Wednesday 29 November 2000

Uneventful 100 mile trip to St Augustine Beach KOA campground, stopping off at the Visitor Centre on the I95 for the traditional free map and huge numbers of brochures. Seems quite pleasant; cool and raining on arrival, but can't blame the campsite for that. The price was $8 a day more than shown in our Trailer Life guide which we thought a bit steep, but we got a weekly rate which helped somewhat. Letter from my Mum awaiting us on arrival.

The weather cheered up after lunch and the sun came out, so we went down to the beach - only 3/4 mile from the site - and walked along the enormous white flat beach, with dunes and palm trees to one side and the Atlantic on the other. That's a bit more like it.

Thursday 30 November 2000

Finally managed to pick up the backlog of emails after the major surgery on the PC. In the afternoon we went on the little train (actually a truck with wagons on the back) which does a circuit round the town with commentary: three days unlimited use for $12 which can't be bad. We actually went all the way round twice, as the second driver's commentary was better than the first. Looks as if there's going to be plenty to see.

In the evening went to Ripley's Believe It Or Not, a kind of combined museum of oddities and watered-down freak show for those of you unfamiliar with Mr. R's work. Robert Ripley was a dilettante traveller from the 1930s onwards who picked up all sorts of curiosities and photographs on the way; for a while he did an illustrated 'Believe It Or Not' newspaper column and then opened the first exhibition in St Augustine; there are now 17 around the world. My favourite is the mermaid, a taxidermist's construction of the mummified top half of a small  monkey and the bottom half of a fish, which fooled leading scientific authorities for many years; the animals with extra limbs and heads are a bit grisly though.

Friday 1 December 2000

Began touristing in earnest. First, the fort - Castillo de San Marcos - built by the Spanish to repel all-comers ..,.

Interesting info #12: Remember the bit bit about the Pilgrim Fathers being predated 13 years by the early Virginia settlers? (Go back and look at Virginia if not). Well, they were both a bunch of Johnny-come-latelys compared with the Spaniards, who first landed at St Augustine in 1513 led by the delightfully named Ponce de Leon who claimed the entire continent for Spain. They forgot about it for a while, but then 700 settlers and troops led by Pedro Menendez founded the first European settlement on the North American continent in 1565, beating the brave British lads by 42 years. Oh, the shame. This is why the settlement at Jamestown was more concerned about defensibility than habitability; the Spanish had had over 40 years to get themselves entrenched along the East coast and resist any attempts by upstart Brits to pinch their territory.

The fort is both the oldest and largest National Monument in the USA, and has never been overwhelmed in battle. This is partly due to its construction; it is built out of coquina, a local stone formed from compressed seashells, which is not hugely strong but has the useful property of absorbing cannonballs. Instead of knocking the walls down, they simply lodge in them. There are the usual bunch of historic re-enactors, who had a musket firing demonstration while we were there ...

Those things are loud and smoky; thank heaven for the AK47.

In the afternoon we visited the Flagler Memorial Presbyterian Church ...

... built in just under a year in the Spanish style prevalent in the area. Henry Flagler was one of the leading 19th century entrepreneurs, a co-founder of Standard Oil and primarily responsible for the development of Florida as a tourist destination from the 1880s on. This was achieved by the simple means, normal for men of his ilk, of bankrupting anyone who set up in competition with him. The church was a memorial to his daughter who died of childbirth complications at the age of 34; it contains superb carvings and Tiffany stained glass and cost untold squillions of dollars to build because of the quality of the work and the speed with which it was put together.

Saturday 2 December 2000

Christine a bit poorly, so we relaxed, updated the web site, shopped at a farmer's market, and generally bummed around. I managed to nearly destroy my big toenail (the only remaining intact one until now) while moving the table and bench at our site; it was incredibly painful and I'm now limping pitifully. Sorry, no photograph.

Sunday 3 December 2000

Both of us now not at our best, and the weather appalling, so we stayed in except for a masochistic walk along the beach in the wind and rain. There are some strange seabirds here which look exactly like woodpeckers, light grey with a yellow crest on top of their heads and big strong bills. The ordinary gulls etc. don't seem to know what to make of them and stand somewhat apart.

Monday 4 December 2000

Visited the Lightner Museum. Mr. L. was another entrepreneur industrialist, glass this time, who bought up entire existing collections of all sorts of stuff and put them in his museum. The building used to be Mr. Flagler's flagship hotel, but it went bust in the 1930s and Mr. Lightner subsequently bought it for about 10% of its original construction cost - quite fitting really, as that was what Mr. F. used to do with his competitors. In its heyday the hotel contained the largest indoor swimming pool in the world - 120' long by 50' wide - which has now been turned into a restaurant and several antique shops. Scallops for dinner at the Florida Cracker restaurant - yum.

Tuesday 5 December 2000

The Fountain of Youth today - the original sulphur spring found by P de L all those years ago, now turned into a slightly tacky tourist attraction. It comprises various information displays, a small planetarium showing the constellations as they were in the 16th century, and the spring itself, whose water is absolutely disgusting. There are also a few gratuitous peacocks. We arrived at the same time as a huge party of Korean tourists, none of whom spoke English and were therefore totally mystified by the commentaries except for the  occasional phrase translated by their tour guide.

The name of the fountain derives from a legend going around at that time, to the effect that in lands far to the west there was a fountain whose waters gave eternal life - the usual kind of legend thing. When P de L arrived he found that the local Indians were on average about 2 feet taller than the little Spaniards, and had a life expectancy about twice as long, so this was put down to the effect of the spring waters.

