Warm weather.

A cold, lingering rain today while I sit inside and write. So...photos of warmth and sunshine.

Jenny Lake, Grand Tetons National Park.

Lunchtime on a float trip along the Yellowstone River.

Warm Spring day at the Dry Tortugas National Park.

 

Wakualla Springs State Park, Florida.

Egmont Key!

On the Chassahowtizka River.

De Leon Springs.

Andy and I, at a Hot Spring on the Yellowstone River.

Another Cool Camping Trip

One of the coolest places Carole and I ever hiked was the abandoned city on Egmont Key in Florida. Once upon a time it was a thriving military town. But the fort was decommissioned and the population removed from the island. It became a ghost town, then a smuggling point for illegal aliens. The local police got sick of having to police the town (which was then pretty much intact), so they burned it to the ground one night "by accident".

We also had one of our all-time favorite campsites at the Fort DeSoto County Park just outside of Tampa.

This was our campsite at Fort DeSoto County Park near Tampa. Campsites really do not get any better. Separated from other sites by lots of vegetation. Full shade. Waterfront. Water and electric hookups. Across the street from the bathrooms, hot showers, and laundry facilities. Quiet. Tons of wildlife. We loved this place.

We took a boat ride to Egmont Key State Park and explored the abandoned Naval fortifications.

There are miles of these amazing brick roads that once took you through the city, which is not all but gone except for some foundations and a few standing walls.

The Egmont Key lighthouse. The metal housing on the top was removed and used for scrap during WWII. There is a movement afoot to have it replaced with a new housing and, as I understand it, most of the private funding has been collected to have this done.

This was the first time we encountered an ocean-going manatee on one of our trips.

Tired.

Rough day. Hardly wrote at all today. No energy for blogging.

I actually see this kind of thing a lot on the coastal regions of the South. This was part of the cistern system at the naval fort on Egmont Key. When it was constructed, this spot was beneath part of the old fort and well on shore. These days, coastal creep has washed away almost all of the fort that used to stand here. Instead of a half mile or more of sold land real estate around it, the cistern now sits constantly in deep water.

More Critters

Carole and I are relatively adventurous when we go to visit parks. Most people who go to Florida are there for the beaches, perhaps, or the amusement parks. But most folk don't seem to venture out much farther than the edge of the shore.

We tend to go hiking into the forests a lot and to hit the waterways either in a canoe or kayaks or sometimes via water taxis to get out to isolated islands where we can go hiking. That is what we did one day on this trip. We took a boat out to Egmont Key where we spent most of the day walking the trails on the island and seeing what it had to offer.

And, of course, in addition to the historical ruins out there, we also viewed a fair amount of wildlife. Here are some of them:

This dark shape was approaching the boat. The captain took us to see it up close.

Mr. Manatee! This was the first ocean-going manatee we had seen. Most we encounter are in the freshwater springs.

The endangered Gopher tortoise. Egmont Key has a good breeding population of this rare reptile.

Beachside crow.

This baby osprey was way up on an enormous concrete tower that was part of the fort.

The ungainly anhinga in flight.

A bottlenose dolphin on our way back to shore.

And back at camp, this little lizard was sitting on one of our wastewater hoses.

Jillions

Usually I reduce the size of photos before I post them on my blog. But I left this one full size so that when you left click on the image you can see the details. And the details in this photo that are most dramatic are the love bugs. I don't know what species this insect is, its scientific name, its family, genus, etc. What I can tell you is that in May in central and southern Florida they seem to outnumber everything else in the state.

They apparently reach adulthood, take flight, and immediately pair with a member of the opposite sex. They then attach themselves in an orgy of genetic material exchange and fly around joined at the genitalia. In places the air is packed with them. I've seen them so thick that you have to cover your mouth to keep from ingesting them. When driving around you hit them constantly and your vehicle becomes black with the splattered corpses of the orgiastic little shits. They remind me of Republicans: dumb, self-destructive, and seemingly without number.

