July 22, 2000 -- 10:34 PM EST

I was looking forward to today all week! But I was a yutz and forgot to take any kind of camera. So we didn't get to take pictures even though a lot of scenery was gorgeous. I'd written the park earlier this week for information but I didn't get it until this afternoon -- after we'd already been and come back! But at least it means I can scan some of the photos and map in. Here's the map -- the trails loop around all over the place! It's all marsh, even though only the big, truly lake-y parts show up as water on the map.

Map is not quite to scale.

I got up around 8 AM and breakfasted and everything but Paul was such a drag to get up and moving that we didn't head out until much later. We had to stop for gas and an oil check and I made him eat breakfast from McDonald's to have something in his stomach. We got to the park at 11 AM. While he unloaded the bikes I went to the booth thingie to sign us in and get some maps of the park. It's a shame more people don't use parks anymore -- I was glad some still do though.

The Ft. Christmas historical park nearby is smaller and has playgrounds for the kiddies plus historical buildings -- a fort, log cabins, etc. There were a few families doing the picnic thing there although the wetlands park was empty save for us. On the sign up sheet the last person had left hours before we got there, also a biker. I guess the only people who want to use the wetlands park are bikers, joggers and bird enthusiasts. There aren't any facilities or easy to use picnic areas like the Ft. Christmas Park for picnic/volleybal type recreation.

(Oh, on the way we also saw a sign for a WWII plane museum display and Paul had a near fit in the driver's seat of the car trying to get a good look at the sign for the details. This modeling business is getting quite sick. He talks in his sleep about paint and gap filler now instead of talking about computers. I digress. Back to the park.)

I slathered on extra sunscreen because the trails are in the open -- no tree cover. Surprisingly Paul didn't complain about sunscreen. I think after that bad burn from biking in Sarasota he's learned being a little slimy is better than being peeling and aching for a week!

Paul kept apologizing for being so slow this morning because it meant we'd only get an hour's riding in before the heat got really unbearable. We were lucky for most of the time though -- the morning started out overcast and there was a lot of cloud cover. The sun didn't really come out until we were almost done riding. Both of us were packing 2 L of water -- me in my hydrapak and him in assorted bottles. We left extra water in the car and by the time we got back we were ready for it!

The Orlando Wetlands Park is a water treatment facility in disguise. Basically water comes in from different counties to the Iron Bridge Plant where it processes it, then shoots it to the wetlands park where it's further filtered down. Berms are built up all over to divide the park into different units, and each unit is set up to do something else to the water. Where it first comes in atone corner of the park it's done like a soft bubbling fountain over a large, flat, disc-shaped rock, and that unit has a whole mess of rocks on the bottom. There some aquatic grass, but it's mainly rock. That's the first stage where nature takes over the water processing -- rock filtering. When we stood on the wooden bridge around it we could smell the chlorine -- it was very swimming pool smelling. As the water flows along through the each of different units and flows through the plants, rocks etc. nature finishes processing it before it moves on to the St. John's river 40 days later. An aerial shot of some of the area looks like this:

Those little lines are the berm dividers/trails.

Some factoids from one of the pamphlets:

• The average home produces approximately 350 gallons of wastewater daily.
• Iron Bridge Easterly Wetlands represents the first scale man-made wetland designed to treat reclaimed water and provide wildlife habitat.
• The wetlands began receiving flow from the Iron Bridge Water Treatment Facility in July 1987.
• Today the wetland system provides habitat for numerous animal species including over 160 bird species, otters, foxes, deer, turtles, snakes, and alligators.
• 18 miles of berms were built to create 17 wetland cells, and 36 water control structures were incorporated into the system. a 75 acre lake was created to provide fill for the berm construction.
• Over 2 million aquatic plants and 200,000 trees were planted to create the wetlands.

I never saw so many birds -- I can see why it's a popular bird sighting area for the local audobon society! They were everywhere -- in the trees, flying around, walking across the water by stepping on the water plants, hooting and squeaking...

Paul and I were both impressed with it -- functional recreational land. It had started out as a big experiment on how to do all this water stuff with less impact on the environment but it looks like it's working and it's a success so far. When I was reading more about the project origins and design I also noticed it had won some pretty hefty environmental awards. Yay! I love it when people try to find more eco-friendly solutions to urban problems like sanitation. I'm nerdy like that. Paul was impressed from the engineering standpoint -- can you imagine trying to design -- from scratch -- a water treatment facility that works, yet can support so much wildlife AND still be used as a park? So many problems to overcome that it is mind-boggling!

The separating berms have trails built into them made mostly of dirt, sand, and ground up shells so while it's an easy bike ride, it's gorgeous going through all that marsh land. It's probably a better ride in the fall and winter than in the summer though -- we could feel the heat sometimes bouncing off the water in big waves. They had rest benches every mile or two and some observation decks for the bird people so that was nice. We stopped at a few for water breaks and watched the animals. Paul got a kick out of the fat, lazy dragonflies clinging to the tops of the cat tails while the wind made them move around dizzyingly.

We were pretty much alone until the end of the ride though. Other people started showing up as we were getting ready to leave. We bumped into a guy lugging photo equipment wearing a black sombrero with the little pom pom balls swinging as he stepped. It made me thinking of castanets for some reason. I assume he was going to shoot the birds and not hat dance though.

A lady who was doing a walking workout kept pointing and waving at us and when we caught up to her she said she wanted to make sure we had seen the basking gator because it had startled and worried her. We looked but we didn't see him. I am sure he was well-fed and he wasn't going to bother anybody. Especially not in that heat since gators don't seem to be very active around high noon. Who in their right mind would?! We heard a few other gators honking in the water at each other but we didn't see a single one. I always thought Paul was a little odd for saying that gators honked. I'd seen plenty of them before but I never heard any of them HONK like he described until today. It sounded something like a bad bike horn crossed with a goose.

We saw a lot of fish and fresh water mussels though. At one point in the trail when we rounded a bend we heard a splash and looked up in time to see a blue heron making off with a snake it had just nailed. Paul joked maybe it would fly over us and drop the snake on me.

him: Snake bombs awaaaay!

me: Ha ha, very funny. (me looking around to make sure the bird was still going away from us and not up overhead)

him: Oh, yeah... well maybe the gators will stop honking then and come out to ... GETCHA!

me: Ack! (flinching, even though I knew he was just yanking my chain)

him: Hey! Watch him go! He keeps flying low over the water with the snake in his claws so he can bap the snake against things to kill it... but I think it's already dead. The snake doesn't look too hot.

me: I think that snake is LUNCH.

That's the only super dramatic moment we had. Most of it was nice and relaxing. We had a lot of fun out there. When I got home and saw one of the photos in the brochures though, I started laughing. If I had seen something like that gator leaping out of the water to try to catch a bird to eat while I was out there, I would have wet my pants, and then booked it back to the parking lot, jumped the car and driven off with or without Paul!

~Astrophe