Everglades, NP - Slough Slog: You Will Get Wet

Remember that I said that the Everglades is not a swamp but actually a slow moving river. Well, when you look at the pictures of our activities today, you're going to guess that we're walking through a swamp - we'll be knee deep in water with trees and brush and possible wildlife around us. We're going to do do a 'slough slog' (truly, that's what the Everglades calls this - I didn't make it up). Here were the instructions we received as we signed up:

        Wear sturdy lace-up shoes, long pants, hats and sunscreen.

        You will be walking over uneven terrain and through dense vegetation and water        

        A long hiking /balance stick will be provided.

        Bring camera and binoculars - but at your own risk.

        No restrooms available.

Where in the world are we going and what will we be doing? Getting close up and personal with the Everglades. An adventure.

Since we had to sign up in advance, it was a small group or 7 with a guide. We met and then followed the guide in 3 cars 15 miles down the road where he wanted to take us. Since our guide, Leon has been doing this for 30 years, he’s developed quite a few trails to take his groups and he took us to a neat section of the sawgrass prairie with a small cypress grove (called a dome) on one side and a much larger one on the other. We would get to slog through both.

We began on a ‘prairie’ which, by January, had dried out from the summer rains and was crustier material called periphyton:  which is a mixture of algae, bacteria, microbes, bacteria and other detritus. It is really like a compost and is a food source for small things like tadpoles and some fish. Actually, the bottom of the food chain here in the Everglades - as our guide explained it. Gary picked up a clod of this and it was like play-do: malleable and, when you put it down, you hands were mostly clean.

But, truly it is the lifeblood of this area, full of nutrients which nourish the land. Lots of saw grasses here - long and spiny with teensy tiny little barbs lining the shaft. You can feel them but can’t see them well. But, my, oh, my, if you went without something on your legs, you would know that saw grass was aptly named.

We headed off to a small bunch of trees. Usually, when you see trees, you can guess that the land is a bit higher here because trees need soil to root. Nope, these are cypress trees and the taller the trees, the deeper the water. These were short baby trees with shallow water and only a prelude to what we would walk through in a bit.

Cypress trees just look dead in the winter but they will leaf out in the summer.

Slosh, splat, squish - yep, we found the taller cypresses and we were calf-deep in water. The taller the cypress trees, the deeper the water. What fun. Up close and personal with the Everglades. We stopped often to look at, touch and discuss certain things in the water and on the trees. The air plants were numerous and some were even in bloom.

We found a ‘gator’ hole which was deeper, probably deeper than thigh-high, which had been swished out by an alligator tail to make it deeper and ready for when the area became really dry - right before the wet season.

But the water part of the slog was fine since the water kept our pants, shoes and socks relatively ‘clean.’

It was the mud slog to our cars afterwards that made it a real slog. At times, my feet were a foot into the mud and I was glad that my shoes were tied tightly. Luckily there is a limestone reef 1’ or a bit more below us so that we could not sink deeper. We could hit solid ground - unfortunately it was 1’ below the mudline. Actually they bring busloads of kids in here to see this cypress grove and, when all of them walk through this area, it kills the sawgrass and there is nothing solid to walk on - hence all the mud.

Fun hike and a bit out of the ordinary. We certainly learned a lot from our guide and from our own experience in the 'Sea of Grass.'

Back at the car, Gary and I start to take off our socks, shoes and pant legs to put into the plastic grocery bags we had brought for just this occasion. Untieing shoe laces caked in wet mud was the hardest. Being prissy as I am, I didn’t want this shoe and sock

on the car mats that I try to keep clean. One other guy did the same thing but all the others got into their cars and trucks and drove off with shoes caked in mud. Yechhh. We put on clean shoes and socks and took off.

Back at the marina, near the Flamingo VC, we knelt on the dock and swished our shoes, socks and pants through the murky salty water. ‘Don’t drop anything’ we kept warning each other. When we got back to the campground, we then washed out the salt in the water spigots near the dump station.

Finally, back at the RV, we put them all into the dryer to dry off. Prissy, prissy, prissy.

Since I didn’t have enough points on my Shine, I had to walk around the campground one last time to do it. Ah, now for dinner.