A Heated Pool and FREE Washers and Dryers?

Day 268  |  Marco Island to Everglades City  |  5.6 Hours  |  38 Miles  

We rose with the sun and I wiped the dew (and salt spray) from Crossroads before bringing up the anchor. To my surprise, the chain came up muddy and required a bit of cleaning. We were underway by 8:00, tracing our path out of Factory Bay and alongside Marco Island's resort properties. Once out in the Gulf of Mexico, it was another beautifully calm day. We headed south, around Marco Island, to the Ten Thousand Islands. The chart looked intimidating, but our path was well-marked. We had planned our departure time to coincide with a rising tide.

We saw a few areas of skinny water, but we always had at least a foot of water underneath us. No worries. ;-) The journey up to Everglades City took us by mangrove-covered islands with small sandy beaches, through a carved out ditch in the middle of an island, and past a long sandbar covered with demonstrative white pelicans.

We entered and exited a portion of Everglades National Park. Osprey inhabited a majority of the channel markers and I caught lunch time for one wide-mouthed chick. Air boat ride tourism seems to be the largest industry in the area. Multiple companies, operating multiple boats each, zipped through the channel. We arrived at Everglades Isle RV Resort and Marina just before 2:00 and tied up to the face dock. The resort is primarily for Class A motorcoaches, but the concrete floating docks are as nice as we've seen. Bill (the dockmaster) gave us a quick tour of the area, pointing out all of the great amenities. The heated pool looked mighty inviting so we returned to Crossroads and formulated a plan.

Today, the three FREE sets of washers and dryers were slightly more impressive than the pool, so we gathered up our laundry and returned. We ran into Marshall and Judy (Lets Go!) and chatted with them for a while -- Marshall and puppy on the dock and Judy at the pool. I sat on the pool's edge and dangled my feet in the water during the wash cycle. Once the clothes were in the dryer I spent a half hour on the recumbent cycle. We hadn't been out for a walk in a few days, and this was a perfect option to loosen up the knees. Laundry done, we returned to Crossroads just as the sun set.

Another front will pass through tonight and scattered showers are predicted for tomorrow. We'll see how it goes and will do as much outside as possible. Hoping for drier weather, we've scheduled our swamp boat tour for Thursday.