I took this self-portrait on top of one of the forts on Egmont Key. The air was swarming with love bugs. They were everywhere you looked or moved. (Click to see it at full size and detail.)

Sometimes as you drive along you hit waves of them. Quite literally waves. You will be moving along at a good clip hitting them along the way, and then--SPLASH!--you encounter a vast wall of them and they explode across your windshield as if fired out of a vast cannon.

Question: "What's the last thing that went through their minds?" Answer: "Their asses."

"I'll bet they won't have the guts to do that again."

The comments run on.

They're disgusting critters, reminiscent of humans, to me. Hell-bound to make babies, no matter the consequences. Just ask Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Egmont Key (Part II)

Carole and I had four hours to explore the island. Egmont Key is not a huge place, and we saw most of what we wanted to see in the time we had (we were dependent on the schedule of the ferry), but you could easily spend far more time than we had and still leave things left undone. There is a large wildlife sanctuary on the far end of the key that is mostly off limits to humans. The only access is by walking in from the land--the beaches are completely restricted access on that side. If we'd had more time I would have hiked into the sanctuary to get a closer look at the bird life there.

As it was we still did not scope out all of the ghost town. The streets form a bit of a maze and we left some of them as mysteries for another trip on another day. That is one thing that really floored me about Egmont--the size of the town that once supported the fort. Since the number of folk taking the ferry the day we went was small we mostly felt that we had the entire ghost town to ourselves. In fact, we never once encountered another person as we strolled those palm-lined brick roads.

The site of one of the larger buildings in the old Egmont Key village.

Carole walking down the lonely street. We kept our eyes peeled for more gopher tortoises, but we never saw any in the interior of the island, but that's where most of them live.

I couldn't get over the beauty of those brick roads lined with palms.

This was one of the most intact buildings on the key. It was a warehouse until the town burned in 1925 (fire set intentionally by Federal law enforcement during an alcohol/illegal immigrant raid).

Scenes like this make me want to take advantage of the right to camp overnight on the island. You can stay overnight if you apply for a free permit to do so.

This building is the only old one on the island that is in good repair. It was restored by a local historical society, but we were told that some branch of the government (we were never sure if it was Federal or State) is agitating to tear it completely down.

Since there are absolutely no public facilities on Egmont Key at all, this would be an ideal museum/visitors center/bathroom building. I hope they don't tear it down.

Part of a rail system on the bay side of Egmont Key. I think this was a loading/unloading port.

Part of an old warehouse beside the short rail system.

Oleander blossom with ever-present love bugs. The love bugs were everywhere. In places the air was thick with them.

The military cemetery. Almost all of the graves were Civil War era and all but a couple of the deaths were due to Yellow Fever and other such maladies. Only one gravestone mentioned a gunshot death.

Just beyond the cemetery you come back to the lighthouse and ranger abode. What a posting, eh?! Live on a Florida Gulf Coast key with an entire island all to yourself! The ranger did look like a happy guy the couple of times we encountered him.

Self-portrait at the lighthouse. For some reason, the US military came to the island in the 1940s and removed the housing around the light. The light is still there, but the metal housing was removed and destroyed. The local historical society has been given permission to restore it and they're trying to raise the funds to do so.

After we toured the island we went out to the beach to lie around and soak up some rays. Click on this image to see it in fuller size.

This dirtbag dogged us, waiting for a chance to strike and steal some of our stuff. Crows are complete assholes when you're at the beach. Watch your stuff!!!

I took a walk way down the beach while Carole relaxed. This was one of the old gun emplacements that has fallen into the sea as the island erodes back into the Gulf. We figured that about one third of the island has vanished since its days as an active military installation. The old power plant is far out in the ocean, now, and has been for about three decades.

A gull takes up a post on what looks to have been an old cistern.

This sign is for visitors who arrive via private boats. Neither the State guys who run 3/4 of the island nor the Feds who run the other 1/4 want your dogs or cats on this wildlife preserve. Either leave them at home or aboard yer boats!

When I passed the old concrete towers I could see the osprey parents feeding the big chicks, so I went back for a closer look.

One of the rather serious looking osprey chicks.

