We went from Flamingo west to Middle Cape Sable

I awoke once again. I was snug in my bag, gazing out through the mosquito head net. Silhouettes of palm trees framed my view of the dawn sky. Streaks of clouds were backlit by the big moon and blue sky encroached on the stars. Hey! Is that a spy satellite up there looking at me? Naw, I'm just paranoid.

This was Day One as leader of a winter paddling trip in the Everglades. With its broken zipper, I have to shed my bag like an old skin. Time to get up, even though I knew the day would grow old before my paddle touched water. Anyone who thinks they can get a group of folks moving on Day One is in for a surprise. Knowing this, the day was a day of horsing around, packing, planning and permitting. Fully breakfasted, then fully lunched, we packed 11 people into 5 boats along with a mountain of gear, including a stove with a 20 pound tank and 80 gallons of water. The trip brochure promised paddling on glassy smooth waters. The weather report was for 20 to 30 knot winds all week, with a small craft advisory. Yikes. Well, one can always hope the group is ready for some adventure! I spoke with the ranger about the tides. High at about 11AM. I went to get the backwoods permit. Dead low at 11 AM!

On this trip, Sean and I were the trip leaders. In addition, we had Jan and Mary as trainees. They were committed to leading the trip next year. Of the participants, Alan had experience in the Boundary Waters, so we picked him as the stern paddler for the fifth boat. Nine year old Eli was the duffer, sitting in the third middle seat of the canoe, which suited him fine. For bow paddlers we put 17 year old Amy in with Alan and Eli, adults Pat and Nancy in with Mary and Jan and Sean & I took Sophie and Annie (12 and 13) in our boats. Each day we rearranged seating, trying for the ultimate match for five boats. We finally settled on a plan that kept everyone pretty well matched except the boat with Patrick in the bow and Amy in the back was soon a dot on the horizon, way out front.

We set out on "glassy smooth" waters

So anyway about 2 O'clock I finally dipped my paddle in the salt water of Florida Bay on a trip from Flamingo to Middle Cape Sable and back. Acting on advice from Greg Pflug, the leader of the other trip, we passed between mainland and Biscayne Key, and then headed out away from shore about a half mile to avoid a big sandbar. The northeast winds blew stronger out away from shore but the waves never got too big. It was about three hours of paddling to get to East Clubhouse Beach, the nearest campsite to our start. Plenty for people who had spent the last couple of days missing sleep at the airport. Another thrash ensued, with new routines for all. I was pleased when Mary and Jan offered to cook up the first night's dinner. It couldn't be helped the first night, but it was fully dark before we had finished with supper and cleaned it all up. I noticed the days were longer but twilight was very brief. We were blessed with fairly clear skies and a nearly full moon so there was some light to see by even at night.

"The better to eat your food by, my dear." said the Raccoon. Back at the put-in, folks warned us that our food would not last the night in those plastic bags. Nor would our water last in those plastic jugs. Indeed, before we even left the park, buzzards had gotten into one bag of food and pecked holes in one jug. As twilight buttered the landscape, we our scratched heads and tried to think of a solution. Clearly the last resort would be to have someone stand guard all night. We thought about anchoring one canoe off shore. Then a buzzard flew by and I had a vision of 11 people shouting and waving arms on shore while the buzzards leisurely dined on our food a couple hundred feet off shore.

Them Nasty Varmints!

I recalled a thread from some message board long ago where someone had overturned their canoe onto food and water and then dug it down into the sand. We settled on this, unfortunately the "sand" was composed of marl and ground shells. Tough digging but we persevered and soon had two well protected food caches.

The technique worked, but our own habits were not yet up to the challenge. I had a bag of spiced dried apples I was going to pull out later in the trip as a treat. I left them in my pack: Gone. One of the kids left a bag of pretzels out and they too disappeared. The next night, at East Cape, we did a better job of personal food supplies, though I admit folks were keeping snack food inside their tents. We had finished the job of stashing food, in the dark as usual, and I was about to turn in when I saw the trash bag. Bummer. I didn't feel like unearthing the whole canoe just to stick it in so I stacked the coolers on top of the boat and put the trash on top of them. It was a nice night so once again I slept out under the stars and moon, next to the food canoe.

In retrospect, it would have saved a lot of time and aggravation to stow the trash properly. Though they couldn't quite reach the trash bag, they sure could smell it and they made the rounds about every five minutes to try again. I soon discovered that a direct hit with a projectile sneaker was only good to move them about two feet. Then they turn and look at you as if to say "Neener neener." However, a gritty aluminum paddle shaft grating on the side of the canoe hull sent them scurrying hundreds of feet. I slept very little that night but the lessons were well learned and careful food storage prevented any more incidents.

