7 February 2017 Collier State Park and Picayune Strand State Forest

Today was the new and the old for us. We started the day with a visit to a state park we had not visited and ended the day at a familiar state forest. Our first stop was at Collier State Park. The state park is host to Florida's oldest geocache. After we paid our admission we made our first stop at a tourist spot, the resting place of the Bay City Walking Dredge. This is the remaining dredge of 145 built to dredge the Everglades and Big Cypress Swamp to build the Tamiami Trail. The machine dredged the swamp at a rate of five to eight feet every thirty seconds.

Our first cache included a very nice hawk sighting,

Collier has many royal palms. They are tall majestic trees and aquatic plants along the boardwalk.

We moved to a quieter section of the park to hunt the oldest cache in Florida. It seemed a perfect place to see an alligator or two, but there were none today so we just enjoyed the other sights.

Mangrove Buckeye Butterfly

We found it! The oldest cache in Florida and the rustiest ammo can we've found. This one is nearing structrual failure from the rust.

This is an interesting flower that we can't identify.

White Peacock Butterfly

After Collier State Park, we returned to a familiar place for a hike at Picayune Strand State Forest. The forest had been cleared of much of the lower growth of cabbage palms since our last visit. It was a more open walk and an interesting revisit.

Mockingbird on the trail

We missed seeing melaleuca trees on our last visit to Picayune Strand. They are non-native and invasive trees the state is trying to control. They were planted to drain swamps. Now they grow aggressively forcing out native plants. They are weird to touch with a spongy texture that flexes somewhat like a squeezed roll of paper towels.

The Zebra Longwing has been Florida's state butterfly since 1996. They are plentiful, but elusive for images. This was one among many that we saw along a small stretch of trail.

We spotted a number of paw prints on the trail this afternoon, but no panthers. They were about the right size.

Sunset along the Sabal Palm Trail