Paddling on Lake Martin

Just a few miles south of Breaux Bridge is Lake Martin where we discovered one can rent various sorts of kayaks or even take tour boat rides. We drove from the campground and soon had ourselves a double sit-on-top kayak to paddle about on.

 

Much of the lake's shoreline is a cypress swamp with what looks like drowned trees, but in fact this is their habitat along with lots of other things. The latter include the occasional alligator, but much more frequently we saw birds and fish. The water quality was questionable as it seemed full of green algae to the point of a serious bloom. I'm wondering if agricultural runoff is a problem here or whether it's natural having so much algae...

 

In the middle of the lake, there were several hunting blinds. It wasn't hunting season, but the blinds apparently are left up all year and are quite elaborate. The hunter's can drive their boats right inside the blind and then get out on an attached shooting platform. All of this is covered with vegetation which at this time of the year had gone brown and will likely need to be replaced before the next hunting season begins.

So a nice little adventure, especially for my partner who had not had much paddling experience in gator infested waters!

Louisiana - Breaux Bridge

Safely parked in our first Louisiana campground in Breaux Bridge, just off the I-10 highway. The highway had been horrendous because of its undulating surface which was so bad I was forced down to 40 kph and running the flashers! It was unbelievable that an interstate highway was still in this condition, especially in an oil state, but there you go...

The campground facilities were excellent and other than the road noise from the nearby highway, we had little to complain about.

 We were lucky to run into a lady walking her dog in a little park beside the river. She took the time to lead us in her car to the Pont Breaux bar and grill. This turned out to be a very drab looking place from the outside, but was a legendary place for Cajun music. Just about everyone you can imagine has either played here or visited. We stayed for lunch and then a few days later returned for supper and to listen to some live music. The place was packed on a week night forcing us to wait at the bar for a table.

Breaux Bridge is on the Bayou Teche, a muddy looking river which slipped along one end of the campground. This lovely house was right beside the town bridge crossing the river. I loved the colours, the flowers, the whole setting of this house!

Meanwhile, the Bayou makes its muddy way through the rest of the town and on to the sea.

We enjoyed the town and found it a great place to explore the surrounding territory for local colour, music and food!

I even met a fellow Quebeçois who thought he might have met me in Kuujjuaq in 1974!  Possible, but I didn't recognize him...

   

Topsail State Park, Florida

Leaving Sopchoppy, behind, we headed to the coastal road and wade our way westward. We stopped for lunch along the way at a little family run diner which operated in a buffet style. You pointed to the dishes you wanted and the cashier tallied at the end of the counter. For desert we went next door for an ice cream cone and chatted with the owner. He operated the ice cream shop during the winter and then went to pan gold in Colorado in the summer! What a life!

 

Continuing along the coast we arrived at our next home for a couple of nights, Topsail State Park. It was a lovely, well forested park with decent showers and a much needed laundry which we took advantage of!

The beach was about a mile away and a shuttle ran every half hour during the day. Instead we decided to explore the trails which led out of the campground into the forests along the shore.

Once down at the shore itself we were taken with how white and sugary the sand was! It really did look like snow from a distance? 

The trails were not very well marked in places and a one point only my GPS told us we were getting lost! We back-tracked and finally found the trail we were supposed to be on and headed back to the campground.

In places the camp rangers had burned the underbrush leaving it looking black and a bit ugly, however this is a natural process and will actually make the area less prone to accidental fires which could prove very dangerous.

In the evening we strolled down to the beach to see the sunset. The shuttle had ended for the day. So the beach was nearly deserted. The white sand and green plants made a nice setting for the sunset. This place was certainly one of the nicest spots we had camped in during the trip to date!

Sopchoppy Delight

Allstays, the camping app I use said their was a County Park in Sopchoppy, Florida so that's where we headed next. Some friends had stayed at a state park a couple of miles down the road and liked the area, so we decided it was a good spot to stop and explore for a few days.

Driving into the town park it was not immediately obvious where the office was to sign up for a camping site. A man in a pickup truck headed our way, so I lowered the window and ask where I could register. He said, "Hang on, I’ll go round to the office." and then he got out of the truck and walked to the rear, lowered the tailgate and announced the office was open! He wrote up a few details and I signed in. We were registered for two nights! It was that simple!

The campground was nearly empty, but that changed the following day when a few more rigs showed up for the weekend. We checked out the washrooms behind the stage, the showers were hot and the facilities clean. A trail led across a bridge to the opposite side of the river, but we didn't follow it too far. We'd had a long drive and spent the evening chilling out.

