TRAIL UPDATES

By Monica Woll

Steve Bowes, of the National Park Service Rivers, Trails and Conservation Assistance Program has ended his time with us. He is relocating to San Francisco for another position with RTCA. For those of you who never met him, he was conducting monthly meetings on the paddling trail with us. While working with him, we developed a mission statement, came up with our logo (almost), and did a lot of work on our data sheets to identify the put-ins, rest stops, and campsites.

Our August meeting was cancelled due to hurricanes. So the last meeting with Steve was in Marathon on September 8^th. It was attended by myself, Debra, Rich Jones with the County, Charlene Wylie from Pennekamp State Park and Sharon. We had planned to deliver the data sheets to Rich for a map update but there were still some that needed completing. So we set a deadline for October 30 to get those to him. We planned a follow-up boat trip with Pennekamp to explore more trail sites. Since that meeting, I met with Kathleen Patton, who wrote Kayaking the Keys, to brief her on our data sheets. She was interested in helping with the Key West sites which is great since we haven’t had much luck getting info for that section.

I was invited to attend a meeting with the state agency, Office of Greenways & Trails, with Debra Stucki recently. It was held in Key West at the historic Casa Marina Resort. It was a chance for the trail users board to see the Florida Keys Overseas Heritage Trail up close and personal. The first part of the meeting was indoors with power point presentations and question and answer sessions with Debra, the Department of Transportation which provides much of the funding for trail improvements, the contractor/landscaper, George Borelli, the National Registry of Historic Structures coordinator Barbara Mattick and Marlene Conaway, our Monroe County Planner. The next day was a field trip to see the sections of the trail that are being worked on or are already completed as well as to look at some of the recently designated historic Flagler railroad bridges. Everyone in attendance was very impressed with the magnitude of this trail and agreed that after all the hard work is done, it will be a world-famous trail.

Coincidentally, there was a meeting the next day in Key West about a parcel of waterfront land that was recently donated to Key West by the Navy. It was a chance for citizens to help decide what would be done with the property. Club members Dee & Jake Bower met Frank and I there and I spoke about the FKOHT and requested that there be a put-in and take-out for kayaks along the water. There will be more meetings coming up. You can also go to the website and express your support for both kayak/canoe access as well as bike trail signage. www.trumanwaterfront.com  or fax your comments to 305-444-4306.

I did another boat ride with Pennekamp State Park manager, Eric Kiefer, park biologist, Jim Ducquesnel and park ranger Charlene Wylie on October 21st. We visited the south end of El Radabob Key called Lower Sound Point where we checked out 3 different sites. It was amazing how far we were able to walk along the shoreline on a sandy berm behind the mangrove fringe. We also visited Dove Key which has an open meadow area rich with diverse plantlife. Jim spotted one of the blues, a butterfly. They fly very fast so he couldn’t make a positive identification but if it is determined that it is the rare Miami Blue then it will likely not become a trail site.

On October 22, Dorie Cox, Donna Nussenblatt and Lou Greenwell joined me on a paddle to Veradero Beach, a new paddler-only site on the bayside of Key Largo. It is a popular gathering place for power boats (like a sand bar) but because of their misbehaving, the neighbors fought to close it off to motorized craft. It hasn’t been buoyed yet but once it is, it will be a stop for both paddlers and hiker-bikers on the Overseas Heritage Trail. It is a pretty little sandy cove making it a great place to pull out of the water and go for a swim and a nice shady mangrove and hammock forest for viewing the sunset. We did a cleanup and the majority of the trash was glass beer bottles. We were able to simply walk through the woods to US 1 and drop off the bags that were too full to carry on our kayaks. Of course we went by later to pick them up. It is also possible to walk to Harriette’s Restaurant for lunch! It was a very short paddle from Sunset Park at MM 95 but it can be combined with a paddle out to many of the off shore islands in Florida Bay such as Pigeon Key where Donna and Lou headed after our cleanup. Beyond that is Bottle Key, which we have had a few club paddles to in the past year. Due west of the cove are several more keys: Butternut, the Swash Keys and several unnamed smaller islets.