Head to Head

Don't Stop!

Saturday December 6th - Alan and I go to Everglades to participate in the first of the season's Art in the Glades. Being the first event of the year, I didn't expect much participation and boy was I right.  The vendors were there but the customers were not.  But I did sell 4 prints that day so I can't complain. I walked away with a respectable amount of cash and I'm feeling good about that. But as the saying goes - Easy come - easy go.....

After the show we decided to go look for photo ops. We head down a familiar road and now that the dry season is upon us, we want to look down some trails that we haven't been down in quite some time. 

All is going well until I see a trail that we've never ventured.  We turn into the trail - Alan stops the Jeep and gets out to check the conditions. He thinks its suitable for the Jeep 4x4 so off we go.  It feels boggier than I like as we get further down the trail. I wanted to take some shots of the palms that area ahead of us and then turn back.  Seemed like a good idea at the time!

So we stopped and as I'm taking photos - the Jeep starts sinking. We tried unsuccessfully to get the Jeep out and manage to get deeper and deeper in the process. Finally we gave up and started calling around looking for help.  Luckily we were in a location where we had full cell phone service.  Our friend Chuck was not home so I used my iphone to look up tow truck companies in the area.  After a few calls, we found one to come out. 

Nothing to do at this point but wait and laugh at ourselves at the mess we'd gotten ourselves into. Luckily, we had a cooler full of ice cold Coronas and a pound of stone crab claws that we'd picked up at City Seafood earlier that day. And at least we had a beautiful view. 

As we're sitting on the roof of the Jeep, we hear a truck pass by and we can see that a hunter is standing in the back of the truck. He yells at the driver "Check out that Jeep back there - They're buried!" I laughed and yelled back "YES we are!!!" They were nice enough to come back and offer assistance but neither of us had a tow cable. They stated that they also travel this trail but the secret is to go head to head with no stopping! If you stop, the water has time to rise and take you down.  Lesson learned.  

We thanked them for their effort and continued to wait for the tow truck which arrived shortly afterwards.

When the tow truck arrived, I stood by the canal to get out of the way. I looked down and saw 4 baby gators. I looked around but didn't see the mother so I relaxed and took a couple of shots. 

As it turns out - I made just enough money at the art show to pay for the tow truck.

Easy come - easy go.  :)