Outstandingly good lunch at the restaurant in the old swimming pool of the Lightner Museum - see above - including live music from an excellent guitarist, Rod Kuncicky. In the afternoon visited the Oldest Store, a museum based around the Victorian stock of a general store which ran there until the 1960s. A lot of the exhibits were actually the store's own stock at the time, so it's not difficult to see why it went out of business ...

Wednesday 6 December 2000

Drove south through Orlando and past acres of orange groves to a new site: Holiday Travel Park of Cypress Gardens, near Winter Haven in central Florida. Mainly inhabited by permanent or semi-permanent residents of advanced years, many of whom get around the campsite on tricycles. Pleasant surroundings, clean restrooms, and a proprietor who was in England with the US Army in the 1980s and loved our accents.

It is much warmer here, to our extreme delight.

Thursday 7 December 2000

On the recommendation of the site proprietor, visited Cypress Gardens themselves. We had been expecting some kind of pleasant area to walk around in, but the entrance price of $32.95 indicated that it might be something a little more. In fact it's a huge theme park, including a large lake on which there's a paddle steamer and water-skiing demonstrations, a zoo, a botanic garden, a 'Golden Age of Radio' exhibition, a topiary garden, a butterfly house, a swimming pool in the shape of Florida used in one of Esther Williams' films, a giant rotating aerial viewing platform (one of only five of its kind in the world) ...

... and loads of other exhibits. At dusk all the illuminations come on - over 5 million lights apparently. We got our money's worth and went to and on just about everything, so were pretty tired when we were thrown out at 9.00pm. It's all more adult-oriented than Disney, and therefore more enjoyable for the likes of us old fogies. 

Cypress Gardens came into existence as a tourist attraction almost by accident. Someone bought a huge chunk of Florida in the 1930s when it cost next to nothing, and created some gardens for their own pleasure as that's what they enjoyed doing. Later by popular request they opened them to local people charging 25¢ to come and look. One weekend the children of the family gave a water-skiing demonstration to a few friends; the next day over 700 personnel from the local Air Force base turned up to watch the show, and it all took off from there.

The Cleveland Indians training ground is located right next to the gardens - a mildly interesting piece of trivia for AIT people in America.

Friday 8 December 2000

Recovered from yesterday - just lazed around and enjoyed the warmth. Booked a few more days as we like it here.

Saturday 9 December 2000

Visited Bok Tower Gardens. This really is a quiet and pleasant place to walk around, but with the addition of a magnificent (English made) carillon housed in a marble and coquina tower ...

... built by industrialist and philanthropist Edward Bok in 1929 (who also created and donated the gardens), and now an official US national treasure. The five octave carillon is played by means of a purely mechanical keyboard; at 3.00pm each day there's a recital by the resident carilloneur, with recordings (or mechanically played pieces - we weren't sure which) at intervals during the rest of the day.

Within the gardens is also Pinewood Estate ...

... a modest 21-room winter cottage built in the Mediterranean Revival style in the 1930s by a steel tycoon who used it for all of 6 weeks each year until he died a few years after building it. It then passed through various hands until being bought by the Bok Tower Gardens Foundation in the 1970s, who restored it and opened it to the great unwashed. When we visited they had a 'Twelve Days of Christmas' exhibit, in which twelve of the rooms were themed around the song: corny but fun.

Sunday 10 December 2000

Drove to Kissimmee State Park, which mostly consists of a lake and large areas of Florida scrub in its natural state (98% of this has now disappeared to make way for orange groves and Disney theme parks). It includes a 'cow camp' where a herd of Florida scrub cattle is maintained; these are small  but very hardy beasts descended from those brought over by the Spanish in the 16th century and abandoned when they left, then not domesticated again for another three hundred years.

Saw several nine-banded armadillos ...

... which are smaller than we expected, with pointed noses and incongruously large ears. When they're rooting around for insects they're oblivious to observers and will walk right up to you. Also spotted two raccoons at dusk, but we were driving out of the park at the time so no pictures I'm afraid.

Monday 11 December 2000 - Tuesday 12 December 2000

Laundry, emailing, shopping, postcards and general idleness.

Wednesday 13 December 2000 - Friday 15 December 2000

Better stop the day-by-day account for a while or you'll all become bored rigid, those of you who aren't already.

Drove about an hour to spend three days at Lakeland RV Resort, Lakeland, Central Florida. As its name suggests, it is in the middle of a group of lakes of varying sizes with which central Florida is amply endowed. Very nice campsite with heated pool, lots of activities and good facilities, but right next to I4 which hadn't been obvious from the directions. Still, it was actually warm enough to have a couple of swims in the pool during our stay, which was another first.

The Lakeland area is a bit dull and residential; the main activity is visiting the various lakes (Parker, Mirror and Morten) to see the bird life which is very varied: cormorants, egrets, herons, black swans, muscovy ducks, and of course the wonderfully named purple gallinule ...

 ... which is supposed to be a twitcher's delight but at Lake Parker comes up and begs for bread quite shamelessly.

Al Gore finally bowed to the inevitable and conceded to George Bush after weeks of wriggling. Hoo bloody ray - we might get something else on the TV for a change. In our opinion there's very little to choose between them; they come across as equally shifty and slimy, with Bush perhaps marginally more so.

