Kissimmee Prairie Preserve State Park, the 12 hour tour.

    I recently found out about a wildflower walk with Roger Hammer and Craig Huegel to benefit the Friends of Kissimmee Prairie Preserve State Park. This sounded interesting so I signed up for the afternoon walk, I knew I couldn't get up there in time for the morning walk. They also offered a swamp buggy ride so I signed up for that too.  For some reason, I never even considered camping out there the night before to make the early walk. Probably my aversion to heading out into Friday rush hour traffic to begin a weekend.
 Google maps routed me up US 27 and around the east side of Lake Okeechobee and estimated almost three hours to get to the park. Checking mileage afterward, I found that the route west of the Lake is actually longer.

 After leaving US27 at Okeetanta onto a two lane side road, I drove through Belle Glade, Pahokee, and Canal Point. Thinking all along, if this dike/levee fails these are the people who will lose their homes. There are houses with the levee seemingly right at their back yards. I passed Port Mayaca and Up the Grove Beach. As I was rushing to make it to the park by 1:15 p.m. to catch the wildflower walk I could not stop and take photos. At Port Mayaca, the Kanner Highway heads off to the east and 98 passes over the exit and you can actually see the vast expanse of Lake Okeechobee from this overpass. I left 98 at Up the Grove Beach and crossed over to 710 to pass through the city of Okeechobee.  Catching 98 again to head to Basinger, near the Florida Trail.
 There the terrain changed, it looks somewhat like it does along US 27 south of Fisheating creek but not so many oak hammocks. Running to the horizon is grass, beef cattle, and tall sabal palms in clumps.   I pass the entrance to Dixie Ranch 'since 1918' it says on the sign. I found that hard to imagine living on a ranch, probably four or five generations raising cattle in Florida.                 

     With all the small towns and slow speed limit zones I passed through, I knew it would take me every bit of three hours to get there. The instructions indicated I would have to drive the final five miles on a dirt road with a 25 mph speed limit due to wildlife. The park entrance day fee is four dollars and I followed the directions and put it in the 'iron ranger'. I passed more cows and a couple of donkeys heading into the park. Here in the park, the vegetation changed, the grasses are taller and in colored bands seeming to parallel the road. I found it hard to imagine having to travel across this either on foot or horseback as the natives and pioneers did.

As I got near the park office I saw this Crested Caracara with a couple of Black vultures on the road, the Caracara was scratching in the roadside dirt like a chicken trying to find something. I was running late but I had to try to get a shot.  The tour group was leaving as I got there, but the organizers  insisted I had to go as I had come so far, and we got in a truck and caught up with the tour before they went off-road. I got a spot on a hay bale up in the bed of the pickup that was pulling the trailer where everyone else was riding sitting on hay bales. From this position I had a higher vantage point to see that the fields were full of flowers.

 The road taken for the tour is called the Audubon trail, currently  wet, muddy and in some places a flooded track.  Eastern meadowlarks flushed as we passed and I saw a snake's tail as it was washed away from the truck passing through the water. We all climbed out and Roger and Craig started pointing out plants and flowers. Immediately we saw the pine lilies,

Pine lily

 a white rose gentian, Sabatia brevifolia, Liatris species, Florida paintbrush, and more. 

Sabatia brevifolia Shortleafed rose gentian

Lobelia glandulosa Glade Lobelia

Liatris sp.

Polygala rugelii Yellow milkwort

 Polygala, Milkworts were everywhere, KPPSP lists 8 species of Polygala, I think I saw four.  

Vanilla leaf

Vanilla leaf Carpheforus odoratissimus var. subtropicanus

This was our second stop along the trail, the Vanilla leaf plants, this plant really smells like vanilla. They were scattered all among the saw palmetto here. Dark splashes of purple amongst the green.

The park provides a plant list and a butterfly list for visitors. The KPPSP has nearly 54,000 acres with 100 miles of trails for hiking, backpacking (there are only two remote backpack campsites) and horseback riding (camping facilities with paddocks) it looks like there will be more to explore on my next trip.

A July walk through Archbold Biological Station

    I've been to Archbold Biological Station a few times, I had heard of it many years ago, and it sounded fascinating. A place where researchers can study plants, animals, and any number of other things in that particular habitat. The Organization of Field Stations website does a much better job describing what Biological Field Stations do*. Archbold comprises over 5,000 acres of Lake Wales scrub habitat for researchers to study. One of my favorite research results is that they have found after decades of research and data collection is that the saw palmetto, Serenoa repens are thousands of years old. After measuring their growth for decades and then recently doing DNA testing they were able to track their trunks back to their center of growth and realized some of these palms are 6 to 8 thousand years old. In a previous blog, I mentioned that the Florida rosemary is also thought to be hundreds of years old. Now just think how much of this ancient Florida scrub has been plowed over to provide us with Fresh from Florida orange juice, or more residential sprawl. Here is a link to a movie produced by Archbold explaining what they do Archbold Biological Station 

Here are some photos from my visit;

Right inside the entrance, an area that doesn't get burned.