 
 The following day we backtracked a few miles to a little trail system we had seen which promised sinkholes and underground rivers. It proved to be quite interesting as we followed the several kilometres of trails through a forested area.

In places the forest sat in water, while in other spots it was high and dry and the streams disappeared underground!

One curious sign suggested not to take a trail as it was closed for some unspecified reason. We headed off in another direction, visiting a number of sinkhole features and so on, eventually coming out at the end of the closed trail. Deciding we didn't have time to continue the loop we were on, we headed down the closed trail to see what the problem was. It turned out to be a bridge spanning a drowned cypress forest. The bridge must have required repairs so was closed. However another trail paralleled the bridge along the shore so we took it as the gps suggested it led back to the park entrance. In fact it led to the original trail closed sign we had seen at the outset!

 

Another kilometre or so and we were back at the park entrance having followed several rivers as they appeared and disappeared on their way through the forest. 

It was time to head back to the campground and forage for food!

I Go To Hell, Tate's Hell That Is...

My son Lee has made the suggestion to check out Tate's Hell, so when we passed a sign indicating the state forest by that name was just ahead, we pulled off and headed down a single tracked sandy road. The further we went the more concerned I became that this wasn't the best place to tow a camper, but the road didn't get worse so we kept on going. After several miles we came to an intersection and turned left following the signs. Another left shortly thereafter and we had arrived!

 

 We headed up the tree lined track, turned the camper around and got out of the car. This was Hell? It was actually an elevated boardwalk over a section of the swampy forest which for some reason had been dwarfed. Perhaps a crucial lack of nutrients had resulted in the dwarf trees, but all the same it was an interesting area to visit.

As you can see in the photo on the left, the boardwalk climbs above the forest and curves around slightly to give a good view of the area below. The dwarf trees are surrounded by normal sized trees, but appear stunted and slow growing. 

 

Finally after having a good look around, we headed back to the main highway and continued our way westward. There were lots more interesting places to see along the way!

Cedar Key

I'd been to Cedar Key years ago and was anxious to once again see the funky little town at the end of the road. I also wanted to revisit the little campground where I had stayed as well. It was one of those places which lingered in your mind and kept asking for your return. We were lucky to get the last spot for a couple of nights. 

When I say lucky, I'm not sure that was the correct term. The site seemed like an after thought it was so small! Luckily we were even smaller so we managed to fit in, but really, what were they thinking? The campground had changed hands over the years and the new people seemed only to be trying to squeeze as many ribs on the grounds as they could. The funky ambiance was gone. It was just wall to wall rigs, the old washrooms no longer the delightful surprise, but a sorry sight. Where was the maintenance, the care and the love the old owners had given the place?

 

Oh well, we headed into town and enjoyed some shopping and the yummy food overlooking the gulf. That was still as wonderful as ever!

That night the bottom fell out of the thermometer and we weren't ready! We damn nesr froze to death! Good thing we both had a warm body to cling to...!
 

Once we had thawed out the next day, we went for a hike up the road a ways where a trail led to some old shell mounds built by the indigenous people long ago. I suppose they had had a village nearby and had taken advantage of the shallow water to harvest the abundant shellfish for food. I had walked this trail on a previous visit and was pleased to find it in good shape.

It was soon time to move westward along the coast to see what else there was to explore.

Bad Day In Naples

Thinking it would be interesting to drive south down Route 41, we headed south from Pine Island roughly following the route laid out in a 1935 guidebook. Needless to say there were changes, lots of them! In fact there were changes even from a few years past when I had taken the same route south to the Everglades. Most notably, there were no more open spaces. It was mall after mall after mall divided briefly by traffic lights. It was at a traffic light that the trip took a nasty turn...

Waiting for the light to change green, we took a sudden impact from the rear. Someone hadn't stopped in time and smashed into Big Trill! I got out and walked back. A young girl was at the wheel on a middle sized car. She claimed her sandal had come off the brake pedal, but I suspect she had been texting someone. In any event, I suggested we pull off to the side and exchange insurance info etc. As I turned right another car clipped the right corner of Big Trill! Obviously in Florida even when it's clear there has been an accident, charging ahead on the right is common practice! 

 

Once on the side street, it was apparent the young girl had run off. We dealt with the second car, exchanged info and so on. We then dealt with the damage. The rear bumper had been pushed in, the right tail light was gone and the fibreglass on the right corner around the bumper was cracked in multiple places. We headed for a hardware store and between that and a deli counter at the grocery store we created a new red tail light. Duct tape covered the cracks in the glass and once again we were on the road headed south.

We were so happy to pull into the Riptide RV Park on Key Largo and find our spot waiting for us. The natives were friendly and the sunset beautiful. Life was good once again...