Thursday, March 13th – Bird Rookery Swamp

 

This morning we packed up our bicycles, lunch and geocaching gear and drove about 45 minutes to Bird Rookery Swamp with plans to find some of the 34 geocaches that are placed in this preserve. We knew it would be impossible to us to find all of them today, but hoped we could get to at least 9 of them.

 

 

 

 

After our assessment of the site yesterday, we decided to ride our bicycles today. I also decided not to pack a lunch to carry with us since I didn’t know how often black bears appear near the trail. Other wildlife that lives here includes Florida panthers, white-tail deer and a menagerie of birds.

 

 

 

 

We got off to a good start after making a quick and easy find of the first cache. Shortly thereafter, we encountered a large alligator sunning along the trail, just as we had been forewarned.  We have learned a lot about these reptiles and we remembered that it is most important to not get between them and the deep water. We also know that sometimes they only eat twice a week and they usually will not select something as large as a human being for their meal. Nevertheless, I felt much more comfortable skirting around that gator on my bicycle than I would have if I’d been on foot.

 

 

 

There were a lot of people using this trail today, either walking along it or biking like we were doing. When we stopped at another cache, a man and woman stopped to take a break while we were scouring the area around the site. We waited for them to finish their snack and leave before we retrieved the cache.

 

 

Further along the trail, we encountered another large alligator. This time, I went around it first and then dismounted my bike and took a video of Cordell pedaling past it.

 

 

This preserve is advertised as a place for visitors to experience a glimpse of “Old Florida” and it truly is beautiful. We saw many varieties of birds, trees, bushes and flowers. The further we got along the trail, the less people we saw.

 

 

 

 

 

The boardwalk trail here connects to a 12 mile hiking and biking trail on grass covered tram roads which was originally a railroad bed. After biking 1.2 miles my legs were really tired. I have accepted that my 70 year old mind feels much younger than my 70 year old body! And so, we ended our search after finding 8 caches. We hope to return to this site another time, perhaps even another year, to look for the remaining caches. We did not see the alligators on our way back to the parking area.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is an interesting receptacle to collect donations from people visiting this preserve.

 

 

 

 

 

A late afternoon rest felt really good to me. I even discovered that microwave dinners taste good when eaten with wine!