The other osprey chick. Somehow one chick was on one tower and one on the other. Did one fly off the nest and get stuck on the other tower? Not sure. What I can say is that the other tower did not seem to have a proper nest on it. Chick, yes. Nest, no.

Alas, we had to leave Egmont Key. I got this view of the vast bridge over part of the bay on the way back to the mainland.

This is actually a cell phone tower in the middle of the bay. Obviously the brown pelicans love this place! Seeing this, I have to remind myself that brown pelicans came close to extinction due to the effects of DDT just a few decades ago.

And just as we got back to the dock, we were rewarded with seeing a pod of bottlenose dolphins fishing the surf!

Egmont Key (Part I)

A couple of days after we'd checked in to our campsite at Fort DeSoto Park near Tampa/St. Pete, we hopped on the ferry that takes you over to Egmont Key. The island is accessible only by water and is the site of a former military fort that was expanded with a complete town just prior to and following the Spanish-American War. These days no one but a state park ranger lives on the island, but in its day the town was vast, complete with a movie theater, shops, bank, homes, warehouses, barns, a power plant, etc.

Most of the structures from the days as a military base are gone, and even the fortified concrete gun implacements are deteriorating. Some of the concrete fortifications have even fallen into the sea due to the severe beach erosion. From what I can gather, the island has shrunk by about a third since its days as an important Florida fort. The power plant now lies far out to sea where it has been flooded for more than a quarter of a century and is now covered in soft corals.

What does remain of the town of Egmont Key are the main forts, many foundations, some standing walls and towers, a light house, and a maze of truly spectacular brick streets that take up the central part of the island. If you're in the area, you should definitely take the time to gain access to the park to see what remains of this relic of the Spanish-American War. There is a tremendous wealth of bird life on Egmont Key, and it's also a refuge for the threatened Gopher tortoise.


When we arrived at the pier to board the ferry, we saw this pair of green parrots on the line above us. I assume that these are invasive birds, as I don't ever recall seeing parrots in Florida before this.

This is the pier where the ferry picked us up. There's a gangway leading down to a floating dock. For some reason I forgot to take a photo of the ferry.

The young manatee that we passed as we were heading out to Egmont Key.

Carole aboard the passenger ferry. The couple behind her were amateur birders/herpetologists. They were there specifically to see the gopher tortoises on the island.

Getting closer to Egmont Key.

A loggerhead sea turtle that was passing us as we approached Egmont Key. He did not care for us at all, took a breath and dove for cover.

The main dock at the light house and the ranger's residence. We didn't tie up there. Instead the captain just grounded the ferry and lowered a gangplank and we marched down to the beach.

Carole at the light house.

Almost as soon as we got off the boat we encountered this gopher tortoise munching on grass. He was quite friendly and kept walking up to us. I suspect some visitors habitually feed him.

I got this shot while standing in the shade of the light house.

This is one of the first forts you encounter on the trail leading toward the beach.

Sign warning hikers off of protected areas.

Some of the native plants colonizing the dunes around the old fortifications.

The second fort.

People obviously spent some amount of time in some of the fort rooms. Several had fireplaces installed.

Concrete trail leading down to the last and most accessible fort.

Carole at the final fort. This is the only fort you're allowed to climb.

This view reminded me of some Mayan ruin.

On top you can see old gun turrets, and wonderful views of the Gulf.

The love bugs were everywhere! At times you literally could not breathe through your mouth, else you'd ingest them.

The weather was very pleasant, but I'm sure these concrete hallways would be cool and inviting on a hot summer day.

Headed back down the trail toward the site of the old town.

Foundations are all that remain of the administrative buildings, homes, and shops.

These old towers had osprey nests with chicks in them.

Part of the old sewer system. For its day, it was state of the art.

From descriptions, I'd thought that the brick streets were brief and a single lane near the center of the town. I was wrong. They were wide and varied and extensive, running for miles throughout the island. The town had been much larger than I'd been led to believe.

Carole took this of me standing in one of the main streets. (More details in later posts...)