After procrastinating forever, myself and 9 other geocachers met up in the Fakahatchee Strand to hunt for a cache called "The Ghost Orchid". As we stood around gathering our thoughts and supplies, a few of us heard a deep, low growl coming from the north side of the road. By unanimous agreement, it had to have been a panther, especially since the very next day, our friends Chris and Misti (who hid the cache) were out there and SAW a panther and took some awesome pictures of it! Check out http://www.oceanicwilderness.com/ if you want to see them.
Off we go!
We saw quite a few orchids, but no Ghost Orchids. I believe this one is a native butterfly orchid. None of what we saw was in bloom, so it was kind of hard to identify things. The area was very dry.
A vanilla orchid? Maybe?
The only wildlife we saw was this beautiful owl. He wasn't frightened of us at all and posed for several pictures. I need a better camera!
Much of this area would normally be underwater, but our lack of rain has left it very dry. It was hard to call it a "swamp"!
Taking a break. We were deep in the swamp at this point.
Orlando, Lee and David at Ground Zero! We found it!!!
It was a long walk back down this tram road to our vehicles. Well, not really...only 1 1/2 miles, but my feet were screaming the whole way!
There were a couple of old, delapidated vehicles out there, too. This one appeared to have been a tourist-type tram car or something...it had an old rack on the roof that made it look very "safari-like". Interesting stuff!!
Before meeting up with everyone at Joanie's Crab Shack, I had to go into the Picayune State Forest to check on a cache of mine that was possibly missing. Lj came with me and Lee and his kids followed in their jeep. We made it out to the cache site to find the tree had been trimmed and the cache missing. Oh well! We turned a corner to head out and there was a big Black Bear in the middle of the road!!! It sort of bounced off the road into the woods as I was laughing and getting very excited. I stopped and waved Lee up next to me. He rolled down the window and I said, "Did you see that bear!?!?!?!?!?" "No. There was a big white truck in front of us."
Oops!
Now yesterday, there was a geo-event at Oleta River State Park. Eventhough it's in Miami, I had never been there before.
The brains behind this event, CaneDNR! (and the back of objet's head)
I took my son's kayak out and it handled great! The hub rented one and said it wasn't too bad, either. We paddled and explored the mangrove creeks...it was nice, but kind of weird. You feel like you are far away from everyone and isolated, yet you hear constant traffic! Yuck! Paddling back we were against the wind for a bit and it was rough. I was so surprised to wake up this morning and NOT be aching! Come to think of it, I didn't ache after the Ghost Orchid, either. Hmmm...not bad for an old fart (with MS, too!!!!)
These are just two examples of why I LOVE geocaching!
Adventure, friends and being outdoors!
3 comments:
The orchids you have posted photos of are the Florida Butterfly Orchid (Encyclia tampensis), Oblong-leaf Vanilla (Vanilla phaeantha) and Rigid Epidendrum/Zigzag Orchid (Epidendrum rigidum).
---Prem
curator
The Native Orchid Blog
THANK YOU for the orchid IDs!!!! I'm just happy I got two of the right.
That cache hunt looks like fun! I had visions of wading through waist deep swamp water - which I would not consider fun LOL
And you saw a bear? That's really cool. There are bears all over where we cache and I've never seen one.
The cache event looks fun too. They're having one close to here that I would love to go to but it's on Easter Sunday and that day is reserved for family. The last one was on Halloween and that's a family day too. I wish they'd have one on a non-holiday LOL
Glad you weren't sore after your kayak trip - you aren't as old as you thought you were!
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