Exploring: Marco Island

Still nervous about the helicopter visit last night we are up at the crack of dawn and out of camp in 90 minutes. With short miles to the next destination, our stealth campsite gives us the gift of a full day to explore. And explore we did.

We followed the Intercoastal Waterway just a short distance and then paddled off to meander. The winds are 10-14 mph today so we search the charts and find a great loop all the way around Rookery Bay in little protected streams. One stretch is on Stopper Creek, which Roger thinks is named for the Mangroves which we penetrate all morning. There are literally no places to stop as the Red Mangroves line the waterways and block any passage to dry land.

We paddle slowly, observing and photographing the birds and dolphins. Even lunch is without land, as we just float on a sand bar.

Early afternoon we find the flaw in our route plan. We cannot tell in the fine detail of the chart whether two bodies of water connect and when we get there we find they do not. Rogers fears that we either need to reverse course and portage the boats. I cannot see any other alternatives either.

But then we spot a marker across the water, so paddle over check it out. "Shell Point Canoe Trail, marker 14". We have no idea where it leads, but follow it. We find markers 13 through 11 easily and keep going. But we cannot find 10. The trail is laid out to go in the other direction, so the spacing and placement of the markers is not optimal for our direction. We take a guess, and paddle up a fork and around the bend - marker 10! What fun to add to our day of exploring. Will this take us all the way to Henderson Creek, which was our hope? We keep counting down the markers and are heading in the right direction. Sure enough, by marker 3 we see the marina on the other side of the creek. A wonderful, free spirit day of paddling in paradise.

We have now travelled about 500 miles, with just 200 to go. It already feels like the end is coming too soon. But we land in our last town for a long time, and will stock up with enough groceries to get through the Everglades and across Florida Bay. Our blog will likely go silent for a while as we are too remote to connect to anything between Feb 2 and Feb 15, or maybe even Feb 17. We will be enjoying the Mangroves and the white sand beaches...