Skip to main content

What a Wonderful World (An #AtoZChallenge Post): B is for Biscayne National Park

 

The front of an orange kayak enters into a waterway lined with mangroves at Biscayne National Park

My husband recently re-retired, and we are front-loading travel. My#AtoZChallenge posts this year will explore our adventures--some pre-retirement, some post. Today's location: Biscayne National Park in Florida, USA. 

Though Biscayne National Park is located in Florida, it would be more accurate to say that it is in the waters off Florida, as 95 percent of the park is in Biscayne Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. We knew that when we visited, we would want to be on the water, so we signed up for a kayak tour of the mangroves through the Biscayne National Park Institute. We met our guide, Daniel, at the Dante Fascell Visitor's Center, just as the winds started picking up. Daniel told us that he had some concerns about the weather, but if we wanted to give kayaking a try, he would be willing to take us out, as long as we understood that he might need to cancel our trip at any time. There were six of us there; four decided to go ahead and get out on the water, and the other two rebooked for later in the afternoon. (In retrospect, they should have gone ahead and gone with us, as the afternoon outing got canceled.)

Daniel was an excellent guide. He taught us about the various types of mangroves. Red mangroves are able to use arial roots to desalinate the water they grow in. Black mangroves have lots of roots that come up out of the ground, and those roots need to stay above the water, or the tree can drown. Mangroves reproduce through viviparity, which essentially means that fully formed little trees break off from the parent tree. Those little trees will float around in the shallow waters until taking root in the soil. 

We explored various mangrove channels and spotted numerous birds. It rained for most of the time, but the water was relatively warm. We had a great experience kayaking, and would definitely recommend it. The following video shows a white bird (a great white heron, perhaps?) sitting in a mangrove while rain falls, then the bird flies away. 


Come back tomorrow to see where in the world we will visit next! 

Comments

  1. Swamps, bays and watery bogs are all so fascinating. I went kayaking once, it was such fun.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Conversations are so much nicer when more than one person does the talking. :-) Please leave a comment and let me know your thoughts; I'd love to hear from you!

Popular posts from this blog

Ten Things of Thankful: Last Two Weeks

  Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone National Park, as viewed from an overlook I apologize for not commenting on your blog posts this past week; John and I took a vacation to Yellowstone National Park, leaving behind our computers and, to a large extent, cell phone service. We escaped the outside world and just spent time in nature. Though we have friends near Yellowstone (who we love to visit) we made this trip just about us, so please forgive us if we were nearby and didn't stop by. The crowds were minimal (though we did mask up whenever we passed someone on the trails) and we spent our days hiking, taking photos, and watching geysers erupt. Today, we are back home and back to work, and, in the case of my computer, back to old shenanigans like not letting me import my photos. (I was able to add the above photo by using blogger on my phone, but that isn't my preferred method.) I want to write about Yellowstone and have photos I want to share, but will leave that for another...

Ten Things of Thankful: Autumn Edition

It's autumn time, one of my favorite times of year.  I just couldn't leave this weekend as a one-post weekend.  

Monday Mentions: Equate Crutches

Have you ever needed crutches? I hadn't, until a week ago.  I'm pretty sure I strained a muscle while running a half-marathon.  (That sounds kind of cool, doesn't it? I'm not actually that cool; the last time I strained a muscle it was from carrying too many shopping bags at once.) In any case, I found myself in need of some crutches. I sent my husband to the store to get some. Photo: A pair of crutches leans against a wall  Not that crutches are all that complex, but because I hadn't used any before, I wondered if I could figure out how to adjust them to fit me properly. I shouldn't have worried. John came home from Walmart with their generic store brand of crutches, complete with instructions. First, I needed to take out a long bolt that went through the hand grip. Then I needed to find my height range, push down two metal pieces, and slide the crutches until the little metal pieces came up in the hole near my height range. (Having two people for this...