It's been a while since I last blogged, but I needed to get back into it for one of the best trips we have taken so far. After Mike and James finally decided to purchase their own kayaks, and Victor, my athletic brother in law, moves back to Miami, I was able to gather support for a more challenging trip where we move from camp site to camp site. This was a big change from the usual floating barges of food, beer, tents, Tiki torches, tables, showers, toilets, and anything else we could tie to a towering canoe and float to Pavilion Key for a weekend you can barely remember. This time we were forced to pack lite, smart, and comfortable, since we spent most of the time rowing with some fishing along the way.
Day One - The Ranger's warning...
The day starts early. After about an hour drive we arrived at the ranger station at around 8:00 AM. We had to compete with other groups for the available camp sites, and received the bad news that Sunday Bay Chikee, our first site, was out of commission. We had to settle for Lopez River camp site, which made the first day's row much easier, but made for a challenging second day. We got a 10 minute speech from the back woods scary redneck looking ranger about the new breed of raccoon, called a crockacoon. He said they are a rare breed of prehistoric crocodile raccoon mixture. No one knows how they came about, but there had been several sightings. We were warned to stay away and avoid them at all cost. We thought it was some sort of sick joke at first, but when we laughed, he stared right at us with his right eye popping out at us, and gave us a strict warning: "You better hope you don't run into one out there!"
We made adjustments to our track and updated the GPS. There's a nice marina with a ramp right at the entrance to Chokoloskee. You pay the man at the counter inside and leave your car there. We spent a good hour setting up the Kayaks. It was a challenge. Knowing you are going to spend the better part of 4 days sitting on your behind, you want to make sure the layout is going to work.
Other than the first hour we spent crossing the expanse of the bay, it was an easy first day. We had no idea what what in store for that second day. We got a heck of a workout on our right arms with the wind blowing north, but once we crossed, we basically rode the tide. Barely needing to row we took a break drifting and eating an early lunch.
We arrived at the camp site in no time. With plenty of time to spare, we setup camp, and fished form the shoreline. Victor headed back out to go fishing. Unknown to us at the moment, Victor had a childhood dream of catching a gigantic snook, so he drifted back out in the afternoon in search for his fish, while we stayed back at the camp, sitting at the shore line, smoking a cigar, sipping on Diplomatico Rum, line in the water, and enjoying the emptiness of mind.
Day Two - The Flood
It rained all night. High tide was fast approaching, and it was still raining that morning. When we thought we couldn't wait any longer for it to stop raining or we would miss the tide and possibly get stranded, we decided to pack up camp in the rain. We had to role up the ten, trenched in mud, and by the time we finally got going it was already too late. The tide had already changed, and now we had to row a good 5 miles against the tide. Having been the one in charge of planning the route, I felt responsible, but there was nothing we could do about it now. It didn't help we had to setup camp so far away from our next destination.
After finally making it to the top of Lopez river we stopped feeling the tide against us. Upset that we couldn't camp at Sunday Chikee and avoid the Lopez river stretch on day two, we decided to investigate the Sunday Chikee area. We found what looked like ground zero for a crock-a-coon attack. We stopped there for lunch, and left hoping we would never run into the crock-a-coon that caused such destruction.
The second half of the day was long, but it got easier. We did some fishing along the mangrove trails and caught several sea trout. When we finally reached the camp, it was disappointing to see two other groups there, but it turned out alright.
After setting up camp it felt good to start on dinner. Victor set out to catch his fish, while Jamey and Mike helped with dinner.
For a while it felt like we accidentally drifted into another dimension. Maybe it was the mental fog due to the exhaustion and hunger, but thinking back on it, there was some weird Sh**t going on!
- First, we were sharing our camp site with some very odd looking creatures from outer space. They wore fancy camping gear, and what appeared to be green flying saucer on their head. At first we thought these aliens must not be able to breath our atmosphere, but later figured out they were probably just trying to keep away the mosquitoes. Come to find out, even alien women love to nag. The flying saucer on her head didn't stop her from continuously nag at the poor alien male. Her high pitch continuous voice made it very hard to concentrate.
- Second, the mosquitoes... I was doing my best to keep focus on the task at hand: cooking the trout. But it was extremely difficult to ignore all the mosquitoes biting on us.
- Third, as we finally settled and started eating dinner, a swarm of fireflies descended on us. It was like an aerial scene from a world war II movie.
When the sun went down it was all good. This camp site had a dock by the water, and we got to do our nightly ritual of smoking and drinking rum.
Day 3 - Smooth Sailing
Day three started out great. I don't know what it is about food out there, but it sure felt like we ate one of the best breakfasts ever. I was low on ice in the cooler, so I decided to cook all the eggs, bacon, and sausage. With two grills going on I worked on the eggs while Mike cooked the sausage and bacon. Man we stuffed our selves. It was a beautiful morning and the sun was back, although we would have preferred if the rain had brought cooler temperatures with it.
With the tide flowing with us, it didn't take long to reach the mouth of the river. You could barely make out Pavilion Key from there, but we paced ourselves and reached the sandy beaches of Pavilion Key in little time.
When we got there the wind started to pickup. We were worried a storm was going to hit us, so we focused on setting up camp first. It was extremely hard to pitch a tent in the wind. We ended up using all but one of the kayaks as anchors. That morning's large breakfast was starting to knock at the door, so we all took our turn digging a comfortable spot in the sand. As expected, Victor went off to find his fish. We stayed behind and fished from the shore line. We saw several black tip sharks and the trout was biting like crazy, but the snook and red fish were MIA. James and I did our ritual firewood pile that we lit up at night. We also had several fish hooked in the water we were planning to eat, but we started drinking too early and cleaning fish just didn't seem that important any more.
Day 4 - Victorious Homecoming
Worried we would miss the tide and be stuck out there, we packed up camp and got started early. Victor was taking his time working the mangroves in search for his trophy snook. We didn't mind, but often left him behind a mile or so. At one point we started to worry. It had been a while since we've seen Victor and we didn't see him coming. We started to turn back, when we saw him turn the corner yelling: "I GOT A FISH! GET THE CAMERA!" It was his trophy snook. Determined he would catch one out here, he finally hooked it. We all went back to the spot he caught it and found it to be a gold mine for snook and redfish. I also hooked the redfish I was looking for there, although I lost it as I was pulling it onto the Kayak. All-in-all that was a great day. I'd never seen Victor smile so big.
