Day Paddling Floridas 10,000 Islands and Big Cypress Swamp

From southwestern Florida's Marco Islands to Cape Sable, Floridian natural historian, writer, and photographer Jeff Ripple explores the extraordinary beauty of Florida's 10,000 Islands, many of which are still unnamed. This guide features saltwater paddling tours on the northern and central 10,000 Islands, as well as a handful of freshwater tours in the Big Cypress Swamp. Trips emanate from multiple put-ins and take-outs, including Rookery Bay Estuarine Reserve (Marco Island), Goodland, Port of the Island, Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve, Ever-glades City, and Big Cypress National Preserve. Most guidebooks devoted to paddlers and covering Everglades National Park and southern Florida focus on overnight trips and paddling the Wilderness Waterway. This book is different. All of the routes covered in this guide, most of which are loop trips, can be covered in a day and are 14 miles long or less; several trips are 5 miles long or less. Each trip includes information on distance, diffi-culty, recommended charts, and navigational features, as well as winds, tides, and safety issues. The author also surveys the human and natural history that you'll encounter-alligators, manatees, striped mullet (which may jump in your boat), mangrove trees-in the region, which comprises the largest tropical evergreen forest in the U.S. Humans have been living here for thousands of years-the first Native American inhabitants were probably ancestors to the Calusa, a nonagricultural people with a rich and diverse culture.