... and then after a little internet planning to cover the next several days, it was first out to biscayne national park. they have crocodiles there -- extremely rare in the US -- and i went on the hopes i could either see one there, or perhaps see some at turkey nuclear plant. neither plan worked -- crocs are too shy to get around people at biscayne and turkey is off-limits.
that didn't stop me from getting some pix, though.
{the greatest living american landscape photographer is a guy you've probably never heard of named clyde butcher. he's essentially the ansel adams of the everglades. i shot this the photo above as an homage to him.)
fossilized coral
switching gears, from an outdoors perspective, if there's one place in the continental US that everone should go, it's yellowstone. i honestly believe that if you're an american and you haven't been there you have not honored your country and the fundamental underpinnings of what it represents (america invented the concept of "national parks," it was nearly immediately copied by the euros). if there's a second place to go, it has to be the everglades. i've been here twice before, and was looking forward to it immensely as part of AYCJ -- in fact, when i first saw the pass it was one of the places i immediately thought of.
the everglades is easily the most subtle wilderness i've ever experienced ... more so even than the WY high plateau. from the ground the vast majority of it looks like a big field. from the air that same region will look like a lake. really what the everglades is is an exrtremely slow running river (6" per hour, if memory serves). it's also the only freshwater ecosystem of its kind in the world. the habitat is varied, huge and distinctive.
rather than yammer on, here's some pix.
a large bromeliad in the foreground and a smaller one in the background
alligators!
(we could hear them "barking" to each other)
grasshopper, about 3" long
partially decomposed mushroom at the base of a decomposing palm
i shot the following three pix for the international mouthpiece
he just bought the same camera as mine and i wanted to give some idea of sylistic range
sepia
black and white
"vibrant" color
the following shots are a 360 degree panorama. i may or may not ever thread them together, but they definitely give you the right impression.
a truly spectacular day in the everglades. although my accomplice was over-the-moon having seen live alligators less than two feet away, for me the high point was seeing a florida gar about two feet long and colored like a jungle-camouflaged leopard along its back. unfortunately for you, dear reader, it swam away much too quickly for me to get a pic.
for dinner we stopped at pollo tropical -- an obvious take off of el pollo loco. it's mildly criminal that we ate directly across the street from the spectacular cuban place, but i didn't want to have a repeat (especially on the same day).
i chose ribs with rice. they had two kinds of barbecue -- guava and traditional. both were tasty, but i liked the traditional better. we were the only people in the place who ordered in english -- i had to switch over to spanish because i couldn't be understood.
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