Our Florida Tour Part 5: Collier-Seminole State Park, Naples; Monday, Nov 19 to Monday, Nov 26

Our Florida Tour Part 5: Collier-Seminole State Park, Naples; Monday, Nov 19 to Monday, Nov 26

Collier-Seminole was a conundrum. The campground was awful but the rest of the park was delightful. The campground has a small loop (19 campsites) for tents and pop-ups only, which has nice buffer zones between large sites. The rest of the 101 sites are crammed together – two sites share water and electric hookups, causing 50% of the sites to have hookups on the wrong side if one is in an RV. The three restrooms are mediocre at best and the entire campground has a very dingy feel. Our site was only about two feet wider than our coach with the awning and slides out. The site next to us was even narrower than ours. There were only two sites in the place we would want – 120 and 102. 102 was a generous size but only about 25 yards or so off of the highway so there was considerable road noise.   

The mosquitoes were fairly bad – we should have had a hint when we saw a sign at the office when we checked in that gave the mosquito index.  “Moderate” was the lowest level, I don’t remember what the mid-level was, and the highest level was “Run”. Dickens was the most bothered by the mosquitoes and gnats – to the point that we drove about 10 miles back to buy a mosquito netting hat that I put on him. Believe it or not, I had no difficulty putting it on him and having him keep it on! 

The rest of the park is much better kept up – a blockhouse visitor center, a recreated Seminole chickee and dugout canoe, and the only remaining Bay City Walking Dredge (more on it later) are all easily accessible. 

The nature trail has one of the three remaining Royal Palm Hammocks in the US, which is more common to the Yucatan or Caribbean, and has a thick canopy of royal palm trees, gumbo limbo, Jamaican dogwood, satin leaf, and many varieties of ferns. There are two other trails, one is a 16 ½ mile  trek through an Everglades cypress habitat where panthers and bears are seen and the other 3 ½ miles Canoe rentals are available, and fishing, biking, and hiking are enjoyed at the park. The endangered Florida panther has been sighted within the park recently, along with the more common raccoons and other native wildlife.

We celebrated Thanksgiving at the park by enjoying roasted chicken breasts, bread stuffing, and pumpkin pie. Unfortunately, the campground was very full and many of the folks had no idea of common courtesy – there were hoards of screaming children, yapping dogs, RC cars racing up and down the campground roads, loud adults, and blaring radios. A new one for us was the guy who brought his projection TV and showed a movie on the side of his RV. 

Friday, we drove the Tamiami Trail to Everglades City and Chokoloskee, where I’ve never been to before in spite of having lived in Fort Myers for more years than I would have liked. Chokoloskee was like taking a step back in time – very small, old-fashioned, and no fast-food places!.  Chokoloskee is the southern-most point you can drive to on the West coast of Florida. We talked to a good-looking young man at the Everglades National Park Visitor Center who is an Everglades City native. He likes the small town life and fishing for a living and plans to stay, although he could pass for a college student in any city. 

I remember the seemingly endless trips from Fort Myers to Miami back when I was a kid – the Trail had a few Seminole villages near the road, some air boat ride businesses, but mostly, endless Everglades and a two-lane highway. There was Ochopee, which I believe, had the smallest post office in the US – about the size of a porta-potti!  It’s not much different today – narrow two-lane highway, marshes and hammocks, Indian villages, and air boat rides. Much of the advertising is still in the 50’s style. The big difference are all the trails, boardwalks, paths, and visitor centers that have been added so passers-by can enjoy the Everglades close-up without much time.

On our way back to camp, we stopped at the Big Cypress Bend Boardwalk, and The Marsh Trail in the 10,000 Island Preserve.  We were very lucky during our Big Cypress Bend walk where we viewed a big eagle’s nest, some huge, old cypress trees   (one larger in diameter than our 9’ diameter oak)  a big, old turtle sunning on a log, a blooming spider lily, and the highlight of the day, a black bear (the largest one we’ve ever seen). I even got a photo of it, although you need to use your imagination a bit. 

A strangler fig growing around a cypress tree

Our black bear in the upper left corner

The black bear cropped from the photo above

White ibis

Rich standing between two huge cypress trees

Some sort of lily - I was told a spider lily and an orchid lily...

The Marsh trail was 2.2 miles long and since it was getting hot and the trail was in full sun, we walked to the observation tower and spent some time there, then turned around and came back to camp. While on the trail, we saw white ibis, snowy egrets, some cute little duck-like birds that looked a lot like pied-billed grebes, some great blue herons, and a wood stork. From our vantage point on the observation tower, we were able to see a large number of fish in the water below, and the little grebe chasing the fish. The grebe would dive beneath the water and zoom after the fish. It was amazing how fast that little guy could swam!

The little grebe that was chasing (and catching) the fish in the pond

Wood stork

On the drive back to camp, we saw lots of different birds, most of which I couldn’t identify but am sure I saw a kingfisher sitting on a fence. First one of those I’ve seen in years. All-in-all, a very enjoyable day. 

The next day we went to the Naples Depot Museum. It was an interesting place, with some nice pieces and the admission was free.  There was a cool video along with sound, of a steam engine coming into a station that had been arranged to show on the windows of one of the waiting rooms – as though the train was actually outside.  

1955 Chevy Bel Aire

Two cars at theDepot Museum

1922 Ford Model T Depot Hack

One of the interesting things we saw at the campground was the Bay City Walking Dredge. The dredge is a huge piece of equipment – a framework 33 feet square with corner “shoes” 5 feet by 6 feet, two center “shoes” located on the left and right side of the framework which are 5 feet by 12 feet. It is on these center shoes that the entire dredge rests as the dredge then is swung forward, or walked. The shovel capacity was one yard – imagine! The machine could dig seven hundred cubic yards of material in a ten-hour period with an experienced operator. This amounted to seventy seconds per cycle of digging, swinging, dumping, and moving forward. It was with this dredge that a ten-mile portion of the Tamiami Trail was built between 1927-28.  The road had been begun in 1915, bur WW I diverted funding and interest from the project. Once construction began again, two men operated this machine six days a week, working ten-hour shifts each day. They worked in sweltering heat fighting swarms of mosquitoes and unlimited mud. The dredge crews lived on floating barges or trailers pulled by tractors. 

A quote from a communication to the Board of County Commissioners on August 1, 1926 gives us a better idea of how tedious all this must have been: “The Walking Bay City Dredge working on the cut off from Palm Hammock to the Marco-Ft. Myers road has made very good progress this month, making a total of 4,400 lineal feet of grade which equals a total of 20,103 cu. yds. handled.”  Presumably this was a report on work done in July – not even a mile!

Now it is on to Lake Kissimmee State Park near Lake Wales.