 Scrub habitat that has recently been burned.

Look at all the Zamia 'Coontie', no wonder Atala butterflies lay so many eggs.

Another shot of this area, almost all of the green is Zamia 'Coontie' plants.

Grasshopper?

Because of the sand, animal and insect tracks are easily seen, it had rained the night before so any tracks showing were pretty recent. 

Bobcat, going both ways.

Tire tracks are from a researcher traveling the area on an ATV.

Followed this one for a while, pretty definite trail.

Armadillo

coyote tracks

The diversity of plants and animals in a place that appears so harsh an environment is amazing. Here are some of the birds, plants, flowers and lichens that live here.

The Florida Scrub Jay, an endemic species, only occurring in scrub areas.

 

Commelina erecta'Day flower'

Scrub oak with acorns.

Scrub Pawpaw with fruit Asimina obvata

I'll just call it a Skink, there are five species here.

The last half of the trail where the public is allowed has branches and trees down and is overgrown. It looks as though no one has been through there lately.

The one area near water, is now under water, with waist-high plants covering the trail.  If walking through areas like this bothers you, then wait until winter when it should be easier walking.

Here's a couple of cute little Earthstars, Geastrum sp. up by the Visitor Center. They are related to Puffball mushrooms.

Earthstars

I hope you enjoyed the tour!






* http://www.obfs.org/what-s-a-field-station-

A visit to the Lake Wales scrub

   Recently I headed up US 27 for a little woods time, this time in the Lake Wales scrub. As I was headed up for the Caladium Festival in Lake Placid the same weekend this worked out perfectly. I could visit Archbold Biological Station and then found out about a volunteer opportunity in the area that would allow me to see other scrub areas I wouldn't have seen otherwise. So I signed up to volunteer with the Ridge Rangers in their final planting of the year.
   These volunteers work with Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission on FWC properties. They are trying to restore some property the state recently purchased, seeking to connect more dots of wilderness for a wildlife corridor. The Ridge Rangers volunteers had collected acorns from scrub oaks*, grown them out, weeded the pots, and now they were ready for planting out in the scrub. The sand in the area is really deep and even one of the four wheel drive trucks had gotten stuck up to the axles. It was one of the water trucks with a full tank and pump on board to water the plants in. Luckily, it was stuck where it could be unloaded to water the plants. This is really a production very well organized with these volunteers.

    We passed through this area (below) on our way out to the scrub area.

This is called a "cut throat" seep.

I am continually amazed by the phone, these are phone photos taken from a moving UTV rolling along at a good pace, much faster than I've traveled through Big Cypress Preserve on a swamp buggy. Negotiating this sand with vehicles is a tricky deal. Rather like riding a rolling surf.

Below is the type of area we were planting in, there are some invasive grasses that hopefully the new oaks will shade out and allow more natives to come back in. There are oaks, rosemary clumps, saw  palmetto, Opuntia cactus, and Smilax to trip us up. Only one tortoise burrow in this area that I saw. This is high ground northeast of Lake Istokpoga. With few clouds, and a  bright July sun we were very happy to have some breeze out there as temps were up in the 90° range.

  Florida  rosemary Ceratiola ericoides. This is one of the smaller rosemary plants. These plants can be hundreds of years old, they get burned down in fires from lightning, and then re-grow. The Florida rosemary plants are allelopathic, meaning that they will not allow other plants to live near them, so we had to be sure to not plants any of our little oaks near them. Plants can be considered allelopathic by using  chemicals to repel or kill other plants, or sometimes by just being a more efficient consumer of the nutrients in the soil, or by shading out other plants. As an example turf is allelopathic to trees, as it can grow six times faster than the tree, consuming water and nutrients before they can get to the trees roots.




Here's the crew packing up the canopy,  water hoses, and tools. Even where the canopy stood will be planted with oaks. So as we leave plants are still going into the ground, given water and good wishes so they too can live hundreds of years in this amazing habitat.



















*Scrub oaks can be Quercus myrtifolia, or Q. inopina, Sand live oak Q. geminata, or Chapmans oak Q.chapmanii.  Source US Fish & Wildlife Service

Update: The Ridge Rangers volunteers planted 1,415 scrub oaks over this summer.

A little problem with the paddle.

