"Bad Luck" means different
things to different people, but here in SW Florida, "Bad
Luck" is the name of an expansive Everglades prairie
that may be one of the world's largest adult playgrounds
- not that children don't play there too. On Memorial Day
Weekend 2004, we spent several memorable days on Bad Luck
Prairie in the 'Glades. |
A "prairie" in the 'Glades is a tract of flat
land at, or near, sea level that is sparsely covered by
by grass and pockets of trees called "hammocks"
during the dry season, and pretty much a completely underwater
"river of grass" when it's wet. When it's dry
it can be very, very dry, but when it's wet . . .well, for
one thing, that big rut in the picture won't be visible
when the rains come.
That can make for some serious excitement. There you are,
tooling along, enjoying everything Aretha can do with Dolby
Digital Surround Sound, and fine tune fiddling with your
radio, when eight inches of water suddenly becomes four
feet deep.
That will make you "sho nuff" glad/wish you had
a snorkel. |
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Bad Luck Prairie is one of the best known
"secrets" in SW Florida. On any given weekend,
there may be hundreds of people out there on Jeeps, ATV's,
Swamp Buggies or Air Boats . . . but I promise you that
you'd never find your way in without help -- and I do mean
NEVER!
There's almost no way to get there from here, wherever
"here" happens to be. |
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I understand that swamp buggies
and airboats are local inventions. I don't know that I have
ever heard of them being used anywhere else, although it
seems to me that they would be useful elsewhere. |
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There are those who look down smug noses at these homemade
vehicles, but as a guy who spent most of his life worshipping
at the Shrine of Some Immaculate Contraption, I admire
the hard work and ingenuity involved.
If you've never looked at a weld as art, you might not
understand; but I do believe that some of these backwoods
boys could build a space shuttle from stuff they could
find at garage sales.
Why do they call this particular piece of South Florida
prairie, "Bad Luck?" Well, I dunno, I guess
that will forever remain a mystery to me.
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If I had to guess, I'd suppose that the place
is called "Bad Luck" because someone must have had
something go wrong out there at some time or another - but
that's just a hunch so don't quote me.
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At any rate, it was the Memorial
Day Weekend, 2004, and after consulting with Ms. Megan,
our six-year old who actually controls all things here,
we felt that we all deserved a little time off. Our friend
Carl, and his wife Colleen, agreed to meet with us at the
trail head, so Jeremy and I packed the cooler, loaded the
family into the Jeeps, and off we went to go play in the
mud.
That's Carl with the blue Wrangler and my son Jeremy by
the yellow one. |
| The trial into Bad Luck Prairie winds along
a canal with a nice canopy of trees for much of the way. There
is nothing that would stop anyone in virtually any car from
making the trip from the trail head to the prairie entrance
when it's dry. |
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It's not a rough ride, but some
sections are washed out into a series of rolling swells
tat will get your suspension going in a sort of harmonic
undulation that will bottom it out if it's a heavy vehicle.
My Rubicon is a good bit heavier than the stock Jeeps, partially
because of the equipment we installed, and partially because
of the load that equipment is designed to carry.
The rear bumper, tire carrier and rack system are by Garvin
Industries. They are seriously heavy and seem "over
built," until you consider the fact that the 76 quart
cooler perched at the top weighs over a hundred pounds,
and each gas can weighs about thirty-five pounds when full
of fuel. The 35" tire and wheel is heavy as is the
hi lift jack that bolts in behind it.
The whole thing probably adds four hundred pounds to the
weight of the Jeep, not to mention the top rack and the
winch. Counting all that as well as the weight of the people,
tools and miscellaneous "stuff," I suspect that
the Rubicon weighs at least a thousand pounds more than
it did on the show room floor.
It's a good thing that "Mikey" [Mike Thoman],
the mechanic at Bob Taylor Jeep who installed my lift, recognized
that the springs that came with my kit were not the right
ones for this kind of application. I am very happy with
it, but had they installed the kit they were sent, it would
have been a disaster. |
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The weight can be a good thing, especially
when you need to pull something heavy - like a big Dodge
truck for example.
It was about that time that our friends Bryan and Molly
appeared on the horizon in their black Jeep. |
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| Although both had elected to install snorkels
on their Jeeps, neither Bryan, nor Carl had gotten around
to doing the installation. The Prairie was getting wetter
with each day's rainfall, and the days for Jeeping with snorkels
had pretty much come to a close. The very next mud hole got
him. |
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Bryan is a lineman, one of those
agile, athletic, supremely coordinated young men who work
with lots of electricity high up on telephone poles. He's
uncommonly quick, and that's a good thing . . . otherwise
I would have been fast enough to capture it on film when
he fell in the mud trying to catch my winch cable.