Saturday 16 December 2000 - Friday 22 December 2000

Further west and south to Fiesta Grove RV Resort at Palmetto, a small town a little bit down from St Petersburg. The resort is actually sited in an old citrus grove, and each site has its own orange tree. It's very quiet and pleasant but a bit lacking in facilities; most of the residents are elderly retired people who live there all year round. On arrival I managed to scrape a bit of paint off the side of the trailer, which was exceedingly annoying as I'd managed to avoid doing that up to now.

The highlight of this area (if you're a fan) is the Salvador Dali Museum at St Petersburg, the finest collection of his paintings in the world. It's in this slightly incongruous spot because a Mr. and Mrs. Morse, good friends of Dali since the 1940s and avid collectors of his work, wanted to house and offload their huge collection (largely for tax reasons, I believe), and St Pete's was the only place to come up with a suitable home. Regardless of what you think of the content of Dali's work, he was undoubtedly a technically brilliant artist. By the age of 13 he was producing works which most of his contemporaries would have given their left arm to paint; on a number of occasions he decided to try a particular style (such as Picasso's blue period), produced a first-class work straight off, got bored and moved on to master something else. Two of my favourites are where he had taken popular commercial prints (a seascape and a field of sheep) and with water colours transformed them into surreal compositions; even peering at them closely it's impossible to tell which bits are the original print and which are his additions.

Visited the Museum of Fine Arts in St Pete's, which is excellent and has a wide variety of work ranging from 1st dynasty Egyptian and pre-Columbian via Art Deco and Art Nouveau to contemporary.

On one freezing cold day we went to the Selby Botanical Gardens in Sarasota, about 30 miles south of our site. Mr. Selby was another entrepreneur made good (Texaco this time) who bought a large lump of Florida and whose wife created the gardens; great orchid and bromeliad collection.

There is also what is billed as a 'museum', which turned out to be the Selby's house with rooms decked out in various tacky Christmas themes; a strange definition of a museum but I suppose it's just another example of the transatlantic language barrier.

The other great place for art lovers in Sarasota is the Ringling Museum of Art, yet another entrepreneur's legacy (Ringling Brothers Circus). Over the course of a very short period - less than ten years - John Ringling put together a stupendous accumulation of old master paintings from the 14th to 18th centuries which stands comparison with many national collections: Reubens, Titian, Van Dyke, Rembrandt, you name it, he bought it, including a wonderful Bohemian sculpture of a dancing bishop ...

 There's also naturally a circus museum, and in 2001 Mr. Ringling's modest little house, a marble palace in Italian Gothic style called Cà d'Zan ...

... (Venetian dialect for John's House) which is currently being refurbished, will be opened to the public as well. The collections ended up in this part of the country because Sarasota was the winter quarters for the circus.

Saturday 23 December 2000 - Friday 29 December 2000

Moved to our first really big campsite: Clerbrook Golf and RV Resort, which is built around its own golf course and is situated in the middle of citrus grove country near Clermont. It has around 1,250 sites arranged in three separate 'villages', its own hairdresser, shop and post office; many of the permanent residents have golf carts which they use to get around the site rather than for golf. It also turned out to be the cheapest place we'd stayed at so far, as we got the whole week at Passport America 50% off rates.

We were hoping that there might be a communal Christmas lunch organised, but we couldn't find a trace of one so we bought some chicken, ham etc. and did our own - very nice too. Made the obligatory Merry Christmas phone calls to England in the morning. After the huge lunch we drove to Lake Louisa State Park and waddled round the lake which is set in the middle of a cypress forest and has its own beach; not surprising as Florida consists almost entirely of sand. Just like being at the seaside.

One day we drove to Kissimmee near Orlando, where all the Disney and other fun places are situated. If you think Blackpool is touristy you should come here and have your eyes opened; it's just miles of restaurants, cheap souvenir shops, advertising hoardings and ticket booths offering two Disney tickets for $10. What they don't mention is that to get them at this price you have to attend a timeshare presentation, which is nominally 1½ hours but which apparently ends up lasting three or more. The timeshare scam is definitely alive and kicking around these parts. There are also plenty of little offices brokering timeshare resales which are probably about half the price of a new one, but I'm sure the ticket touts don't mention this.

Another good day out was the Kennedy Space Centre situated on the East coast about halfway down Florida. Apart from the main visitor centre area, which includes the rocket garden ...

... containing examples of all the rockets used in the space program from the original 1950s military Redstone until the Saturn 1, there are three separate viewing areas which you're shuttled around by bus as they're several miles apart. These are LC39A and B (the two main launch areas), a Saturn 5 rocket of the type used for the Apollo 11 moon landing ...

... and the ISSC (International Space Station Centre). Our particular favourite was the yellow sign on the side of the shuttle ...

... which seems to imply that if anything goes wrong you need a man with a can opener at the ready to get you out.

Saturday 30 December 2000 - Monday 1 January 2001

Moved further south to Big Cypress Campground on the Seminole Indian Reservation located at the northernmost edge of the Everglades. It's 38 miles from the nearest town, and apart from those in state parks is possibly one of the most remote campsites in the US despite being situated in one of the most populous states. After being sat at the edge of Interstates for so long the silence was absolutely deafening. This is a very pleasant site and nearly empty, possibly due to the imminent holiday.

The branch of the Seminole tribe which lives on this reservation (there are several others in Florida and Oklahoma) is pretty wealthy, thanks to the gift of Bingo. I believe that it's illegal in the rest of Florida, but because the reservation is partly autonomous they can run a huge Bingo hall which brings in several million dollars per year. The reservation was created in 1964 but only under a 50 year agreement, so it's not obvious what will happen in 2014; presumably the government can't take it back again or they'd be crucified by every minority rights group in the country as well as the press.

