Day 21, Feb. 10, Oceanographic Center

After spending the morning trying to catch up on some work, I finally contacted Gail and we decided to go to the Florida Oceanographic Coastal Center. First stop was at a Verizon Store to make another attempt at the phone. This guy didn’t take long to say the phone didn’t work right and to call Verizon for another phone. They could even overnight it to my hotel. (If I knew which hotel I was going to be at.)

Next we pulled into a gas station where the sign said $3.49. It wasn’t until I was pumping that I noticed the pump said $3.73. Oh, no. There’s a different price if you pay cash or use a credit card. I got caught trying to find a cheaper price when all the other stations were around $3.65. Yeah, it’s more expensive down here.

Gail scrubbed the windshield while I pumped the gas. Wow, that glass was filthy, but she soon had it spotless (with a little help from the Windex I had in the back) and we were on our way. The odometer read 15130.1 and it was 78 degrees under sunny skies with fluffy clouds. In Stuart, there are two big bridges on SR A1A one after the other crossing the St. Lucie River and Indian River. We got to the Oceanographic Center on Hutchinson Island just after noon when it opened for the day. The island is a barrier reef between the Atlantic Ocean and Indian River Lagoon.

It cost $10 each to get in and after getting our stickers we entered a room with aquariums. I was taken with the seahorses. What interesting creatures they are. Outside, the first area was a sting ray petting area. I asked the difference between a skate and a sting ray. At the moment, I can’t remember what he said.  The guide showed us some cartilage of the barbs and mouth. He said the barbs detach once the ray stabs something with its tail. Gail asked about Steve Irwin’s death from a sting ray barb and the man explained that unfortunate incident. Irwin had pulled out the barb and subsequently bled out. In a similar situation with a woman, she didn’t pull the barb out and at the hospital, they were able to do surgery to remove the barb and the woman lived. (The barbs had been removed from these sting rays so people could pat them.)  

We opted not to stay around for the feeding demonstration and decided to do the trails on our own. The next enclosed pool area was quite large. There were nurse sharks, more stingrays, tarpons and other fish. We took photos and moved on to the nature trails.

These were a hard packed shell mixture and boardwalks over wet areas. I expected mangroves to be huge trees, but the majority of these are like small saplings. The leaves remind me of rhododendron leaves, but it’s the root system of these trees that are amazing. The roots start higher up on the tree than on other trees perhaps to be out of the water. They curve out and down almost reminding me of a crown and there are many root legs curving down into the brackish water. Put many of these sapling-like trees together with this root system and there isn’t anything of size that could get around in these swamps. It was very closed in.

In spots where there was a little dry land, called a hammock, there were dead trees and fallen palms. Some palms trunks stretched high in the air with no leaves on them at all. They looked like tall posts. It was eerie. A few of the tops had other plants growing on them. These spots seen through bushes were brown, gray, and colorless. There were other dead trees with their naked limbs stretched in creepy isolation as if green was afraid to be near them; as if something cut a swath through the green and left  ugly brown, gray patches.

Gail was intrigued by some spiders. I was having trouble with the focusing of the camera. The manual focus does not work and when trying to photograph something in dim or shady light, the auto focus won’t focus. (Arrggh, this is the third Tamron lens I’ve gone through. Maybe it’s time to bite the bullet and invest in a better Canon lens.)

The waters through this swampy area were of various colors. Some were red, then there were streams of bright yellow, others were dark and clear, and there was a section where there was a whitish blue, oily yuck on the water. The colors, a sign read, are due to the tannins from the leaves and detritus that are rotting in the waters. I certainly would not want to get any of this water on me and the thought of falling in one of the places… Let’s just say I wouldn’t want to imagine the diseases and infections. Very little of the waters seemed to be moving, it was just stagnant and crept around the roots of the mangroves and most were full of mosquito fish. (Which weren’t doing their job as Gail got bit by two mosquitoes.)

There were signs along the way to explain the different vegetation and the habitat of the mangrove swamps and after awhile, we reached the river. It was nice to see some scenery. We both decided that there wasn’t anything pretty about the swamp. Photos tended to be of specific leaves or plants. We had to continue back around through the swamp to return to the center. It was interesting and a totally different landscape than I am used to. Gail said that part of that is because Florida is so flat.

We got back to the center to see the turtle feeding. I felt good that I’d been able to hike the entire trail. Yes, I was hot and my face was red. My left leg was beginning to drag a little, but there was a breeze and enough shade so I hadn’t been totally in the sun. It was after 2 o’clock and I hadn’t eaten. We were both hungry.

We couldn’t decide where to eat and ended up at the Olive Garden again. It was again, a delicious meal. I ate too much salad (the waiter even gave me some to go.) Back at the hotel, we made plans for the morrow. Looks like it’s a day trip to Okeechobee.