March 16th: Pine Island

Pine Island sounds like paradise, and the photo above looks the biz. Jane is beachcombing on white sands lapped by the blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

 However, all is not as it seems. Pine Island is 12 miles by 2, and has no beaches. It’s encased in the dreaded mangrove swamps. The campsite runs a weekly bus to the beautiful beach above, but it’s a two hour ride (two hours there and two hours back). The site itself was large and anonymous: it was ok, but we weren’t enthused.
We did a couple of pleasant walks, and next is a photo from one where we reached a viewing balcony overlooking a sea inlet. An unusual feature, just visible in the photo, was that every piece of wood on the balcony was carved with a person’s name. This had been done professionally all in the same lettering, so presumably these were benefactors of the small wildlife preserve leading up to the balcony.

I used the US word “preserve” for what we would call a nature “reserve”. In the UK, we use the expression “preserve” to describe best quality jam! Jam here, by the way, is called jelly. And jelly’s called jello. This could go on forever, so I need to get to the pic before you forget what it was about!

On the way was a field of cows with a much bigger flock of cattle egrets. These feed on insects attracted by the cows and happily co-exist with their bulkier benefactors.

We strolled past this quirky boy-toy with a for “sale sign” in the window. It looks great fun.  Imagine off-roading through marshy scrub and boggy tracks. But how safe would it be on the highway. In an emergency stop, would the wheels part stop dead and the passenger part just carry on?

So we left a few days earlier than planned as we had heard of a wildlife park where manatees were fairly common, at Homosassa Springs, 200 miles north. Here’s Jane driving on the Sunshine Skyway that crosses Tampa Bay, an impressive road with an even more impressive bridge. See y’all at Homosassa.