About the Everglades Exploration Network - Everglades Exploration Network2024-03-28T12:07:08Zhttp://gladesgodeep.ning.com/forum/categories/about-the-everglades/listForCategory?feed=yes&xn_auth=noWelcome!tag:gladesgodeep.ning.com,2008-11-30:2541133:Topic:1062008-11-30T22:24:11.000ZKeith Whttp://gladesgodeep.ning.com/profile/KeithWasserman
Welcome to the Everglades Exploration Network! Here, you can meet others who share your passion for exploring the Everglades and Big Cypress backcountry, and to discuss and share your information and stories about your travels in the backcountry of the Everglades ecosystem. If you have already made one or more forays into the Everglades or the Big Cypress, your experience and insights will be welcome additions to our discussions and blogs.If you are still thinking about or planning on making…
Welcome to the Everglades Exploration Network! Here, you can meet others who share your passion for exploring the Everglades and Big Cypress backcountry, and to discuss and share your information and stories about your travels in the backcountry of the Everglades ecosystem. If you have already made one or more forays into the Everglades or the Big Cypress, your experience and insights will be welcome additions to our discussions and blogs.If you are still thinking about or planning on making such a trip, feel free to post your questions in one of our discussion forums. This is also a place for those who, like myself, have gone beyond the boundaries of the Park roads, trails and established campsites, and who have explored the Everglades backcountry as few others have since the creation of Everglades National Park more than 60 years ago. Please be sure to read the Site Guidelines before starting a discussion or posting a blog entry. We hope that with your participation we can make this site a valuable resource for exploring the vast wilderness of Everglades National Park and the Big Cypress National Preserve by canoe, kayak, or on foot, in a safe and responsible manner. How this group got started.tag:gladesgodeep.ning.com,2008-11-30:2541133:Topic:1042008-11-30T22:23:30.000ZKeith Whttp://gladesgodeep.ning.com/profile/KeithWasserman
A little more than three years ago, after Hurricane Wilma closed the backcountry of Everglades National Park for camping, I began planning a trip down the Shark River Slough from the Tamiami Trail down to Rookery Branch, and then on to Flamingo at Florida Bay.<br />
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Two years of drought, and some difficulty in building the boat I wanted to travel in, delayed the trip until early fall of this year. Finally, with a completed Glades skiff that had passed muster on the sawgrass and mangrove country in…
A little more than three years ago, after Hurricane Wilma closed the backcountry of Everglades National Park for camping, I began planning a trip down the Shark River Slough from the Tamiami Trail down to Rookery Branch, and then on to Flamingo at Florida Bay.<br />
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Two years of drought, and some difficulty in building the boat I wanted to travel in, delayed the trip until early fall of this year. Finally, with a completed Glades skiff that had passed muster on the sawgrass and mangrove country in the south end of the Park, and blessed with a season of abundant rain that brought water levels up to nearly record highs, I set the starting date for the trip for Sunday morning of November 9 2008.<br />
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I will admit to a fairly high level of anxiety as the departure date approached, due to the lack of hard information I had regarding the conditions I would find in the Slough. When I say that I'd begun "planning" the Slough crossing, what I really mean is that I thought a lot about it, and over time I cobbled together what amounted to a very meager collection of information gathered from one book and a couple of online magazine articles, and I was plagued by a number of questions: Would the sawgrass be too high to get through before I got to the airboat trails? Would I be able to get through the mangroves at Rookery Branch? How would I get into the Slough in the first place? About two weeks before the trip a bit of serendipity came my way, and I received an email from someone who had just completed his own Slough crossing - in a single day! The exchange of information that followed (mostly one way, from Terry to me!) was a godsend. A good example was knowing how to enter the Slough, and one of the things that had me the most concerned was finding an entry point from the Tamiami Trail. The articles that I'd read, and the brief discussion I had with a couple of nameless Park Rangers at the Coe Visitors Center (who knew very little and couldn't even tell me what, if any, permit I would need), led me to believe that you had to get into the Slough a few miles east of Shark Valley from the disused section of the Tamiami Trail - the old "Dead Body Road" - that parallels US 41 east of the Forty Mile Bend. Terry had entered from the L-67 canal, which was a revelation to me. I'm not from south Florida and I don't know the area outside the Park very well, so this is something that would not have occurred to me.<br />
