The Everglades

If you have an opportunity to go to the Everglades take it!  What an amazing place!  When we drove into the park towards our campground I said to Doug "I need someone to help me interpret what I'm seeing.  It doesn't look like anything but grass."  It is grass.  Sawgrass.  Miles upon miles of sawgrass, sitting in a few inches of water as it flows from south central Florida to the Florida bay.  The area is called a river of grass because it literally is a river of grass.  The highest elevation the park is 4 feet above sea level.  The water flows so slowly that it's almost imperceptible.  This slow moving water is the home to thousand of migratory birds, alligators (lot's of alligators), crocodiles, mosquitoes (not so bad in Feb, but terrible in summer), some deer, panthers, bobcats and snakes. 

The park provides lots of ranger-lead activities that help you understand what you're seeing.  My favorite was a slough slog.  We entered into the sawgrass and stepped into a few inches of water and more inches of mud.  There is a layer of nutritive algae, called periphyton, that is on the top of the water.  The saw grass is named aptly, as it has very sharp "teeth" along the edge.  These teeth gather dew and funnel it down to the center of the plant which is how it survives the dry season when there is no water.  We worked our way into a cyprus dome.   The water is deeper here.  The cyprus loose their needles in the dry season to protect them.  As they decompose they acidify the water, which then erodes the limestone bedrock.  The deeper the water, the better the trees grow.  Very cool.

There is one area of the park that has a preponderance of  wildlife.  Here are a few pictures of my favorites

Anhinga.  Spears fish with it's beak.  AKA the snake bird because of it's long sinewy neck

  the tri-colored Heron

 The wood stork

 The little blue heron

 alligators

 silly birds

 the green heron

Also very prevalent were ibis, great blue herons, great white herons and snowy egrets as well as many that I didn't identify.

We're working our way North towards Americus Ga, where we have tentatively set up another service assignment.  Hopefully the weather on the main land will have warmed up a bit by the time we get there.