TEN THOUSAND ISLANDS

 

Four couples of us towed our boats to Everglades City last week for our Spring overnight boating excursion.   We docked our boats and then used two of them to explore the waters.  (EC is only a little over an hour away by road, but it would have  been at least one overnight stop before we arrived at our destination if we had traveled all the way by boat.)  

Everglades City is at the edge of the Ten Thousand Islands, a chain of mangrove islets off the SW Florida coast.   And exploring at least part of this area was the goal for this trip.  We were grateful for good GPS and charts.  There are so many islets and they look so much alike it would be very easy to get turned around.   

 

 

I am pretty sure I’m right this time about these being terns.  (Again, thank you to all who corrected my bad-pun mistake last week when I mis-named a laughing gull.)   I think these are Royal Terns, and I’m sure someone will correct me if I’m wrong.  This is a highly cropped picture of a sandbar islet we passed.

 

There were Ospreys on most of the markers we passed.  Many with babies at various stages.  This part of the Ten Thousand Islands is  part of Everglades National Park.  

 

 

 

We beached our boat on this small sandbar.  It was the first time we’ve anchored our boat.   (But we couldn’t get off because none of us wanted to jump off the front.  The water in back (where our boarding platform is) was about 7 feet deep — we didn’t want to swim or wade either!)

 

The largest of the Islands is Chokoloskee, which is connected to Everglades City by a causeway.   It is the only one that is currently inhabited (by about 400 hardy souls).  We had  an early dinner one day at the Havana Cafe there.  Tables on the screened porch were surrounded by orchids and other tropical plants.

 

We stayed at an RV Resort that has dock space available for boaters.   The picture on the top left is our boat and one of the others from our group taken from the restaurant across the channel and the other picture is vice-versa (the restaurant taken from our dock.)    We walked to this restaurant on one day of our stay.

 

 

Companionable friends, birds, good food,  and beautiful scenery (some that we could only see from the water)  … the recipe for another good boating excursion. 

 

LINKING this week to the following:   Thank you to the hosts.   (Last week the new INLinx tool did not work for me for the first couple of days.   On Wednesday when I tried for the fourth time, it suddenly worked again.  Fingers crossed that it decides this week to let me in from the first of the week!)

 NATURE NOTES;   ALL SEASONS;  THROUGH MY LENS;  MOSAIC MONDAY;  TRAVEL PHOTO SOUVENIRS; OUR WORLD on Tuesday;  SAY CHEESE;  WILD BIRD Wednesday;   MY CORNER OF THE WORLD;   SIGNS SIGNS;   THANKFUL THURSDAY;   SKYWATCH FRIDAY;   FRIDAY  BLISS;   SATURDAY CRITTERS;  and RATHER B’ BIRDING