The tribe has its own jet which operates from an airstrip right next to the campsite, but fortunately there was only one landing during our stay (the chief and his family returning from their winter skiing holiday in Colorado). Their jet used to belong to King Hussein of Jordan, and apparently is a great improvement on the previous model which shook all the RVs on the site every time it took off or landed.

Apart from the peace and quiet there are precisely two attractions in this part of Florida: the Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki museum of the Seminoles and the Billie Swamp Safari Park (Billie is the surname of the current chief of the tribe). The museum is fairly good, and has a nature trail with a traditional village manned by a couple of uncommunicative Seminoles. The Safari Park organises airboat rides on the swamp and wildlife viewing trips in an all-terrain vehicle on the drier bits, both of which we did. Airboats are jolly good fun but incredibly noisy; there was a fair variety of wildlife but much of it is exotic (e.g. water buffalo, nilgai) introduced to provide something to look at. They also have a number of chickees for rent;

traditionally built Seminole houses which seem as if they would be cold in the winter and plagued by mosquitoes in summer. None of them seemed to be occupied, so other people probably agreed with us. In the ticket office cum shop they have a pet armadillo which you can hold and stroke, probably an unrewarding experience for both the stroker and strokee.

Tuesday 2 January 2001 - Monday 8 January 2001

Down to Florida City, about the most south-easterly town in mainland Florida. We stayed at the Goldcoaster RV Resort, which on inspection turned out to be the nicest one in the area with big grassy plots; it's always difficult to select on the basis of the blurb in the campsite directories but in this case we got it right. The only downside was the spectacularly rude and unhelpful owner of the campsite (we believe she was the owner as she surely couldn't have got away with it as an employee), who made Basil Fawlty seem like Mr. Personality. Customer service was only an abstract concept to her, if indeed she had ever heard of it, with no foundation in the real world, any entry into her office being taken as a personal affront and requests for information or assistance as direct attacks. Her ill-temper seemed mainly to be caused by two things: continually having to let people in through the security barrier, and campers wanting to use email which was only accessible by disconnecting her fax line. Both of these bugbears could have been very easily remedied by means of an automatic barrier (or a gatekeeper) and the installation of an additional phone line, so she was obviously stupid as well as rude, two qualities which often seem to go together.

To be fair, this site had a good community feeling and the best set of organised activities we'd yet come across, including a bingo evening. We didn't attend (honest), but through the door heard what had to be the most uninspired caller ever; no 'two fat ladies - 88' etc., just the numbers read out in a bored monotone. However, the room was packed out so he obviously didn't feel the need to extend himself.

We came to this area to visit the Everglades National Park, one of the world's outstanding wildlife areas. The whole extent of the Everglades occupies most of the southernmost 80 miles of mainland Florida, although the National Park only extends over the bottom left quarter. Rather than write my own inadequate description, I'll rip off a piece directly from Encarta ...

I INTRODUCTION

Everglades, vast marsh covering much of southern Florida. Formed by thousands of years of overflow from Lake Okeechobee after heavy rains, the Everglades extends southwestward from the lake to the shores of Florida Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. The marsh lies in a shallow basin of limestone, tilted slightly to the southwest, that begins a few kilometers north of Cape Sable at the southernmost tip of the Florida peninsula and stretches northward to Lake Okeechobee. Several small streams, such as the Miami, Little, and New rivers on the east and the Shark and Harney on the southwest, drain the region, but none flows into it. The swampy Everglades constitutes a "River of Grass" (so named by its famous chronicler, 20th-century American author Marjory Stoneman Douglas), covering about 13,000 sq km (about 5000 sq mi) and averaging 80 km (50 mi) wide and 15 cm (6 in) deep.

II DESCRIPTION

The Everglades is a unique wetland ecosystem on the margin of the tropics. Its slow flow of water supports grasslands, thick forests, and a diverse group of animal, fish, and bird life. The Everglades originated between 8000 and 10,000 years ago at the end of the most recent of the Ice Ages, when the melting of the glaciers caused sea levels to rise, inundating the region’s outlets to the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico and converting the low-lying basin into a swamp.

Today, tidal bays, lakes, and connecting waterways, varying in depth from 0.3 to 2 m (1 to 7 ft), and sometimes considerably less in dry years, honeycomb the wilderness of swamp, savanna, and virgin forest that make up the surface of the Everglades. Most of the marsh, however, is covered with saw grass that rises 1 to 3 m (3 to 10 ft) above the surface of the water, and is often so dense that passage is effectively blocked except for the natural water lanes. The entire region lies less than 6 m (20 ft) above sea level, with elevations overall averaging between 2 and 3 m (7 and 10 ft).

The climate of the Everglades is tropical savanna, characterized by hot, wet summers and warm, dry winters, with no month exhibiting a mean temperature below 18° C (64° F). Average annual rainfall exceeds 130 mm (50 in), though this amount can vary widely when hurricanes cross the region or multiyear droughts strike (as happened during most of the 1980s). Cypress, mangrove thickets, palms, live oaks, pines, and lush vegetation cover the numerous islets (known as hammocks) that are found in the Everglades. The lower-lying floodplain that surrounds these hammocks becomes a swamp or is covered by water during the long summer rainy season, which is usually marked by heavy downpours associated with daily thunderstorms. Wildlife, although severely reduced in number and diversity over the past century, is still abundant and includes alligators, American crocodiles, deer, wading birds, fish, snakes, and the endangered Florida panther.