Pity that - it was a wonderfully awkward splash!
Evidently, Molly thought so too, judging by the laughing.
At the next mud hole, Bryan got stuck again . . . "he
who laughs last," I guess. |
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At least she didn't fall in Bryan!
The next mud hole was nasty, slick and deep where I went
thru, so Carl chose a different line of approach, making
it thru without much trouble. |
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| Bryan chose to follow the route I had used,
demonstrating that the lockers in our Rubicon make a significant
difference. |
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| Yes indeed, Brother Bryan, the veritable image
of grace and alacrity! |
| Roger was the next to get stuck; when he gets
stuck, he usually gets stuck good! That's certainly not a
place I'd want to be without a snorkel. |
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| That's our Roger! He's a great guy to have along
when you're out Jeeping in a place like this. He can generally
be counted on to do whatever it is that seems to be the most
challenging thing to do. |
| My kids enjoy riding around on the prairies
and exploring the ATV trails, but the opportunities to play
"Rubi to the Rescue" are the highlight of every
trip. Roger is a very popular guy with them - naturally, after
pulling him out, we had to swim our way back too. |
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I enjoy whatever the kids enjoy,
but I was anxious to show them the place we call "Boy
Scout," an abandoned house out in the middle of a hammock
that is supposed to have been used by Boy Scouts once upon
a time. If they really used it, I cannot begin to imagine
how they could have hiked out there. |
Bryan, guided by his GPS unit, led the parade. |
The house is dilapidated, but most of the
damage is due to vandalism. This place existed for years
and years, serving as an emergency shelter for those caught
out on the prairie, but I guess it was inevitable that some
mindless moron would eventually find it, and they did.
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Fortunately, those people are not common on
the prairies. The vast majority of people we have met have
been like most of the Jeep and ATV community.
We explored Boy Scout without incident, until the bandits
showed up. They waltzed in like they owned the place, and
I guess they do.
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Cute l'il critter isn't he |
I am sure there are folks who'll
have something to say about feeding wild animals, but I
happen to be pretty familiar with these particular coons,
and I personally see no harm in it. Besides, I'm getting
old, and fighting with Megan takes too much out of me. |
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| It's funny, but when people see Megan scramble
to catch a lizard, frog, or some such thing, they think I'm
kidding when I yell at her not to eat it. If that coon had
seen some of the things we've seen, he might have been a bit
less trusting. |
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I'm sure it's tough for the boys to stand
by and let Megs try everything first but I suppose fighting
with her takes a lot out of them too.
Once she was satisfied that she wasn't going to eat the
coon, and the coon wasn't going to eat anyone else, Megs
moved on to exploring around, and let the boys give it a
try.
Ryan lobbied for his turn first claiming, "I'm
always in the middle." There was no arguing that
point. |
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| Besides which, Dook has more patience
than the rest of us put together, a fact that I attribute
to his being Meggie's oldest boy. Since she was a baby, it
was always, "I'm going to get my boys,"
or "Where are my boys." She could try the
patience of the Pope. |
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| Once Dook had his turn, Megs came back to exercise
a little management. She got it in her mind that Luz' life
would not be complete unless she fed the coon too. Luz wasn't
what you'd call enthusiastic, but Megs ultimately prevailed. |
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| Unlike Roger and Bryan, Carl and Colleen tend
to be a bit more on the cautious side. It is common to find
that blue Jeep back in the middle of the prairie as clean
as it was when it rolled off the show room floor. |
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| Once Jeremy took his yellow
Sport out and parked it for a picture under the clouds,
Carl and Colleen decided to join him.
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| With thunder heads beginning to move in, we
decided that it was time to start moving to the trail head
- I say "we" rhetorically, the more it rains the
more the kids want to stay and pull people out of mud holes. |
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I suppose this was more a slide
show than a story, but I wanted to share with you the
beauty of this place that remains as God left it within
rifle shot of condos, subdivisions, interstate highways
and far too many people.
I've enjoyed this place since
"back in the day," when it wasn't wise to shine
a flashlight in the air - a square grouper might have
dropped out of the sky and hit you in the head.
This was just Day 1 of our three
day weekend though, perhaps I'll do a little better with
the others; or perhaps not.
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