Everglades 2020

Everglades/Ten Thousand Islands

12/14 - 12/17/20 (3 nights)
2020 Bag nights: 31

Everglades City Boat Ramp

Weather looked good, ended up being warm during the day, I would have liked slightly cooler temps.

Roseate Spoonbill next to the boat ramp

Loaded up and ready to go

I ended up seeing dolphins everyday

I was going against the tide for a couple miles and it made for slow going. A couple times I pulled over to where I could hold on to a mangrove branch so I could rest. 

First night at Rabbit Key. At low tide, there is a large sandbar to walk on.

Horseshoe Crab

I think this is a Blue Heron

I got woken up in the middle of the night by noises from the waves. I was as high up as I could go, but my tent was almost in the water. Later, I looked at the tide chart more closely and that night was a higher than usual high tide. I did not get wet, but it made for an interesting night. 

Sunrise

Heading towards Pavilion Key

I had lunch at Pavilion Key and walked the beach

Then headed towards Mormon Key

More dolphins

I spent about 20 minutes watching them stir up the water, I assume they were feeding. 

Then on to Turkey Key for the night. I was on the east side of the island so no sunset and no breeze to keep the bugs down. I got swarmed bad enough that I ate dinner in my tent. My original plans were to head inland but the bugs changed my mind. Again, I got woken up by high tide coming in, this time I actually shifted my tent back into the grasses to avoid the water. 

Sunrise the next morning was nice.

After enjoying the sunrise, I had to pull the kayak through about a half mile of knee to thigh deep mud because the tide was way out and I did not feel like sitting around for another 5 hours. 

I decided to head back to Pavilion Key for the night and then back to the ramp. 

A couple crows kept me company while I read in the shade.

Mating season? 

Jupiter, Saturn and a couple day old moon

Sunrise

And back to the ramp, it ended up being a much easier paddle than the first day since the tide was coming in. 

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I ended up having extra days to fill since I wasn't in the Everglades. One day I drove over to Lovers Key State Park. It was not as nice as I remembered, but I guess that is what 30 year old memories do. 

Another day the whole family drove up to Ft Myers to check out the manatees at the power plant.

KY River paddle

 November 8, 2020

It was a beautiful day and my son had been pestering me about kayaking. He really wanted to go camping/kayaking, but I thought the nights/mornings would be cold enough to not be fun for him. So, we went paddling for the afternoon.

I have paddled a little bit on the Kentucky River, but I had never launched at the small ramp near Clays Ferry and I-75. So off we went. We headed down river, but there is not much of a current, so direction doesn't really matter. After a little paddling, we were past the houses on the shore and it felt a little more remote. 

I-75 bridge, almost back to the ramp.

November 28, 2020

I was looking for a long hike to burn off Thanksgiving. My youngest wanted to do something with Dad. There was not way she would manage a good hike, so we went paddling instead. 

Not a lot of photos, it was a lot colder and my feet had got wet launching the kayak so, after a couple hours, my feet were feeling pretty frozen. I asked her to stop paddling since we kept getting out of synch and I wanted to get back to the ramp. As we got close, I wanted to take a photo of the bridge reflections. As I pulled out my camera, I noticed that she was looking a little crooked. I took the photo and said that we were getting close and she jumped. It turned out she had dozed off for a bit :)