Morning came at East Clubhouse Beach that first night and I let everyone sleep in, as many had lost sleep traveling to the put-in. I watched with growing anxiety as the tide receded, exposing a mud flat of marl. To a Mainer, a 3' tide is laughable - why even bother? Well in a bay only 8 feet deep, low tide exposes acres of sucking mud half up to your knee. I soon learned a deep respect for the paltry 3 foot tide. I consulted the tide chart. I pondered the tide correction factors. The numbers rearranged themselves on the page again. Finally I determined, by looking at the shoreline, that the tide was going out and we were destined to leave at low tide.

But this day it couldn't be helped; I wasn't going to drag everyone out of bed and put them to work right away. Instead, we learned our second new lesson of the Everglades. I determined the best approach was to load the boats on the firm ground and then push them out over the greasy marl to open water. We pushed the first one out, about six people on it. The kids who helped skipped back to solid ground, while my body weight plunged my sandals deep into the muck. The sandals make great anchors and I could not for the life of me lift either foot. La Brea Tar Pit came to mind.

Pat gets a little crabby

I thought of mired water buffalos about to be an easy meal for lions. I thought these things as I pulled my greased feet out of my sandals and began the barefoot walk back. I was suddenly snatched from my reveries when Patrick gave a hoot, pulling his foot from the mud with a great big crab clinging to it. Yipes! There's biting animals under there! Not only were there live crabs under there, but the muck was full of sharp broken shells too. A couple of my toes looked like sliced bologna by the time I was done. I was not the only one and I added cleaning and dressing wounded feet to my camp chores. Two types of footwear actually did work in this mess. Sean had low neoprene booties that stayed on and Mary had plain old socks. I guess the lack of edges to embed in the mud is the trick.

Speaking of tides, (in case the reader is now enamored with paddling in the Everglades) they were very hard to figure. Tide tables are available for Flamingo, free at the park HQ. East Cape Sable, about 12 miles away, has a correction factor of minus 1 hr. 39 min. for high tide and minus 2 hr. 45 min. for low. Also, being near a full moon, the night time tides were much bigger than daytime. Not at all well behaved like a good Maine tide. Those Maine tides know how to act, good and regular.

The run from East Clubhouse Beach to East Cape Sable was relatively uneventful. Once we got in the boats that is. A large sandbar, actually shown on the chart this time, runs out about ¾ mile from the shore near the manmade channel into Lake Ingraham. A little further, we passed a natural channel into the mangroves. Another sandbar and we were now at East Cape. The beach extended quite a distance and we shopped for a good location before pulling in. Today we had plenty of time to set up, eat and clean up before dark.

The daily chore of caching food fell upon me and Sean. Thankfully Amy was right on task with tent set-up. We never traveled more than 8 miles in one day, but the paddling combined with striking of camp seemed to occupy the whole day. The kids were dispatched to collect sea shells and report back with their findings while us adults dealt with the mundane aspects of camp life. We should have had more than two layover days, as they were the time for relaxing and recharging. We had one at East Cape and at Middle Cape. I went on day trips for each, which is where we saw a lot of the wildlife. Crocs, gators, sharks. Birds? Good God were there birds.

From East Cape, we went back to that mangrove-lined inlet. We wended our way through the mangroves on a rising tide through ever-tightening channels until we ran out of headroom under the branches and between the hanging roots. The mangrove roots hung stiff as jail bars and I feared our exit would be blocked if we allowed the tide to lift us much more. So we turned and headed back out.

Once in the main channel, we encountered a very strong headwind and opposing current as the tide rose to fill all those backwater channels and ponds. I was bringing up the rear when the other last canoe was blown against the muddy bank; paddles just sank into the stuff when they tried to shove off. We had three folks in one boat and two in the other. Hanging onto branches in the strong current, it was a neat puzzle to move people around to new positions, one person moving at a time. The first arrangement was a disaster. The other boat raced across the channel five times, back and forth, without making any headway. Finally the man at the rear attempted to steer by throwing his hands in the air and burning holes in his partner with his eyes. I could almost hear the implied cursing. In Italian, no doubt. We regrouped and found a more pleasant arrangement and soon caught up to the rest of the group.

Great Advice

The second day trip was from Middle Cape into Lake Ingraham. Most of the folks elected to stay in camp and hang out on the beach. Four of us battled the dropping tide through the channel and paddled into the huge lake. The channel was marked with poles and we soon found that the rest of the lake became mudflats on either side of the channel. Sean and I plied the shallows with our poles, specially fitted with a home-made foot that I had concocted from an archival photo of the native Miccosukee Indians.

We spied a side stream across the mudflats and we thought that might lead up to a small ¼ mile lake deep in the mangroves of the Everglades, and curiously a very short distance (as the spoonbill flies) from our campsite. After a protracted and fruitless battle with the mud, the tide graciously lifted our canoes and granted us passage into the interior. Many large things jumped and scuttled beneath the murky surface.

