Adventures in the Everglades

Christen and I took a three-day camping trip to the Everglades this weekend. Well, technically it was in the Big Cypress Preserve, but it was in the swamp and close to the Everglades, so we'll cut the technicalities. We camped in at Bear Island Campground, as mentioned in The Best of Tent Camping, which is a hunters' campground with a port-a-potty and no shower facilities, but is a very nice secluded campground. After the first day we forwent the potty in favor of the squat method because they quite obvoiusly hadn't been cleaned in quite awhile. (We thought of calling the number on it to tell them it was time but decided the dudes would come out and say "Nah, you can fit 6 more craps in that one."). We spent the whole time doing nothing. I read The Ballad of the Whiskey Robber (which was fabulous, by the way. I way recommend it) and took naps and took pictures of all the gators in the swamp. We did some geocaching on the way back up, hitting a few in Naples and Ft. Myers, but mostly we just spent time together relaxing. My main complaint? When did mosquitoes become immune to deet? We sprayed so much Cutter on us that you'd think we would have drowned them, but they kept a'comin'. Now I'm still all itchy, but I might pick up some Calimine (SP?) lotion to stop the itchies on my way home. It was really cold at night, and the first night we had forgotten the sleeping bag so we just had my thin quilt so we drove into town (an hour+ drive) to get a mess kit (because we also left the pots at home) and a sleeping bag. Goodness. I spent all Friday evening getting everything together and we forgot some of the most important things, you know?