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We haven’t visited many of the sights in the far southwestern portion of Florida. The closest we had gotten was in North Fort Myers back in both 2015, before we had committed to the full time lifestyle and again in 2019 for a Habitat for Humanity build. We wanted something even further south and for a longer duration in order to check out some of the places we hadn’t explored. We have found that most Florida state park campgrounds are pretty nice so in August when we were planning our travels in Florida for the winter months, we saw we could get a campsite at Collier Seminole State Park just south of Naples for 10 nights.
The hundred or so sites here only have electric and water but there is a dump station. While we can go for 10 days without needing to dump our holding tanks, it takes a fair amount of water conservation to do so. We also don’t like the thought of needing to break camp in order to drive over to the dump station midway during a camping stop. But we have found the shower and restroom facilities at the most of the state parks to be fairly decent so we should be able to easily last 10 nights by using the facilities in the park to supplement those in our motorhome. It’s just under 140 miles from the Elks Lodge in Sebring to Collier so it is a relatively easy drive. Coming in on a Sunday afternoon means there isn’t much going on at the park so we are able to stop by the dump station on the way in and then settle in our site.
After one lazy day at camp, we head out to explore some of the places to the east of camp. If you drive far enough on US Route 41, you’ll reach Miami. We had no goal to go that far simply because there seemed to be so much to do closer to Naples that we would never make it that far. Our first stop is at the Marsh Trail in the Ten Thousand Islands National Wildlife Refuge. This 35,000 acre refuge is immediately east of the state park and there is a fairly large parking lot that allows access to the trail and some of the canoe and kayak launch points. The trail heads south and has water on either side of it. There were a lot of water birds out in the shallow waters just off the trail.
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| Egret on the Prowl |
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| View Along Marsh Trail |
About a quarter mile from the parking lot is a two story observation tower which does provide for a nice view of the surrounding area. There seemed to be quite a few pelicans in full feeding mode with one of them splashing down to nab a fish every minute or so.
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| Observation Tower |
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| Pelican Searches for Fish |
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| View from Tower |
It seems like most visitors will go as far as the tower and then head back to their car. We knew the trail continues south for nearly another mile. We did see a couple of alligators in the water or on the edge of a small island just off the trail but admittedly there seemed to be less wildlife activity the further we went. Maybe the birds know to put on their show in that first quarter mile where the majority of the visitors are? When we got to the far end of the trail, we looked around a bit but just turned around and headed back.
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| Looking Out at Mangroves |
Back on US 41, we continue east with the goal of heading to Everglades City and doing an Adventure Lab to tour us around town. The place isn’t all that big with a population of around 400. If you want to do some sort of boat excursion, this seems like the place to go. Pontoon boats, air boats, kayaks and canoes are all popular options. We stick to the land and wander around town. It is definitely a touristy town but we still enjoyed our walk.
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| Everglades City Homes |
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| Old Bank |
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| Museum of the Everglades |
There seemed to be a thousands of dragonflies in town. I’m not sure if they are like this all the time or we got lucky but they seemed to be everywhere.
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| Dragonfly Poses on Sign |
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| Dragonfly on Grass |
It was definitely a beautiful day to explore. We did see one unexpected sign for a restaurant featuring pizza, pasta and pythons. From what we hear, the pythons are taking over south Florida so I suppose if you can convince visitors to eat them, it should help to keep their numbers down. We decided to pass on the opportunity for a python lunch.
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| Church in Everglades City |
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| Python for Lunch? |
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| Old Depot Restaurant |
Back up to US 41 heading east, in 3 miles we get to the visitor center for the Big Cypress National Preserve. The Nathaniel Reed Visitor Center has quite a number of displays that helped explain about this preserve as well as a pretty good video telling about the area and the history of the preserve. There is a short boardwalk behind the center that leads along some of the mangroves that make up much of the preserve.
