serve non electrical site for today. We got this really nice site on the very corner. 

We rode our bikes to the visitors center and attended a ranger program on the tropical trees that are native here. Very interesting. John talking to Tim Taylor  the ranger giving the program.  A ropey buttonwood trunk and three stranger figs in different stages. They usually grow on palm trees, wrap around them and end up strangling the host plant.  The first on has almost engulfed the palm, the next two are still working on wrapping around the tree. 

A green and brown male sand fiddler crabs with one large pincer and one regular sized, the beach is covered in masses of these tiny shells. Poison tree leaves- they are a relative to poison ivy and just as nasty, mangrove flowers and a poster on the bathroom tonight. Join us at the amphitheater  to howl at the full moon. It faces east so you can watch the full moon rise over the bay. We chose to eat dinner and watch it rise over the campground and howl at it.  A gumbo limbo tree at sunset.  

We drove on  Hwy 1, the South Dixie Hwy out to the keys.  Just what I always wanted to do, feed hands to sharks, the speed limit sign in the RV park. We are in a no wake zone, I like that. The water is impossibly, beautifully turquoise. 

The bus on parked on the water (well the edge) at Jolly Roger Motel and RV park in Marathon, Florida. Really nice site and view, it is the most expensive site we have ever rented. $112 a night. Rv parking sites are drastically reduced since hurricane Irma and the ones left are full. It is the high season here. we were lucky to find this one.  Pelicans at the fish cleaning station. They seem to live there. People are cleaning fish all day. 

Not much sunset, clouds moved in. But some one blew a conch shell at sunset. Very key like.