everglades blog by Tud

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 Bugs, sunburn, tanning, paddling, excessive singing, exotic conversations, and flubbery, blubbery manatees can pretty much sum up this entire expedition.

  We started our 6 day, everglades canoe expedition at Chocoloskee bay in everglades city. After we were all packed, regardless that it was windy and rainy, we set off on our journey into un known and un-charted territories.

  Our first day ( the rainy and windy day) we took on about 8 miles of our 43 mile trip through the Everglades battling wind, rain, tiredness, and exhaustion. But we sure did do it. And we did it good! This first day brought us to a campsite called Lopez River Camp ground where we spent exactly one night.

Second Day: Our second day couldn’t have been better, ( compared to the first that is) since the forecast decided to exclude the rain and wind and chose to be our friends by letting out the sun shine. Even though this day was an 11 mile paddling day, it was much easier to enjoy. The camp site we arrived to was called The Watsons Place which has a true story involving mystery and murder and a man by the name of Edgar J Watson, but I don’t have time to tell it unfortunately. On the bad side though, this site had the most bugs, so you can probably guess why we were efficient getting out of there.

Third Day: this third day was on we had been waiting for! We were headed to Pavilion key which was nothing less than a beach in paradise. It was mostly windy so the bugs were not bad at all, we saw and eclipse which was amazing, and we caught some sweet puffer fish. Also what made it more spectacular was that we got to stay 2 nights here since the next day was our break day.

Fifth Day: today we pulled out of Pavilion with sad faces but still with excitement because we had one more day, and then we were out of there. On this day we paddled 12 miles to a key called Picnic Key where we ran into a shark swimming out of a cove created by the key itself. We spent one night there, like the majority of our sites then the next day, headed back to Chocoloskee bay, which was a final 6 miles.

  I have personally done this expedition before and knew what we were going to do. But each even with this being the second time, I experienced new things that made all the difference between a good, and a bad expedition.