I was just out canoeing on the bay this morning and encountered a problem I hadn't experienced  before. A couple of years ago I purchased a new shorter kayak paddle, to use in the mangroves. I use a solo canoe so a kayak paddle works best. The last few years I haven't gotten out as often as I would like so things sit around. When I went to put the two piece paddle together the button was rusted. This surprised me as I have another much older paddle that this has never happended to in twenty years.
    Now, how to fix at the launch site? I have a disk on my keyring that has several screwdriver sizes. I used that to pop out the button but then it still wouldn't move in and out as intended. It needed some kind of lubricant to help break up the rust and corrosion. What I had was a can of mosquito repellant. As this has some petroleum ingredients (turns out to be: butane, propane, isobutane) it worked. This is what causes the repellent to destroy plastics, etc. when you spray this stuff around, and probably contributes to that burn you feel when you spray it on bare skin. I'll have to follow up and clean that corrosion off the button and figure out what to lubricate it with to prevent this in the future.

This is the button pushed in, the brown is corrosion on the button.

The repellent along with some prodding and pushing got the button back working and we were off on a lovely paddle on the bay.

 Here's a photo of the canoe last year when I was doing some upkeep on it. It's a Kevlar and fiberglas sandwich that they don't make anymore, 15' and weighs 45 lbs.

I restored the canoe last year, replaced the seat, some hardware and painted the gunwales.

 

 

On getting lost and dying

    There is currently a news story about a woman hiker getting lost on the AT and dying. She insisted on hiking alone, after her companion had to leave the trail. She got lost after leaving the trail to relieve herself, and she could not find her way back to the trail. It is presumed she starved to death. Her notes showed she lived for 26 days. Her body was found two years later. This shouldn't have happened. I have hiked alone plenty of times, walking in from a camp or walking out to a camp, or doing trail maintenance.

 Down here in the Everglades and what they are now calling the Western Everglades, Big Cypress, plants grow year round and can envelope trail blazes pretty rapidly. Many people do not realize when they leave the trail to relieve themselves, or go look at something, that when they turn around and look back, they can no longer see the trail in many cases, much less the blazes. Trail blazes are meant to be seen while on the trail, not from off the trail. They do not usually encircle a tree or down here, a palm trunk. The trail is a narrow path in the woods generally, not an open cut in the trees like a road. You can actually cross a trail without seeing it, if you aren't paying attention. But then, if you aren't paying attention you shouldn't be out there.

So, when you decide to leave the trail for any reason, I suggest that you tie or hang something on a trail side tree that you can see from a distance. Use something bright colored and hang it above head height if you can depending on height of plants in the area. If there is a breeze, orient it so it moves in the breeze. If the area is heavily overgrown you may want to carry some fluorescent flagging tape to use to mark your path back to the trail. Be sure to remove the tape as you return to the trail. Remember follow Leave No Trace principles.

If you are lost, you need to be seen in order to be found. In order to be missed you need to tell someone or many where you are going and when you will be back. Always file BACK COUNTRY PERMITS so the land manager/agency knows that you are out there and where you expect to be. This gives them an idea where to search.  Photo from a helicopter, could you find a person?

    Always carry something multipurpose that you can use for a SIGNAL. An emergency blanket that is silver spread out on the ground and held down with sticks or rocks in an OPEN area. A red piece of clothing or bandanna will work also. I have helped looking for people from a helicopter - it is very difficult to see people under trees. If you hear a helicopter or airplane get out in the open so they can see you. Do not start a wildfire to attract their attention, you may end up getting charged for it. Don't laugh, this has happened. 


 Proper equipment; GPS is an option, but you should not be out there without a map and compass. You need to have a current topographical map of the area, and a compass, and know how to use them. Custom maps can now be ordered on line for areas.  Phones, GPS and the like are quite nice until they lose (not loose!) their connection, run out of batteries, fall and break, get wet, etc. There are very few cell towers in the wilderness or remote areas and this is as it should be. You could climb a pine tree out there and still not get a signal. If you really depend on a phone then you should consider a satellite phone.

While I'm at it, here are the ten essentials to carry:

1) water & water treatment (lots of good options available now)
2) whistle
3) food (always carry some survival bars)
4) fire starter (you can make this yourself)
5) knife and/or multi-tool
6) rope or parachute cord
7) map and compass
8) flashlight or headlamp
9) first aid kit (know how to use what is in it!)
10) proper and extra clothing (check the weather before you leave)

Over the past two weekends I went up to Palm Beach county to check out J.W. Corbett Wildlife Management Area. I had previously only been to Corbett's youth camp for Florida Trail Association south regional conferences. The area explored is one used by hunters but the season is currently closed. Here are some of the wildflowers and views of the area.

Some of the Polygala blooms we saw.