The Pa-hay-okee Overlook is about 12 miles in from the Homestead entrance to Everglades National Park. Great place to catch the sunrise, and in Summer no one will bother you due to the extremely high mosquito level.
There are rumors that the local snakes have started eating automobiles, but this is not true.
(A larger version of this photo appears on my gallery site here.)
A few years ago I took a walk along the pathway of Everglades National Park. Saw an alligator just sitting there a few feet off the path.
I didn’t bother him and he didn’t bother me.
Also found a nice quirky and interesting place in the area – the Rod and Gun Club.
http://www.evergladesrodandgun.com/
Lot’s of interesting history.
I almost moved to Fort Myers in 1872. One reason I didn’t were the mosquitoes on the first tee at 9 AM
That,s 1972. I,m not that old.
The bugs are much less a problem during the winter. Still, I am amazed that anyone was able to live in the swamps (which in Florida were much more extensive before 20th Century development) in the old days. I assume that the benefits were abundant game and some isolation from enemies.
As I recall from readings about colonial America, the death rate from tropical diseases and water-borne infections was high for everyone and extremely high for slaves. I suspect that it was high for the Indians as well, though there must have been a lot of selection for resistance before the Europeans and Africans arrived.
The extent of malaria at the time of the Civil War was much greater. William Mayo moved his family to Rochester, Minnesota to escape malaria.
I think – one of the main reasons the Panama Canal was completed was controlling the mosquito problem and yellow fever (transmitted by mosquito) – was that Walter Reed? – but a main means for controlling the population was, I believe, going in and breaking most of the discarded (but rain filled and mosquito breeding) bottles in that small country.
Bill (incognito)
I remember reading that malaria was endemic as far North as Virginia until the 1930s. Draining swamps was considered a good thing. People forget, or never learned, what life was like before modern medicine, insecticides and central air. Imagine NYC or southern cities in summer before automobiles. There is now a huge Corps of Engineers project to restore the original Everglades water flow and wildlife migration patterns by elevating portions of the modern roads that cross southern Florida. I have no opinion about the wisdom of this project, but I suspect that such a scheme would have been thought crazy until quite recently.
Dr. Kennedy: “I almost moved to Fort Myers in 1872”
We knew you were old, but we didn’t know you were that old.
Jonathan – imagine NYC with all the horses – summer – and no a/c
Bill (incognito)
There should be a Floridian version of Mannitoba town statue to a mosquito.
Tatyana: Florida tourist boards wouldn’t buy onto that at all.
I’ve been living in Florida for the past seven years. In that time, I’ve been bitten by mosquitoes less than a dozen times. Perhaps it’s because I limit my outdoor life to non-dawn/dusk hours; perhaps it’s because the state has effective mosquito control programs.
No-see-ums, on the other hand, are voracious.