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The upshot of our discussions was that there was too little information available for folks who wanted to make such trips off the established Park trails, and no way for folks to get together to share what they knew. At first, we had thought about putting this information up on my other website, the <a href="http://www.evergladesdiary.com">Everglades Diary</a> (if you don't know either Terry or myself, then you probably got here from the link on that site). However, just posting a few extra stories was not going to get the job done. What was really needed was a full-blown discussion forum, a way for others to easily discuss and share their knowledge and experiences. Now, I am not by any stretch of the imagination a programmer, and this is something that would take me much time to learn and to do correctly. To further complicate matters, I work a day job with overtime, and attend school nearly full time as well, and finding any spare time to update my website is already something of a sore point with me. The Everglades Diary has been a labor of love for me, but it is also a huge source of frustration in regard to finding time to actually work with it, and I didn't feel right adding even more content when I still haven't finished what I started four years ago. It's not the actual writing that is hard - I can pretty much write in my sleep - it's the grunt work of learning and writing all the code, and formatting the content so that it looks good and fits correctly. This is something I have to do every time I put together a new page, and, frankly, I don't always do it very well.<br />
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Then I found out about the Ning network and the tools they provide for networking people of similar interests. After about an hour of checking it out and seeing what it had to offer, it started looking to me like just what was needed to get our information out there and bring other Everglades explorers together to share their own stories and knowledge. A few minutes later, the Everglades Deep Exploration social network was born. What would have taken me hours and days to learn and to put in place from scratch was all ready to go with just a few mouse clicks.<br />
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The rest is up to you. Welcome, and please use this site to your advantage - that's what we're here for! Site Guidelinestag:gladesgodeep.ning.com,2008-11-27:2541133:Topic:452008-11-27T17:10:37.000ZKeith Whttp://gladesgodeep.ning.com/profile/KeithWasserman
<p><u><strong>Membership Information<br></br></strong></u>The Everglades Exploration network is a gathering place for those who wish to discuss, ask questions, and share information about exploring the South Florida wilderness, and we ask that you join with the intention of becoming an active participant in our discussion forums. If you only wish to view discussion postings and blogs, then you are still welcome to do so without becoming a member. All of our content is publicly available and does…</p>
<p><u><strong>Membership Information<br/></strong></u>The Everglades Exploration network is a gathering place for those who wish to discuss, ask questions, and share information about exploring the South Florida wilderness, and we ask that you join with the intention of becoming an active participant in our discussion forums. If you only wish to view discussion postings and blogs, then you are still welcome to do so without becoming a member. All of our content is publicly available and does not require membership to view. <strong>If you do choose to join please take a few moments to read the General Guidelines, and you will be required to introduce yourself in our Introductions forum within 7 days of your membership approval.</strong></p>
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<p><u><strong>General Guidelines</strong><br/></u>Needless to say, please refrain from using strong profanity, and show respect for the opinions of the other members of this network. While all discussion is welcome, <strong>any network activity that</strong> <b>knowingly encourages or promotes</b> <strong>any illegal or other unauthorized use of National Park Service or State Park resources and facilities will be summarily removed from the discussion forums and blogs without notice, and the poster may be subject to banning from the network if the activity persists</strong>. These activities include:<br/><br/></p>
<ul>
<li>The unauthorized cutting or clearing of foliage. This includes trail-clearing that is not specifically authorized by the proper authority.</li>
<li>Camping in areas where it is not permitted.</li>
<li>Trespass on private property,</li>
<li>Harming or harrassing any wild animals that are not covered under hunting regulations.</li>