III POPULATION AND ECONOMY

The Everglades have been inhabited by native peoples for several thousand years. During much of the 19th century, the marsh was a sanctuary for the Seminole people during their conflicts with United States troops. Today, the Miccosukee people constitute most of the region’s residents. They are concentrated in reservations near the center of the Everglades; much of their income is now derived from gambling profits in large bingo halls, which attract large numbers of retirees from the urbanized coastal areas to the east.

Agriculture, the leading economic activity in the region, is confined to the northern segment of the Everglades in the area south of Lake Okeechobee. Here, on rich, drained lands, farmers have raised sugarcane, fruit, and vegetables since the 1920s. In the wilderness to the south and west, tourism dominates, with most of the swamp’s visitors drawn to certain sites where the natural processes of the Everglades can be closely observed. Approximately 1 million people per year visit Everglades National Park, which covers more than 6000 sq km (more than 2300 sq mi) in the southern Everglades.

IV ENVIRONMENTAL THREATS

During the 20th century, human interference has altered the Everglades ecosystem. Shortly after 1900, large drainage projects were launched. Soon many canals were built, which lowered the level of Lake Okeechobee and inhibited its natural tendency to overflow into the Everglades. As urban growth along the Atlantic coastal strip accelerated after World War I (1914-1918), more and more water was diverted from the Everglades. Simultaneously, an agricultural zone was developed south of Lake Okeechobee, and farming soon consumed huge quantities of water. Meanwhile, the farms’ phosphorus-rich fertilizer wastes and pesticide residues were dumped into water that made its way southward across the swamp. At the same time, two major east-west highways were built across the region, enhancing the accessibility of wilderness areas.

In addition, the introduction of exotic vegetation with no natural local enemies, notably melaleuca trees and Brazilian pepper plants, has upset the traditional biological balance in the Everglades. Melaleuca trees were imported from Australia early in the 20th century in an attempt to launch a timber industry and to drain the region. The wood proved too difficult to harvest, but the new trees spread quickly, overwhelming many other plant communities and consuming much of the marsh’s dwindling water supply. Brazilian pepper was initially imported as an ornamental shrub for landscaping, but it, too, spread out of control.

The federal government tried to preserve the Everglades ecosystem by designating the southwestern segment of the swamp as the Everglades National Park in 1947. Although wildlife protection was thereby enhanced, the park was too small (covering only about 20 percent of the Everglades) to counter the negative environmental forces plaguing the region. Later, during the 1960s, the United States Army Corps of Engineers thought it could help by converting the Kissimmee River, the source of Lake Okeechobee’s water, from a meandering subtropical stream into a straightened concrete-lined channel. However, this channel has wreaked further environmental havoc in the northern part of the Everglades watershed.

Recently, the environmental problems of the Everglades have received national attention, and a number of restoration efforts have been initiated in the 1990s. The federal government has approved the idea of expanding the Everglades National Park in order to control more of the area’s water resources. The state of Florida is attacking the chemical pollution problems in the Lake Okeechobee farming sector. Despite these efforts, environmental scientists still consider the Everglades ecosystem to be under severe stress. In 1996 the administration of U.S. president Bill Clinton endorsed a huge plan to protect and restore the Everglades by taking farmland out of production and allowing it to revert to marsh. In addition, the plan, if passed by the Congress of the United States, would appropriate money to help restore the Kissimmee River to its original channel and continue removal of nonnative species, among other projects.

So now you know. It's a really strange place to be in, flat enough to make Lincolnshire look like the Himalayas. Differences in the height of the land of as little as a foot cause enormous variations in vegetation, creating hardwood hammocks (up a foot) or cypress 'domes' (down a foot) amongst the plains of grass.

During the wet season a lot of it is under water, as well as being sweltering hot and infested by mosquitoes, so the dry season (November to April) is really the only time to visit; the wildlife tends to concentrate around the waterholes as well making it much easier to spot. The recent cold snap had killed off nearly all the unpleasant bugs so we were pretty much unmolested, less so than in an English summer. This had been one of our prior concerns so it was a pleasant surprise.

One thing which we had not expected is that there are virtually no parts of the park which are off limits. Other than a few areas near the visitor centres where wildlife congregates, and restrictions on wheeled vehicles and power boats, you can set off by yourself in more or less any direction you want. The down side to this is that nearly everywhere you go you're in between three inches and two feet of water, although it is very clean; there's virtually no muck as the swamp consists of a shallow layer of sand and water-retaining vegetation over a layer of limestone, and when you emerge you can just squeeze your trousers and socks out, let them dry and they look unscathed. We went on one organised two-hour walk into a cypress dome with a park ranger, and at the end did another on our own as we couldn't get any wetter than we already were.

Alligators abound in the park. They have recovered from being listed as an endangered species in 1967 following over-hunting and habitat destruction, and are now fairly prolific. They're a lot less vicious than the Australian salt-water crocodile, tending to run away from people, so the various alligator-wrestling shows which abound in these parts aren't as impressive as they're meant to be.

Also, if you can turn them upside down the design of their brain is such that they fall asleep, so it's not that much of a challenge. Florida has crocodiles as well; these are nastier, but are seriously endangered so you're not likely to meet one.

