I secretly planned a family road trip to the Everglades last weekend.
After breakfast I tossed around a few ideas of daytrips we could take before soccer season ruins Saturdays. After my husband and I agreed to visit orange groves next weekend, I still felt antsy, so within an hour we were packed into our car with a picnic lunch. An hour after that, we were traveling down a dirt load in the middle of one of the most gorgeous locations on earth.
We took this trip last January, for Andres’ birthday, but it might just be an annual event we love it so much.
Here are some shots:
Loop road goes through three counties and the Miccosukee Reservation.
I love rusty old anythings! This old gas station is on some redneck-owned property. I know it was redneck due to the plethora of signs declaring it so and the gun firing (not at me) while I took this shot. We swung a u turn outta there- straight past a rusty car with a dead zombie family inside. I hope that was just leftover Halloween.
An ibis crossing the road! Sometimes we see them in our yard, but I always get a thrill. Such elegance!
Look up! Half of the fun of the Everglades is seeing all the birds, but they are usually too fast for my capture finger. Here’s a turkey vulture.
Good Lord! How many alligators have I seen? Florida makes em commonplace. This was our best shot of the day, but the real fun was seeing three swim at the same time.
Doesn’t this background look fake? It’s not!
The birds, the birds, the birds.
I’m always tempted to take out the color in Everglades photography. It makes the trees look more sculptural, and captures some part of the soul. Which do you prefer, color…
…or black and white? In this picture, I think the color detracts a bit.
I chose black and white for this to capture the bird’s neck and how it mimicked the cypress trees.
Black and white makes the bird pop here.
I prefer color here, because the algae looks like tree leaves in the reflection. The color in the water makes the reflection look more alive than the standup trees.
Maybe you don’t care about the zebra long wing as much as me, but I finally got his wingspan.
This was our picnic view: miles of sawgrass interrupted by lone trees. Would you like to see this in black and white? It’s gorgeous, but different.
Also our picnic site.
I regret not taking a picture of our picnic, but I had four hungry mouths to feed and it wasn’t prepped in advance. Sometimes the chore of making and packaging picnics is such a bother, it saps the fun right out of them. Lately, I’ve been just gathering whole foods and bringing a cutting board and knife.
Our Picnic Basket
2 kinds of cheese
fig preserves
homemade boule of artisan bread (hmm… freshly baked bread just laying around, I guess that’s where my secret plans peeped through.)
a big fat tomato
pickled red onions
strawberries
bananas
pistachios
butter
sparkling water
milk (for the kiddos)
I sliced the bread, cheese, and tomato while Andres readied the drinks. Everybody served themselves as they liked. It’s so much fun to be relaxed about eating. Lunch was scrumptious, elegant and nearly effortless.
At the picnic table next door teenage boy scouts and their leaders ate limp sandwiches, goldfish crackers, granola bars, Gatorade and chips. They had just completed a 2.4 mile nature hike. Their food (or should I say food products) was so sad, although the eaters enjoyed it, arguing over flavors and whatnot. They generated a fair amount of trash, which they dutifully sorted into recycling and garbage bins.
“This is the way most people eat in our country,” I shook my head in bewilderment.
I don’t mean this as a judgment. It was just such a striking example of how our country has gone so off course in terms of food that even kids hiking through a National Park fuel up on factory-made chemicals designed to tickle their taste buds.
I turned my attention back to my own table. Eyes on your own life, I often admonish myself. A feast lay before me: food for my body, beloveds for my heart, and the view for my soul.
There was more than enough to look at in my own life.
Leave a Reply