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| Big Cypress Visitor Center |
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| Boardwalk at Visitor Center |
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| Water and Mangroves |
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| Swamp Buggy |
We head east another mile or two on US 41 to check out the country’s smallest post office. Yep, that’s a thing and there was a geocache hidden nearby to direct us to it. The Ochopee Post Office was previously an irrigation shed but was converted to the post office in 1953 after the original one burned down. Coming in at 61 square feet, we were rather surprised to see that it was open and had somebody inside the building. We decide to call it a day and head back to camp.
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| Country's Smallest Post Office |
The next day we head up to the Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary northeast of Naples. This 13,000 acre property is overseen by the Audubon Society. General admission is $17 but from everything we read about the place, it was worth the money. The main attraction is a 2.25 mile boardwalk that loops thru the swamp and marshland behind the visitor center.
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| Corkscrew Swamp Visitor Center |
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| Start of Miles of Boardwalk |
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| Swamp View |
It didn’t take us very long as we began to explore the boardwalk to realize this was a very special place with lots of very interesting plants, trees, bugs, birds, frogs, and flowers. As an avid photographer, I was constantly stopping to check out something along the way to capture just the right shot. The cypress trees that are right next to the boardwalk seem to have a strange ability to grow into and all over the wooden railing or floor boards. And there were a lot of strangler figs which we had learned about during our stop in Vero Beach a couple weeks earlier. These too seems to be trying to engulf the deck and railings as they grow over their host tree.
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| Tree Grows Over Deck |
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| Strangler Fig Goes After Railing |
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| Strangler Fig Wraps Around Tree |
Given this place is associated with Audubon, I was expecting the main interest would be birds. We did see a few birds but they were in the minority to all of the other things we spotted along the way.
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| Vibrant Dragonfly |
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| Blue-gray Gnatcatcher |
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| Mexican Primrose-willow |
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| Grasshopper |
There were quite a few air plants growing on the sides of the trees. These do not grow roots into the ground but actually get their nutrients from the dust and moisture in the air. They were very easy to spot because they were starting to flower with vibrant reds that stood out in the wooded areas around the boardwalk.
There are quite a few interpretive signs along the way that helps to describe the plants or animals that we are seeing. One area had a sign requesting visitors to be quiet in order to hear the pig frogs. We stood in this section for quite some time and could hear what sounded like dozens of them. But regardless of how quiet we were or how observant we were, we only ever heard them but never saw them.
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| Pickerelweed |
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| Dragonfly |
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| Lizard Showing Off |
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| Pretty Iris |
There were many unusual plants along the way as well as lots of small lizards and a few skinks. The latter seemed to more skittish as people approached so getting a good picture of one took a fair amount of patience.
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| Buttonbush Flower |
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| Another Dragonfly |
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| Purple Mushroom |
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| Skink |
There are several short spur trails out to observation platforms that overlook the surrounding areas. Near one of these I spotted a pig frog sitting on a fallen tree. This one was not making any noise but did stay put for some good photos. While we were chatting with one of the volunteers that were along the boardwalk, we spotted a hawk swoop in and land on a tree close enough for a good picture.
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| Pig Frog |
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| Grey Catbird |
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| Lizard on Cypress Knee |
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| Hawk |
We finally made our way around the full two plus miles of boardwalk taking nearly a full 4 hours to complete! This definitely was a very special place with so much to see along the way as long as you take your time and observe closely.
We did take some time to explore Collier Seminole SP since there were some things to see and do there. It’s a small enough park that the points of interest are all within walking distance of the campground. There is a unique log cabin that sits atop a stone first floor foundation. The upstairs is the residence for one of the park rangers while the downstairs is open to the public with information about the history of the park.
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| At Collier Seminole SP |
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| Inside Building |
There is a a marina area with boat rentals and water access to some of the Ten Thousand Islands Refuge next door to the park. There is also an old “walking dredge” which was used to create the Tamiami Trail back in the 1920’s. It is a rather large beast over 40 feet wide and 30 foot long with a huge arm and excavation bucket out front. There are signs that attempt to explain how the thing “walked” thru the swamp land to create the trail although it would be even more impressive if they actually had it operational!