There are a few more animals, including the very rare panther which is now down to around 20 (a couple of cougars have been introduced recently to widen the gene pool), otters of which we were very lucky to see one in the late evening, rabbits, turtles, snakes, white-tailed deer, and loads of fish. However, the main group of wildlife to spot is the birds, of which there are zillions. For the twitchers among you we saw: great white herons, great blue herons, little blue herons, tri-coloured herons, green-backed herons, yellow headed night herons, turkey vultures, black vultures, bald eagles, red-shouldered hawks, wood storks, great egrets, snowy egrets, little egrets, white ibis, glossy ibis, anhingas, cormorants, pie-billed grebes, common moorhens, purple gallinules, boat-tailed grackles (I'm not making this up, honestly), one roseate spoonbill, palm warblers, greater yellowlegs, common yellowthroats, belted kingfishers, an American bittern, a northern cardinal, American crows, and various unidentifiable LBJs (Little Brown Jobs). We're not normally spotters, but there are so many birds of such variety and to which you can get so close that it's inevitable if you come here.

Green-backed heron and cormorant

During our stay here we visited some part of the park on every day except one, as there's so much to see. The only thing we didn't do which maybe we should have was a boat trip into Florida Bay right off the southern tip of the mainland; you see lots of wading birds but at a distance, and as we're not experts it wouldn't have meant a great deal.

Whilst watching an egret one day we were asked by a photographer if we would appear in a couple of his shots. He turned out to be a professional (Peter Carmichael) who was just completing his next book in a series, and whose publisher had asked him for a few shots with people in. The book comes out in a couple of months so we'll keep an eye out for it and see if we made it in. His previous book, Florida's Fabulous Natural Places, was on sale in the gift shop and was excellent so we bought it; pity we didn't have it a month ago when we arrived in Florida so we could have visited some of them.

During our stay here we ordered flight tickets via www.travelocity.com for our fortnight's visit back to Blighty in January. A couple of anxious days wondering whether FedEx would manage to deliver them to our campsite, and if they did whether the old bag who runs it would hide them out of spite, but they duly turned up on cue. When we go we'll leave the trailer stored at Big Cypress Campground (see last week); it's out of the way there so nothing's likely to happen to it, whereas if we stored it near Miami where we're flying from it could be stripped to a shell by the time we return ...

A brief moan: Travelocity's website explicitly states that you can order tickets using a non-US credit card. Jolly good, we thought. It then asks for the full credit card address for validation purposes, including mandatory postal code. It then validates the postal code as if it were a US zip code (five digits) and throws it out if it fails; I had to give it five zeroes to fool it into carrying on. Honestly, I do get disheartened by the inability of supposedly intelligent people in my profession to design and implement the simplest things correctly and of quality control people to spot elementary errors; no wonder so many people get put off using the web at an early stage. There, that's it. Sorry.

This area is absolutely full of Hispanic people, mainly Cubans who have been coming here in droves for decades, and in fact the Miami legislature recently turned down a serious proposal that the primary language taught in schools should be Spanish. Most of the shops are run by Cubans, nearly all of whom are effectively bilingual, so anyone who isn't is at a disadvantage.

Tuesday 9 January 2001 - Monday 15 January 2001

Drove down to the Keys for a week's stay at the Lazy Lakes Campground on Sugarloaf Key, about twenty miles from Key West at the far end. This is a pleasant site with a couple of man-made lakes, but incredibly expensive ($57 per night) as are all sites on the Keys, especially Key West. It's also not very big, and needed a tight bit of reversing to get in; I managed it more by luck than judgment after a couple of tries, but some people were shuffling backwards and forwards for the best part of an hour. I tried not to feel too smug but failed, although I expect I'll get my come-uppance soon.

It's a little over 100 miles from Key Largo down US1 to where the road stops at the end of Key West. The Keys themselves carry on out into the Gulf of Mexico, but you need a boat to carry on, as indeed you do to access many of the smaller Keys on the way down. The climate is great, similar to that of the Bahamas which lie about 150 miles to the east.

Key West is known as the place in America where all the weirdoes, loonies, misfits and sexual deviants end up, and several people had warned us about this before we went. In fact we didn't really notice anything out of the ordinary: plenty of ageing hippies, a few pairs of blokes holding hands, a man with a pet pelican ...

... and some individualistic clothing and cars such as this one belonging to the owner of the Three Legged Dog Art Gallery ...

... but nothing at all compared with any average town in England on club night.

The main touristy bit is Mallory Square right on the western edge of the island, where a celebration of the sunset is held every day of the year from about 3.00pm onwards. It fills up with food and craft stalls, musicians and street entertainers - like Covent Garden but with good weather. The sunsets can be nice ...

... but mainly it's an excuse for having some fun. Duvall Street is the main main shopping, eating and drinking area; it's about a mile and a half long, and you can walk from the Gulf of Mexico at one end to the Atlantic Ocean at the other. There's a number of cultural places to visit too: Hemingway's house where he wrote about 70% of his output, the refurbished Customs House and Art Gallery, the Audubon House etc.  We did a glass-bottomed boat trip out to a reef about seven miles from Key West. Compared with the Great Barrier Reef the corals aren't much to write home about, but the fish are better.

Key West has had a checkered history. After America acquired Florida from Spain, the island's Spanish owner, fearing legal problems, sold it to a Mr. Simonton for $2,000. Being an enterprising chap he also sold it to several other people at the same time, and it took an Act of Congress to eventually sort it out. The town grew out of the industry of wrecking: salvaging ships wrecked on the reefs off the coast. Wrecking here did not have the same derogatory connotations as in England; the wreckers were licensed, and acted partly as a kind of informal lifeboat service and partly as salvagers who were awarded a part of what they recovered from the wrecks by the port authorities. This was such a lucrative profession that for many years of the 19th century Key West was the richest town in the USA in terms of per capita income.

