Days 259 - 260

Naples FL - Everglade City

• Start 7:20 AM
• End 1:30 PM
• Underway 5:30 Hours
• Distance 45 Miles
• Total Miles on Trip 4460
• Av Speed 8.2 knots
• Weather Sunny , 75 Degrees, Wind 16 Knots NE

What a morning, to start with my alarm did not go off. My phone did a system upgrade and rebooted, and was waiting for my pin to restart. I woke up at 6:55am, and we were supposed to leave at 7:00am. Dan & Cheri (Cheri Baby II) were ready to go. We made it off the dock by 7:20.

One of the reasons we left so early was to get as close to our destination as we could before the wind and the waves picked up. It was a good plan, the only flaw was the wind came early. By about 9am, it was getting sporty. The seas were, what are called a confused sea, where the waves come at you from multiple directions. The waves were mostly around 2 feet, and occasionally bigger. The spray from the waves was coming over the bridge. By 11am, we passed Cape Romano and were able to turn towards the shore, and it got much smoother. By the time we got to port, the entire outside of the boat was coasted with salt. The salt was thick enough you could wipe it with your hand and have enough salt for a margarita.

As we left the gulf and entered Indian Key Pass around noon, we called Everglade Isle Resort, where we were heading. Our check in time was 1pm, but we were hoping to be able to come in early. No such luck. The dockmaster does not start work until 1pm, so we anchored out and waited.

After an eight mile ride through the islands of the Everglades, we arrived at Everglade Isle we were pleasantly surprised, it is primarily a high end RV resort. Their entire shoreline is lined with slips. Most of them are vacant. If you have a RV in the resort the slips are a flat fee of $25, for transients it is $125 per night.

Everglade City is a quaint town on the edge of the Everglades. Their two industries are tourism and fishing (Both commercial and recreational). By luck we had booked our stay during the beginning of their annual Seafood Festival. We are here Thursday & Friday and the festival runs Friday through Sunday.

One of the primary attractions here are Airboat rides through the Everglades. We booked a combination tour with Captain Jack's Airboat Tours that included a mangrove tour, a sawgrass, a swamp buggy ride, and the Wooten Animal Sanctuary and Alligator Park. Before we booked our online, we checked the location, and found it was a 10 minute walk from the marina. After we booked it we found out that only the mangrove tour was at that location, and the rest of the tours were five miles away down a busy highway that was not bike friendly. Because we booked within 24 hours, there was no refunds. After a lot of talking and checking with people, Kathy at the snack bar said we could use her truck to get to the second location. Once again we found how great people are!

Words cannot describe how incredible the airboat rides were. On the first ride we toured the mangroves. Some of the channels we were in were barely wide enough for the airboat and most of the channels were under the canopy of the mangroves. We had hoped to see alligators, but the captain explained in winter the fresh water and warm water is further up the everglades and that is where they are. The second airboat ride was in the "sawgrass", while we stayed in the channels not really in the sawgrass it was also incredible. We did see plenty of alligators on this ride. The first one we saw was when the captain stopped the boat to tell us the history of the everglades, when we looked over there was one laying 5 feet away from us. We probably saw ten more on the ride.

The swamp buggy ride was nothing spectacular. Most of the ride was over dry trails. But the buggy which sits about twelve feet high was pretty cool.

Friday night we went to the Seafood Festival. For such a small town the put on a great festival. There had to be over 100 vendors, plus food trucks and every kind of seafood you could imagine. Everyone knows I do not eat seafood, but I did have shrimp cocktail.

Saturday we are continuing our way to the Florida Keys. We could make it in one day (about 90 miles) but it would be a long day, and we are slip reservation are for Sunday. We are going to stop at Shark River Inlet and anchor out. It is abot ½ way to Marathon.