My Weekend in Big Cypress

Every year some geocaching friends of mine have an annual camping event at a remote campground in the Big Cypress Preserve. This year, there were 4 of us making the trip...my two sons and my friend Lj from Pennsylvania. My littlest one was so excited about camping. All I heard for 2 weeks prior to leaving was "We go camping?" "I go camping, Mommy?" "We sleep in tent?" etc....

This was the view not far from the back of our campsite.

Friday evening, the squirt was really whiney and just plain tired, but would not lay down and take a nap. I decided we needed to go for a drive. No one else wanted to go. everyone wanted a break from the crying 3 year old, so it was just me and Aidan...driving down the road that leads to the campground and looky what we saw! Gee, it's kind of far away, but c'mon...you can guess....

It's a PANTHER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I zoomed in as much as I could and cropped the next picture. Terrible, but you can definitely tell what it is.

OMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Seeing this guy made one of my lifetime dreams come true. Awesome, totally, completely awesome. They are rare in South Florida and I bet 99% of the people here have never seen one in the wild. I feel very fortunate to have been in the right place at the right time. I just wish my other son and Lj had wanted to come along for the ride!

The next day, we went in search of a geocache located in the Fakahatchee Strand...a very humid, swampy, buggy area. Sounds awful, right? But it holds many treasures. One that we found was this orchid. I believe it's a butterfly, but not 100% sure. We also found what we thought were ghost orchids, but they turned out to be ribbon orchids. *Deep sigh, heavy depression* Well, I DID get to see that panther, so I can't complain too much.

I'll put up some more pictures tomorrow.

.....And for those curious, no, we never found that cache. Over 6 hours in the swamp and we camp out empty handed. Tired, sore, a bit bloodied and bitten. Maybe we'll try it again one of these days.