Poles are big part of boating in this area. Even the motorboats are outfitted with poles. Theirs are fiberglass, about fourteen feet long. One end tapers to a dull point and the other protrudes from the top of an A-shaped foot. The foot is used to push the boat around in the mucky shallows and the pointed end can be embedded in the mud and used to anchor the boat while stopping to fish. Our canoe poles were bought in New England from a guy who makes them in his basement. These are special two piece aluminum poles, perfect for stowing in a ski bag next to your favorite paddles when traveling by plane. Assembled, they are twelve feet long. After studying the photograph above, I designed an attachment for the pole. To attach, the pole first slides through the cord. When the foot is twisted to align with the pole, the cord tightens and holds it fast. Then the foot is worked up the pole until the hole in the tab slides over the bolt end of the pole. These worked great in the shallows of Ingraham and were a well appreciated break from paddling against the ferocious headwinds of the last two days. It was rare that water levels were deeper than the max three feet needed to use them.

I saw the fins of a shark moving slowly through the mangrove roots. When in the lead, I heard a loud thrash and splash behind me. Sean and pat in the other boat reported that it had been and alligator. We snaked our way through the meandering flats and channels until we ran out of water. Our goal of the inland lake seemed thwarted. As we sat and watched the pitiful trickle of incoming water, I spied a large opening through the trees. We struggled another 100 feet through what amounted to a partly filled muddy ditch and there before us was the lake. All 100 acres of gray mud. I would have enjoyed waiting for the tide to fill the lake, watching it fill with life and take on the color of the sky, but alas, we had to go. Had I been solo, I would have hunkered down with my journal and passed a pleasant hour as the water carried me in.

Just add water...

After battling a strong cross wind and 5 knot current in the canal, we arrived at camp ahead of schedule to find a group of well rested and cheerful campers. Middle Cape turned out to be a great place for swimming, sunning and exploring. During our evening trip meeting around the campfire, the discussion turned to our departure. Sean had checked the weather radio and the wind would be coming from the East, which meant headwind. We resolved to get up at 6:30 and get on the water earlier to beat the worst of it.

While breakfasting, we were treated to a couple of porpoises jumping clear of the water, silhouetted by the sunrise. "Hey Alan! Look!" I point. He looks. Nothing. Just as he turns to me and gives me a questioning look, they leap again. "Porpoises!" I point again. He looks again for just right amount of time, turning back to me again when they jump. Over and over. He never did see the things.

We got on the water at 9AM, which was pretty good for us. We beat a lot of the wind in the morning, but as the day wore into afternoon, the wind built and we had a tough battle on our hands. We resolved to get an even earlier start the next day, as people had planes to catch.

This was our last night in the wilderness, away from modern conveniences, miles from the nearest road. While finishing supper, we spied a couple of people wandering through the meadow behind camp. I thought perhaps they were camping at East Clubhouse, a couple miles away. We hailed them and they came over. A man and his daughter were out on a day hike from Flamingo, 7 miles away! Well now, considering there was only a half hour of daylight left, we urged them to stay, we'd fix them up with a tent, feed them supper which was still hot. But no, they insisted on hiking back. So I fetched them Amy's flashlight and a couple of head nets while others pressed food upon them. Off they went, back into the bush. As the sunset's beautiful display waned and darkness crept from the shadows to spill across the landscape, I thought of our friends out there hiking bare-legged at feeding time, for things do come alive in the jungle at night. The cell phone actually worked and we called Park Dispatch to let them know of our wayward hikers, then turned back to the task of making Smores over the fire.

I don't recall volunteering, but somehow it was a done deal that I would wake up at 5AM and get breakfast started. Not that I mind. I slept with one eye on my watch and got up right at 5. We ate and packed in record time, all of us goaded by the promise of easy paddling before the headwind rose and the struggle it would cause after. We were fed, packed and on the water at 7:30 AM. Yesterday I had jealously watched Sean as he effortlessly poled against the headwind along the shallow shores. My own pole was stashed under all the other gear, impossible to get out. Not today! The tables were soon turned. The foot I had made him worked loose and lodged itself firmly into the muck, never to be seen again. So it was my turn to enjoy the comforts of poling. We arrived at the take-out at noon, an hour ahead of schedule. An inquiry to the park service revealed there was no record of our wandering friends. No flashlight, no head nets, no nothing. Perhaps, like the coons, a new form of life had evolved, developing a way to feed off our excesses. Disguised as humans with a British accent, they were successful at getting our food, where the coons had failed. To this day, perhaps, Sasquatch and Squatchette wander still, preying on the kindness of Everglades paddlers…

Peace! This doesn't even look real, does it!

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Your pal, Hal