In 1905 the ubiquitous Henry Flagler began constructing the final stage of his East Coast railway from Miami to Key West, including one seven mile long bridge, completing it in 1912. This was the first time there had been a land route from the mainland along the Keys. The railway, combined with improved reliability of shipping, signalled the end of wrecking which had pretty much disappeared by 1920. Unfortunately, in 1935 the railway disappeared as well, due to a dreadful hurricane which took out one of the bridges and caused the deaths of over 400 people, and the Lower Keys were once again cut off for three years until US1 was built (largely over the top of the old railway).

For many years Key West was a major base for the armed forces, and this largely supported the island's economy. However, in the mid-1970s numbers were drastically cut from around 16,000 down to 3,000, and it took over ten years for the town to recover by developing the tourist industry. Now it's a rich place again, with very modest houses in the old part of town selling for upwards of half a million dollars and the marinas stuffed with yachts.

Other than Key West, there are:

That's about it for the Keys. Lots of people seem to come here to spend the winter, despite the high cost, and you can hardly blame them; it's the nearest you can get to a Caribbean climate and atmosphere whilst staying within the US. If you're into sailing and / or fishing then it's a great place to be.

Tuesday 16 January 2001 - Wednesday 17 January 2001

Back to Big Cypress to store the trailer ready for the flight on Wednesday. We're heading back to England for a fortnight to see people, pay bills and look at five months worth of post. When we return we'll see what the weather's like and take it from there, but our guess is that it'll be Florida for a few more weeks at least.

A tedious but uneventful flight home with Virgin. The controller for my seat-back entertainment console didn't work properly, so I got one of the little video players out of first class to play with - no consolation for being unable to play Super Mario Brothers, though.

Thursday 18 January 2001 - Tuesday 30 January 2001

A frantic fortnight of travelling round the country visiting friends and relatives (after getting the car serviced, MOTed and taxed on day 1), paying bills, processing a pile of paperwork the size of Belgium, and generally dealing with five months worth of accumulated stuff. At the end of this we're really ready for a holiday ...

Wednesday 31 January 2001 - Sunday 4 February 2001

Our journey back to Miami with that nice Mr Branson was enormous fun. As we taxied out to the runway about an hour late, both we and the stewardesses near us at the back noticed something rolling around and going 'clonk' down below as we went round corners. They duly reported this to the flight deck, and we spent the next half hour driving round Gatwick with all the cabin crew listening for strange noises. At the end of this they pronounced themselves unhappy, and we went back to where we started and sat in our seats for about two hours while various people poked around in the cargo area. Eventually they decided that it was a luggage container not secured properly, and that we would try again; unfortunately air traffic control didn't have a takeoff slot for another hour and a quarter. As you can imagine, this just flew by. We then taxied out again with an engineer on board, and the noise was still there. More driving around rural Sussex, then back we went. This time they accepted that they didn't have a clue about the nature of the problem and that they'd have to find another plane which would take off in about four hours time. Probably. We gathered our free food vouchers, ate too much in Garfunkel's, wandered aimlessly round Gatwick, then got onto the new plane which at least had better video screens. Another hour and a half of most enjoyable sitting on the ground, then we took off. About ten minutes into the flight there were various disturbing grinding noises as they lowered and then raised the landing gear; just a normal test we were subsequently informed, but by this time no-one was in any state to believe anything they were told. However, we landed intact, demanded a free hotel room and finally got to bed about 26 hours after we previously awoke. Next time British Airways gets our business.

Back at Big Cypress Campground for the third time. Fortunately it's one of our favourites. By chance this weekend there was the Seminole Tribe Third Annual Shootout and Rendezvous just up the road - traditional food, reenactment of a skirmish from one of the Seminole Wars, games of stickball ...

... in which the object is to hit a narrow pole above a mark around 20' up. Men have to use their sticks to propel the ball while women can throw; other than that there are very few rules, and apparently a couple of broken legs is about par for a good competitive game. There was also traditional dancing, of course ...

Incidentally, the main foodstuff on offer was Indian Bread with various fillings - this is deep-fried dough not unlike a doughnut but without the sugar, and consists almost entirely of calories. Most satisfying.

On our first evening I went to send emails at the office, which has an outside modem connection. Unfortunately the mosquitoes had recovered from the cold spell and were out in force down at ground level, as I discovered later when my feet came up in red lumps, started itching like mad, and continued to do so periodically for about a week.

Monday 5 February 2001 - Sunday 11 February 2001

Travelled about 90 miles west to Bonita Springs near the Gulf coast. Stayed at a pleasant enough campground, Bonita Lake Resort, which is related to the Goldcoaster in Florida City whose owner has an attitude problem (see above). This one was friendly enough, but our site was narrow with very little maneuvering room and it took a lot of to-ing and fro-ing and swearing to get us in. 

This was the first site at which it had been worth even thinking about getting our awning unfurled. However, it was hot, dry and sunny - hurrah - so we did it with the expert help of Bud next door, making the trailer look much more holiday-like and inspiring us to buy a couple of outdoor comfy chairs. Bud and Susie had just started the travelling life last year following Bud's retirement from his career as a hospital administrator, which has to be one of the most demanding jobs going (at least it is in the UK, and I'm sure the US is no better), and from which he had escaped remarkably sane. They showed us round their sumptuous new motorhome which was still undergoing a few not-so-minor teething problems: one of the hydraulic jacks wouldn't retract, and the power converter wasn't producing any DC volts. I read an article to the effect that new RVs regularly suffer a level of faults which would be deemed totally unacceptable in any other major purchase, so it looks as though we've been lucky with the few minor ones that we've experienced. 

