Raining hard. We slipped cleanly through customs and entered Michigan ("Great Lakes, Great Times").
Ohio was completely different from Michigan in no ways. Then into Kentucky around 7 o'clock, where
we ate at the "chili product" restaurant. I was awake for Tennessee (huge hills and fog), but slept
through the crossing into Georgia. At 5:30 I woke up and watched a slow sunrise as we crossed the
state line into Florida. We tried to get free juice at the welcome centre, but they didn't open till
8, so on we drove. At 9 we stopped at Waffle House and we got some great waitress quotes: "I can't
breathe and swallow at the same time. I keep trying and trying..." Finally it's getting warm, and
the sun is out. Everything is so alive! We went to the Kennedy Space Centre but we didn't have time
to look around. However, on the road in and out I saw 5 alligators, 3 snowy egrets, 2 small brown
egret-like things, and many a pelican. Then we went to the beach in Cape Canaveral and I went for a
run to shake the van-cobwebs. Heading through Miami, we decided to take the carpool lane. As we
soared high above the traffic jam, laughing at the people below, we realized that we had completely
left the road we needed to be on. Then we stopped at a drugstore in Miami and had to drive away
quickly when a man with a leafblower attacked our van. After narrowly missing an opossum, we pulled
into camp around midnight.
I woke to watch the sunrise and ospreys flying overhead. We were off around noon and headed right
out to the bay area. The water, though vast, was very shallow. Anything that got water on it was
almost immediately covered with a layer of salt. The sun was relentless. We saw many birds,
including pelicans (one dove for fish over and over), herons, and egrets. We camped on the beach,
where we found horseshoe crabs and crazy thick jelly-like blobs. The no-see-ums were bad, but at
least I could see them. We didn't get much of a sunset, but the stars more than made up for that.
We made a fire and offered up sacrifices to the gods of horseshoe crabs and never-ending
under-the-sand plant skeleton things.
The next morning it was 28C by 8 am and the no-see-ums were driving us mad. At first we explored
a narrow river and saw alligators and many birds of the stork persuasion. Eventually we got mired
in clay and had to retrace our steps. Then we entered a canal that led to a huge lake. We roped
up for lunch, then paddled by sand flats covered in small birds; some running, some scavenging for
whatever the tide had left behind. Once we reached the end of the lake, there was only a short
canal to go through before we were back onto the spray, sun, and noise of the ocean. By paddling
out from shore, we managed to glimpse dolphins, directed in our search by the explosive blowhole
sounds. When we reached our beach, I finally went swimming, then sat on the sand after dark and
watched the flicker of firelight, fireflies, and far-off lightning.
We got going early in the morning and had a long, hard morning's paddle on the bay. There were
dolphins accompanying us periodically the whole time, teasing us by appearing first on one side
of the canoe, then on the other. We reached the river around lunchtime and played around in the
mangroves. After that we rafted up and drifted lazily upriver until the sun became too intense
and we were forced to pick up our paddles again. In no time we rounded an island and had our first
glimpse of a chickee, the platform on which we were to camp. We were impressed, and also excited
to get an outhouse and some shade. The sunset brought fiery orange arcs and a visiting dolphin.
We played with it with a paddle and an underwater whistle until it was too dark to see, and then
I lay in the tent and watched ripples spread away from me over the dark lake.
The no-see-ums were out in the morning, so we worked fast. We paddled into a headwind all the way
to Joe Chickee, where we had lunch and left John, Jon, and Lindsay. Then we worked our way up the
Joe River, finding a dead manatee surrounded by turkey vultures. When we reached South Joe Chickee,
we had an interesting talk with the two men we found there. One, John, had picked up a dolphin skull
in his travels. It was still early in the afternoon, so we played dice and cards for a while before
dinner. After dinner we paddled out to watch the sun set through the chickee and the water turn to
quicksilver. After dark, we took turns giving readings of Dracula, punctuated by the soft, sonic
cooing of fish called grunts and the exhalations of dolphins.
We met up with John, Jon, and Lindsay in the morning and headed out, escorted by Chickee John. We
saw crocodiles floating in the water and marvelled at the magnificent, crazy flight of a frigate bird.
All too soon, a car passed us on the canal and we were back in Flamingo.
We left around 5:30 pm with 3000 km ahead of us. Leaving the Everglades, we drove through sawgrass
prairie that looked for all the world like the farmland in Manitoba. We stopped at the Robert Is
Here fruitstand where we had a reunion with one of the other vans and saw: Good and Evil pickles;
Harold the talking, laughing, sneezing parrot; iguanas; cool old cars; and a goat that thought it was
a dog and even stood on the back of a huge tortoise to be petted. Robert himself sold me my mustard.
After sundown I slept for a couple of hours but then was wide awake for the crossing into Georgia.
There I used a gas station bathroom with a waiting room and an abstract painting. It is getting colder.
I stayed up while John drove and when daybreak hit, we woke up the rest of the van by driving the
rumble strips. We stopped for breakfast in Tennessee, got called "y'all", and saw Mr. Clean. Then a
man in the parking lot told us that we were so clean and polite, we must be Canadian. When we reached
Kentucky, we saw our first snow and ice, along with a man wearing a green camo shirt over an orange camo
shirt. After dinner I created a spectacle by brushing my teeth with my finger, facing the busy highway.
Now the sun is going down in a purple-gray haze as the skyline rolls by and bluegrass bleeds from the
radio.
~Sara Lipson