<li>The possession of firearms in areas where it is not permitted.</li>
</ul>
<p><br/><b>Please remember that we as a group are promoting the use of a stressed and fragile ecosystem, and that we want to be recognized by National and State Park administration and law enforcement officials as exemplary citizens that can be counted on to make use of these natural resources in a proactively responsible manner. All state and federal resources are protected by law, including all plants and animals.</b><br/><br/><u><strong>Discussion Forum Guidelines</strong><br/></u>Please read and follow these guidelines that govern the posting of discussion topics <b>before</b> you post. At this time discussions should be limited to the areas that lie within or connect to the Everglades watershed. These areas include:<br/><br/></p>
<ul>
<li>Everglades National Park and all public areas that lie within its boundaries</li>
<li>The Wilderness Waterway paddling trail and Florida Bay</li>
<li>Big Cypress National Preseve</li>
<li>Biscayne National Park</li>
<li>Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve</li>
<li>Picayune Strand State Forest</li>
<li>Rookery Bay and Cape Romano - Ten Thousand Islands Aquatic Preserves</li>
<li>Collier-Seminole State Park</li>
<li>Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge</li>
<li>Lake Okeechobee</li>
<li>Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary</li>
<li>Fisheating Creek</li>
</ul>
<br/>These area restrictions are by no means written in stone, and if there is sufficient interest and demand, we may include other South Florida wilderness areas as fair game for discussion.<br/><br/>All discussions are limited to travel by human-powered or small sailing craft, and by foot or bicycle. This includes canoes and kayaks (with or without sail rigs), poled skiffs (no motors) and rowboats. Motor boats used as 'mothership' shuttles for paddle craft are ok, as long as they're not the primary exploratory vehicles. We do not welcome any other discussion regarding primary travel by motor boat, airboat, off-road vehicles (ORVs and swamp buggies), and personal watercraft (Jet Skis, Sea-Doos, etc.). There are other outlets on the Internet where you can discuss these subjects, and I feel very strongly that we who enjoy our wilderness experiences minus the noise of internal combustion engines and the smoke of their exhaust deserve to have a place of our own. I don't envision any circumstances where these restrictions will be lifted, so please don't ask. These restrictions don't apply to personal blogs, private photos, or messages (see below for Photo, Blogging and Messaging Guidelines), but they do apply to promoting your blog posts and photos in the open discussion forums.<br/><br/><u><strong>Photo Guidelines</strong><br/></u>All photos should be in JPG format to keep the size down, and it would be much appreciated if you would re-size your large digital photos and scans so they are under 1 MB in size. The Ning Mini network service that we subscribe to provides us with a lot of space, but it is still limited, and by keeping your photos small we can keep your photos available for a longer period of time before we have to retire them to make room for more. The topic and area restrictions that apply to the discussion forums also apply to posting your photos, and your photos should be clearly captioned or commented to indicate the location.<br/><br/><u><strong>Blogging Guidelines</strong><br/></u>Blogs are personal accounts and journals that reside under your profile page (My Page) and are not part of general community discussion, so there are no subject restrictions on blogs. So, if you have a burning desire to relate an account of your swamp-buggy hunting trip, or talk about your new 250 HP, twin-engine fishing boat, this is the place to do it. Your blogs may be read by others on the network, however, so we would appreciate if your blog posts are free of strong profanity or inappropriate sexual content, the promotion of illegal activities, and any other content that could be considered objectionable by reasonable community standards. Please remember that promotion of your blog posts in the discussion forums is subject to the restrictions placed on those forums, so if you want to make your off-topic blog posts known to others, you may want to send them a message instead (see below for Messaging Guidelines). Any complaints made by members regarding blog content will be considered on a case-by-case basis.<br/><br/><u><strong>Messaging Guidelines</strong><br/></u>The Ning service provides the ability to send messages to individual members. This allow members to communicate with each other outside of the discussion forums. The same restrictions that apply to blogging will also apply to messages, in other words, there are no restrictions except those that concern respect, privacy, and common decency. If you choose to send rude or inflammatory messages to other members, and if those members complain, it may get you banned from the network.