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| Boat Dock |
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| Walking Dredge |
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| Lots of Gears and Pulleys |
We spent another day at the Conservancy of Southwest Florida. This is a small (21 acre) nature preserve of in the heart of Naples. Admission is $18 per person but it sounded interesting and one of the perks was a boat ride along the Gordon River. They have several talks during the course of the day as well so we plan on spending a few hours here.
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| Conservancy of SW Florida |
The volunteer at the visitor center suggested we head to the dock to get our name on the list for one of the boat trips later in the morning. This will permit us to attend one of the morning talks first, then take our boat ride. We have some time to explore some of the buildings before the talk. There is a large rescue bird habitat but there currently were no birds to see - I guess that might be a good thing for the birds. There are a few other displays in some of the buildings that were neat to see.
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| Empty Bird Enclosures |
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| Hiss! |
The talk was all about invasive species in this part of Florida. Besides some of the invasive plants, there is a good description of how two animal species are causing all sorts of problems in the area - lionfish and pythons. Both of these are believed to have been released into the wild from the exotic pet trade and they have become quite the problem. They had a python skin that was nearly 12 feet long. While there are programs for hunters to take pythons from south Florida, one of the more interesting approaches for hunting them is to place a GPS tracker in a large male snake and release back in the wild. It will often find several female pythons and then the volunteers can use a tracking antenna to locate the male and be able to get several female snakes. It sounded like they were looking for volunteers to help with the program but we didn’t investigate that option any further.
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| At the First Talk |
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| Baby Gator |
After the talk, we head to the dock and boat our all electric boat ride. They actually have several of these boats and we headed out into some mangrove lined channels to the Gordon River.
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| Electric Boat Fleet |
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| Looking Over the Bow |
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| Captain Bob Points Out Feature |
Each boat had a captain and 6 to 8 visitors so it was a small crowd but we did manage to be on a boat with a young kid that was not happy to be on the boat ride. We had a similar problem on our boat ride at Silver Springs State Park a month or so ago. It was still an informative ride and we went past some beautiful homes each with their own boat. We went as far as a weir which was about 1.5 miles from the conservancy. We did see some wildlife along the way but not too much.
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| Homes Along River |
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| Turnaround Point at the Weir |
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| Great Blue Heron Perched on Limb |
After the ride, we grabbed our lunch from the car and ate in the shade of the porch before heading to the second talk. This one was inside one of the buildings and was centered around a large spinning earth. They have several different programs that get displayed onto the globe that show various things like tracks of hurricanes over the years. Once the talk was over and the crowd was gone, we were able to go and play with the controls to see all sorts of interesting displays.
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| Animated Globe |
There were still a few inside displays we had yet to fully explore. These had mainly water based animals like fish and alligators. We ended up spending nearly 4 hours total at this stop and while it wasn’t quite as fun as Corkscrew Swamp, we did enjoy it and learned a lot.
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| Fish Tank |
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| Baby Gator |
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| Starfish |
We got finished at the Conservancy early enough in the afternoon to check out some other things nearby. We head to Baker Park to do a walk around the area and get in a few geocaches along the way. Our route takes us over a pedestrian bridge and gives a nice view.
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| View of Gordon River from Bridge |
We realized there was a new Adventure Lab at the Naples airport that had not been completed yet so we head over to the viewing area to do this as well as see some planes taking off and landing. This airport has no commercial traffic but there were a surprising number of planes taking off and landing. We had a good view of the planes taxiing up to take off as well as those coming in for a landing. There is a speaker system so we could hear the radio chatter between the planes and the tower. The whole walk was about 2 miles long.
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| Taxiing By Us |
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| Ready for Takeoff |
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| Coming in for Landing |
