Beauty Along The Waterways

Caloosahatchee River, FL

26 47.52 N 081 14.14 W

Now my mind is turned to migrating northward once again.  That reminds me of a blog topic I've been meaning to write about for some time -- the different flora and fauna we see up and down the east coast.  From North to South:

In Lake Champlain and in Maine, the shore lines are rocky and the terrain is mountainous.   We see a lot of  red cedar and maple trees by the shore line.  Proportionately fewer maple the more north.  The twisted and gnarled cedars are wonderful.   They appear tough enough to last for a millennium.  The maples make for spectacular colors in the fall.   The Vermont Tourist Bureau will never admit it, but the finest fall foliage is actually in western Massachusetts, near Williams.  

Along the Chesapeake we see an assortment of deciduous trees and only the hint of a few hills.   The scenery there is not very  interesting.   The best thing to see there are the osprey that seem to be everywhere.

From the Dismal Swamp south to South Carolina the waterways are lines by wonderful cyprus swaps.  The cyprus trees are beautiful and the swamp environment is very peaceful.  Mind you that we've never been there in the height of summer and thus we avoid the bugs.

South Carolina, Georgia, and northern Florida down to St. Augustine are marked by spectacular swamp marshes.   We think that the marshes are very beautiful but it's hard to explain why.   Mile after mile one sees nothing but flat land,  waving grasses and meandering  creeks.    What makes it beautiful?  I'd say the subtle colors that I find impossible to describe or to photograph.   I'm reminded of Sweden.  The Swedes are specially fond of the kind of reeds they call vas.   Vas too shows very subtle and very beautiful color variations.

From St. Augustine to Vero we see a mix of palm trees and palmettos and many non-native trees.   A few spots are very nice but most of nature is drowned out by heavy development and houses.

Starting around Vero, and all the way South, mangroves dominate everything.  Mangroves are remarkable plants.  They suck up salt water and convert it to fresh water for their own use.   They are tough, hard to kill and hard to uproot.   Their root network provides shelter for all sorts of marine life.  However, mangroves are highly repetitious, almost featureless and they grow were the land is flat.   Therefore, there's not much scenery at all in mangrove country.  In the Everglades, the mangroves grow so big that at first I thought they were some other species.

A special treat, seen from North Carolina all the way down to the Keys are live oak trees.  We don't have live oaks in the northeast and it wasn't until we began cruising that we learned how great they are.  The most majestic and beautiful live oaks are on Cumberland Island, GA.   I have no idea how old they are.

In the Bahamas, the real attraction is the water.   The water in the Bahamas is marvelously clear and it takes on wonderful shades of blue and green and white.  

So, what are the most beautiful places according to Libby and Dick?   No surprise there.  Lake Champlain, and especially Valcour Island are by far the most beautiful.   Our runners up (in order) are:

1. Otter Creek leading to Vergennes, Vermont.
2. Cumberland Island Georgia. 
3. The Hudson River from Hyde Park to Manhattan.  
4. Moore Harbor, Isle la Haut, Maine. 
5. Manjack Cay, Abacos, Bahamas. 
6. The Pasquotank River from Dismal Swamp to Elizabeth City, North Carolina.