We did 4 days of paddling in the Everglades national Park.
We had planned to do 6 days, but the day we were scheduled to leave there were torrential rainstorms, so we just drove down to Everglades City and stayed in the very funky but forgotten Everglades Rod and Gun Club this place dates from the 1920s when it was a private club. The bar and reception area are amazing.
In the morning there has been tremendous flooding from the rain and tides.
Day one we took the inside passage to Watson's place It was very rough and windy after the big storm and we wanted to check out what the inside paddle was like. We paddled up the Lopez river, and We camped at the Watson place the mosquitoes were terrible.
EJWatson is notorious as an early Everglades resident. I had read the excellent book about him called Shadow country I actually brought the book with me and started it again on the trip. The biography of the author Peter Mathison is almost as interesting as the Watson story.
The next day it was very calm in the morning and we left and headed south trying to catch up to our original plan. Because of the storm the water was very churned up and although we had a fishing pole we decided it would be futile. We had lunch on pavilion key and continued south.
At this point We decided to cut the trip short and stop at hog Island for the night, but we were downwind surfing and we went a little bit too far. We still found a nice campsite on the shore nearby. It remained very wind 15 to 20Kts from the North.
At this point we totally changed our schedule and started working north again The winds were predicted to be very strong from north to south. Our original plan had us going past highland beach, if we had we never would have been able to get back.
We went north and camped at new turkey key which was a very beautiful campsite.
The next day we continued north to rabbit key for exit in the morning.
I had to do a long trip on Saturday and the more I thought about it i wanted an early exit to get everything cleaned up and organized, also. it was cool and very windy everyday.
For future trips if this is the prevailing wind direction we could do a car shuttle go in at Chokoloksee and Out at Flamingo.
Although it looks interesting interior camping on Chickees or ground sites is probably a mistake because of the bugs. We asked a local and he said they were less in winter, but always a problem except after a hurricane that disrupts their breeding for 14 to 16 months.
Truth: the tide keeps coming
