In February of 2016 I spent five days paddling around the Everglades. Altogether we had eight guys, veterans of past hiking and paddling trips together. I helped organize this trip as I had grown up in South Florida and had spent many days and nights in the Everglades when I was a kid.
We planned to spend part of our time in the interior area of the Everglades, on chickees, and part of the time in the open water of Florida Bay, at beach camps. When we arrived at the ranger station though we found that the predicted weather suggested a change in our plans. One strange thing about the Everglades is that you can’t make any reservations in advance. As there are only a few campsites, not having a reservation is pretty risky when you are traveling 3000 miles with eight guys. As it turned out though we got a great itinerary and spent almost every night on a chickee.
A chickee is a raised wooden platform that provides a dry place for campers to set up. This is ideal as there is almost no dry ground in this part of the Everglades and even where there is dry ground the mosquitoes can be unruly. We looked at one ground camp — “Lard Can” was its rather apt name — and it looked really unpleasant. Very muddy, smelly even, and closed in and humid. After seeing that site we were all happy that our plans were for mostly chickee camping.
With eight guys, we had booked both sides of each double-chickee. The doubles each have two 10×10 foot platforms, so four of us set up on each side. It got a little crowded when we were set up for the night, so we generally waited to set up tents until they were needed. Chickee life is fantastic. The views cannot be beat, there is room to hang out and fish, eat, and drink, and there is even a fairly nice porta-pottie right in the middle of the connecting catwalk.
Because we were spending our middle night at the main campground, we had the luxury of being able to switch from rental canoes to kayaks mid-trek. This was pretty nice. The first half of our trip we were mostly in tight paddling waters, where canoes were optimal. We also were able to carry more / better food and beer with the canoes. Once we headed out to open water though, kayaks became the safer option. The boats available from the concessionaire were pretty basic, perhaps intended more for hourly rental than multi-day paddles like ours, but they worked out OK.
Above is our early-morning launch on the West Lake Canoe Trail and out to Alligator Creek. Up until this day we had only seen alligators near where humans were — on the roadside or at the marina. I think all of us were getting a little disappointed at seeing so few of them. Partway through Alligator Creek though we came right up on a monster — at least twelve feet long — sunning himself just a few feet off of the narrow, twisting river. I wish we had a good picture but all of us seem to have gotten more of the plants then the actual gator. He was huge though and had his mouth wide open.
One of our frequent companions on these treks is Black Box wine. We usually ditch the box and just bring the bladders, with their delicious and fortifying nectar. On this trip we were also fortunate to have Captain Morgan’s Cannon Blast Spiced Rum along. I usually don’t like flavored booze like that, but it was really good!
Our last night was at Johnson Key chickee. This platform is way out on Florida Bay and has fantastic views, as well as a lot of bird shit! We had heard about this and had brought along enough tarps that we were able to completely cover the floors of the chickee — that was a good plan. This was a great place for a final night as it had such a sense of being remote. We did have to time our arrival and departure carefully as the water leading to Johnson is not very deep, especially if you look for a direct route like we used. In some spots we were paddling in only 2 feet of water.
