Everglades City - Day 1

 The 40 mile trip from Marco Island to Everglades City was nice. Flat ocean and a little warmer.  Yeahhh.

Though we had always wanted to visit Everglades City, we were concerned about the depth on the 7 mile trip up the river to the city. Other boater reviews we had read indicated that depths should be OK. It turns out that they were wrong. Argghhhhh!

Here, we're making our initial approach to the Everglades waterway that would lead us through the mangrove islands to our destination.

The dolphins seemed happy to see us as they came out in force to say high. Here's a video of some jumpers. In case it doesn't play well, the direct Youtube link follows it.

Dolphin jumpers

The water here was wonderfully calm.

This is the land of 10,000 islands. Now we know why.

Several times, both coming and going, we totally ran out of water - - like 0.00' below the keel. That is a terrible feeling, especially when we are so far from anything. Totally on faith, Jim puckered up and pushed through the soft mud - - very gently. . . It was such an awful feeling!

The good news is that we made it. Phew!

Everglades City is a small, quaint town with a distinctive old Florida vibe to it.

The kids at the school were playing outside as we passed by on the water so we gave them a toot with our horn. They loved it.

As we approached our "marina", we hailed them numerous times on our radio and called them several times with the phone - - crickets. 

Finally, someone answered & told us to proceed to their dock & pick a spot. We, of course, were the only boat on this long dock. The dockmaster tried to help us but was out of his element. The docks were nice, though.

Once secure, we headed to the office to check in. We were surprised at both the RV park and the clubhouse. This is quite the posh RV resort for only the largest, motorized RV's. As we threaded our way to the office, we were amazed at the number of large, spotless RV's, or "motorhomes" as we learned that they call them. Even the clubhouse was pretty amazing.

The gal at the desk told us where to find the 4 small restaurants in the city. 1 was at the gas station & the others were on the water so we headed out to find some lunch.

The best recommend restaurant was closed due to a gas leak in the kitchen. Hmmm.

This was their distinctive front yard ornament. Fun.

We went on down the waterway to this nice little dive which had great, local stone crab claws.

After lunch, we decided to give Speedy's a go of it.

This was Speedy. He had a fleet of 6 airboats or so and we got him as our guide. That's a good thing.

On the way to the glades, we passed Samba on the long dock.

It was a great tour through some pretty tight passages, some reallllly shallow mud flats and, of course, some requisite gators. Speedy was like a sports car driver whipping his over-powered machine around tight corners and doing donuts in the mud flats.

I'm looking at you looking at me!

Speedy was a great guide and the trip was well worth the effort. What a fun, serendipitous thing to do.

We got back to Samba around 5:00 and found several RVers fishing on the dock so Jim & John talked to one of them to get a little local knowledge about the river fauna. As it turns out, Samba was sitting almost on top of his favorite fishing hole. 

Guess what is in store for day 2 in Everglades City?