The Road goes ever on and on; Down from the door where it began;
Now far ahead the Road has gone; And I must follow, if I can;
Pursuing it with eager feet; Until it joins some larger way;
Where many paths and errands met; And whither then? I cannot say.

[JRR Tolkien, Lord of the Rings]

Sunday 24 November 2013

M&G Go For A Slog

Mick's bites-the-size-of-small-countries had abated to more reasonable sizes this morning and I managed to convince him to go for a slog*.

We started off on the Florida Trail in the Big Cypress National Preserve, where, just for a look-see, we wandered an hour upstream before wandering an hour back. An interesting place, we declared, going through a mixture of open meadows and Cypress woodland, sometimes on dry land, sometimes through water.

Back at our starting point, and after lunch and a wash out of our shoes and socks (full of mud and silt), we wandered over the road where the going looked somewhat wetter.

Coming upon a college group being led by a ranger (who were stopped whilst one of their number tried unsuccessfully to locate her shoe which had been sucked off in some mud; she ended up limping back to the Visitor Centre) the ranger asked if we realised that we weren't on the Florida trail, but were on the 'Swamp Walk'. In all honesty, we didn't know where we were, but we were exactly where we intended to be.

Out to a stand of Cypress we waded, had a poke around, and waded back along different sloughs. It was less than an hour, but something very different to our usual walking (yes, we get wet feet in the UK, but not in such consistently deep or warm water.

(* slog = walking through the water, varying from ankle deep to thigh high, in the Everglades)

2 comments:

  1. I'm a bit puzzled about your itinerary on this trip. Presumably there is not a multi day backpacking event including?

    All that wrestling with the tech is reminiscent of my early days with the iPhone.

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    1. The original itinerararary was 1 week Disney, 1 week touring and 1 week backpacking. That went out the window when we stayed at Disney for 2 weeks, and it was the backpacking element which was canned. So, we have all of our gear with us, but it's going to I unused (we would have been travelling *really* light if we hadn't brought it!).

      Last night issues with the tech were all to do with the Internet connection. Most are to so with the cursed iGadget. I'd rather have a Blackberry or an Android device for typing/editing rather than an iGadget.

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