As a little light relief and to fund their retirement, Bud has set up a family business creating and selling commemorative paddles. This is a uniquely American item: a piece of wood in the shape of a paddle purchased by members of University fraternities / sororities displaying the frat name (Phi Beta Kappa etc.), its logo and its motto. He showed us a couple of examples whose mottoes will hopefully make their members deeply embarrassed in the years to come.

After about six failed attempts, most places having been booked up months in advance, we finally managed to book a site for a week within 30 miles of New Orleans during Mardi Gras. This was good news, as we were beginning to think we might have to stay in Mississippi about 70 miles away. The lady required a deposit for three days rental (cash or cheque; no credit cards) and the price was somewhat higher than shown in Trailer Life, but I suppose at this time of year it's a seller's market.

Visited Lee County Manatee Park, which is located next to the warm water outlet for a power station. Manatees can't survive in water below 66°F, so when the temperature drops to near or below this they flock inland from the gulf to stay warm, and this is one of their favourite places. We spotted about twenty or so basking in the sun.

Most manatees have horrendous propeller scars across their backs from encounters with powerboats whose freedom-loving owners routinely ignore low-speed zones. Some, like the one in the top right of the picture, have a permanent growth of algae on their backs from lying at the surface with their backs exposed to the air. For the rest of the day we visited the J. N. (Ding) Darling Wildlife Park, named after one of the area's early conservationists, where we walked along a good shell beach and saw several feeding roseate spoonbills, fiddler crabs, and a one-legged photographer with a well designed leg made of what looked like titanium tubing. 

Next day we visited the excellent Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, set up and maintained by the National Audubon Society. We didn't see the full range of wildlife and vegetation as the weather had been so dry, but the walk along the 2¼ mile boardwalk was good, passing through swamp, pine flatwoods, prairie, and the very last old growth cypress forest which was preserved due to the Audubon Society's intervention with the enlightened logging company who were sympathetic with their aims and efforts. I also include a photograph of myself taken there, for no other reason than that it's possibly the most unflattering picture of me ever taken ...

... making me look as if I'm giving the kiss of life to a large green snake.

On Bud's recommendation, we went to Venice Beach to look for fossilised sharks' teeth. The white sand beach is grey to black in places with ground up fossilised animal and vegetable remains; some configuration of the ocean currents washes a lot of it up in this area. The teeth aren't easy to spot amongst all the other black stuff until you tune your eyes in to their distinctive triangular shape, but we managed to find about 15. Serious shell and teeth hunters wade out into the surf with specially designed collecting boxes and nets to extract the better stuff which doesn't get washed up onto the shoreline; in this part of Florida there are numerous conventions and competitions to do with shells and shell-related crafts.

Also visited Collier Seminole State Park. Nothing special, but they have on display the original dredging machine used to create the Tamiami Trail - the first road link between Tampa and Miami - in the 1920s.

Monday 12 February 2001 - Wednesday 14 February 2001

Moved to Turtle Creek RV Resort at Homosassa Springs, about 200 miles north. A bad start to the week - Mondays never go right, even on holiday.

Drove some miles to WalMart to buy the missing bits and pieces. They had the necessary clip, but no pressure regulator and although they had a good range of petrol caps they didn't have the chart which allowed you to select the right one. No wonder they all looked a bit dusty - they'd probably been there since 1993.

We stopped here in order to visit Homosassa Springs State Wildlife Park, which is well known as a haven for resident manatees which have been injured or orphaned and can't be reintroduced into the wild. Many of these are hugely fat as they don't get a great deal of exercise, although manatees tend towards plumpness anyway. There's an underwater viewing area which allows you to see them feeding ...

... and as a bonus lots of fish swim in from the gulf and circle round in the lake for no reason that anyone knows ...

They also have a great range of bird life, including our first flamingoes ...

... and an aged hippopotamus, left over from when this used to be a general wildlife park rather than a manatee reserve, whose party trick is to shake himself and rotate his tail rapidly thus showering nearby visitors with mud and hippo poo. Unfortunately we didn't get to experience this.

Thursday 15 February 2001 - Wednesday 21 February 2001

We spent this week at Pine Lake RV Park in Fountain. This is a little town right in the middle of the Florida panhandle (the sticky-out bit at the top left of the state), which is generally undistinguished but is central for visiting lots of places in the area. Actually a very nice park, with lots of space and acres of undeveloped land to walk around; they also gave us 50% Passport America discount for the whole week making it our cheapest stop so far.

First visit was to Florida Caverns State Park, which unsurprisingly is centred around some underground caverns discovered and explored during this century ...

... although they also have some ancient unspoiled mixed woodlands with walking trails, which are a nice change from the generally boring pine forests which abound in Florida (where they haven't been chopped down to create citrus groves).

During the rest of the week we visited:

No more interesting pictures during this week's stopover, I'm afraid; it was just a nice restful week with lots of beautiful scenery. The panhandle is very different from peninsular Florida: cooler, less developed, and with much more varied terrain. The beaches are the best in Florida but you need to visit them during the late spring and summer as the temperatures aren't conducive to sunbathing and swimming otherwise.

At last - the end of Florida! We've spent much longer here than we originally intended, but it's been the only spot on the weather map which didn't involve snow and sub-zero temperatures. On to Louisiana and Mardi Gras.