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Clyde Butcher

We first got a taste of Clyde Butcher's large format black and white photographs of the swamp at the Corkscrew exhibit we perused while waiting for a deluge to end.    I can not describe the beauty, detail and haunting nature of these 40 x 60 inch images.  Discovering that he used to live near here and has a gallery there just east on 41, we set out after our morning kayak in Halfway Creek Bay with it's  own dolphin herding fish show.  Entering the gallery, we found ourselves in an amazing world of images of Florida from Big Talbot island, the Keys and Ten Thousand Islands to the swamp.   We finished our afternoon and last day in one of his favorite places, Big Cypress Bend Boardwalk in Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park.

Everglades City

Everglades City is a funky, old Florida fishing village - the stone crab capital of the world.  But now the crabbing season is closed, the snowbirds have migrated north and the town has a lazy, deserted feel.  The locals we have met however, from our waitress to the fishermen,  have been warm, friendly and willing to share their Everyglades City story.

Collier-Seminole State Park

This is the beginning of the wet season.   The summer weather pattern - Atlantic breezes meeting Gulf breezes - creates  afternoon thunderstorms which fill up the swamps, now mostly dry.   We saw these storms beginning in Bocca Grande and continuing as we moved south.   Getting a later start today and hoping to avoid the storms, we drove west on 41  to Collier-Seminole State Park where canoe trails lead through the mangrove tunnels to form the Blackwater River.  We were able to rent both a SUP and kayak - amazing since we were the only ones here, making it our own private playground for the day.   The ecoguide gave us directiions, Tom a special "Blackwater" lure and sent us on our way.   A map would have been helpful since this is a place you don't want to get lost.   We fished and paddled through mangrove mazes and down the river, somehow missing the branch to Mud Bay.   We stopped for a late lunch and then headed back the way we had come.   Tom lost the lure to a might snook who broke the line in the mangroves, but was able to land a smaller one - his first snook.   We watched kites catching their prey and eating it midair, a manatee and her baby, flycatchers and piliated woodpeckers.   Only on the trail to the native stand of Royal Palms did we meet an obstacle - the mosquito wall.

Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary

Corkscrew Swamp, near Imockalee, FL, was our first introduction to the ancient bald cypresses that once filled the swamp land of  south Florida.    This area and Big Cypress National Park  are the last remaining stands of these magnificent tress, saved from the loggers.