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OK, back from Everglades City and Marco Island. We went down there to review the lay of the land for my novel LOVE CHASE.  Was an unexpected experience. Neither one of us cared to be travelling to southwest Florida during August as it is nothing short of steaming hot. Also that coast, although not as humid as the eat coast, is more humid than Central Florida; where we live. For a good comparison for you, it is is just across the state from Miami. And it is knee deep in gators and quicksand. I'll get back to Everglade City in a spell...    Marco Island is worth visiting in August because it's one of the Ten Thousand Islands - the largest of them - and a super tourist trap. August is off season so we were able to enjoy all the amenities without the price tag or over crowding. We stayed at the Radisson which is on the Gulf of Mexico. The price after all the 'sneaky southerner' add-ons came to about $175 per day. The entire tag for the 3 days came to $585. That though includes a fair sum of food and drinks. We dropped another $200 in the  local bars and at a restaurant named FORTUNES that is worth twice the $50 we paid for lobster and a knock out spinach and artichoke dip appetizer and beer for Cathy and a Yellow Bird for me. The waitress only added to the experience. We got to every spot known - like the Snook Inn - and to every hide away the locals prefer - like the fishery on one of the Isles of Capri. The beaches are best at night while large storm cells hover far in the distant over the Gulf. Neither Cathy nor I cared for the beach during daylight and the water was too warm and fishy for our tastes. I would recommend Marco Island only if  you want to visit and not stay long. View Marco Island at MapQuest.com Joe leaving the sultry warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico     In LOVE CHASE, Patty Carroll opens the book by taking  a hand glider from off a dry spot on a island called Goodland that is  the first key south of Marco Island, and adjoined to Marco by a slime land bridge. Patty enjoys riding heat thermals and usually catches them off the Grand Canyon around Tubor City, well, here's a quote from the very first paragraph of the novel: When the wing grabs a thermal rising from a canyon, Patty can drift for hours. She twice rode thermals outside of Tuba City, Arizona that carried her craft to Grand Canyon and North Rim in one flight, clocking over 120 miles each flight. Once over Ewa Beach she rode thermals, rising up and westerly from the numerous buildings and pavements of Honolulu, for nearly three and a half hours. Click here to view Tubor City at mapquest.    Now, here's the trickery part... no one hand glides in Florida. No mountains. So I needed to find out how to manage this for the Novel. That rectified by discovering that a parasail company can bring a light wing glider up enough to catch a thermal - completely in theory, I can use that to nail down any disbeliefs from my audience. Although the chance of doing anything of the sort is very near zero - 1) Getting up high enough and 2) being in the right place when a thermal is building over that area of Ten Thousand Islands. But, what's imagination for anyway?      Patty then gets side tracked toward a pop-up electrical storm and so the novel begins........ The story is 4 stories in one, a tale of reincarnation and a LOVE CHASE through the four life times. Patty's life time is the last of the four and takes place in present times. She is the wife of an oil refinery builder who is working with Jeb Bush to build a refinery on Dismal Key. Click here to view Dismal Key at Mapquest. Circumstances have it that her soulmate was hired by her hubby's company to  track down a rare type of alligator suspected of living near Dismal Key; on Shell Key. Fate takes over and Patty falls from the skies right into the arms of her soulmate. Unfortunately for the soulmates, Patty's husband John is not only in love with his wife, but is so under the enchantment of a magician who handles the spell in order to sooth out bumps John formed in the past 3 lives of this Chase. Things were under his control until Patty meets Hunter Gadar - the soulmate - and turns even worse for Celtic Kunning - the magician - when he meets Catherine Rebisher -  a Sibylline oracle.  Hence begins an action packed drama-romance that pits naturalist against industrialists, lover against suitor, magician  against witch and a whole bunch of red necks from glades aplenty;  that be Everglades City. Click here to view Everglades City at MapQuest.     So, never being in Everglades City, Cathy and I needed to pay attention to it. We got there Thursday. No one lives in Everglades City but a  small handful of fishermen, a couple of inn keepers and 3 Air Boat Ride pilots. And so many alligators and panthers that, in the words of one fellow we interviewed, "There ain't no folks out here. If there are, they'll be tonight's supper for the critters and tomorrow will see no folks again."    We needed to visit the area in August because the action takes place during alligator egg hatching season - now. Talk about hot? Whew! No one in there right mind would live around here in August.     We saw so many gators that you'd think we'd take a photo of them - a bit difficult to do when you're running from a 12 foot beast that can waddle faster than you can run, and it's hungry to boot!    If you're looking for friends, this is no where to find them. Firstly, there are no people here abouts, none. During tourist season you'll find some, but not many. Oh, there will be because southwest Florida is building in leaps and bounds. Our property, which my aunt purchased in 1963 for $1,400 has a line of buyers starting at $50,000. In fact Mike and I are involved with building a house on my lot in Lee County just to sell it at a profit. However, I might just do nothing as 1) The value will increase and 2) After living here for 4 years, I have learned not to trust a Floridian no way, no shape, no how. So contracting one to build a home might be a terrible and awful experience - and loss. As you know, after the huricanes of 2004 everyone is getting the old Floridian schuffle. Due to poor construction methods, my son is now homeless. My sister, her hubby and daughter had to sell their house for peanuts after a contractor took them over, and my dad - wise as he is - learned a hard lesson and in one day flew to South Carolina and purchased a  million dollar home in under 15 minutes just to get the hell out of Florida. Florida is not a friendly state. It is a wonderful place to live so long as you keep the defenses up at all times.    The Everglades are outstandingly beautiful. You, as a person attuned to nature, would just fall in love ... right before a crocodile or gator or panther gobble you up. Or a snake uses you for target practice. The sea of grass is everything they advertise it to be. I highly recommend an air boat ride through it, though we did not opt for that. We came to get a feel for the land, and found it's liquid.    They actually say, "liquid land."  And that's a fact.  The Ten Thousand Islands are nothing more than mangrove trees - save for Goodland, Marco, parts of Dismal and some of Shell Key - lots of tangle foot mangrove trees. Where we expected solid ground often revealed itself as quicksand. I wanted to strap myself to a bush then get into the sand to experience it but Cathy just freaked until I gave up on the idea. There are some quicksand scenes in LOVE CHASE  and I want to know what it's like to fall into it - not like our friend Eddie Abey who would rather watch me sink in. There are some back roads which are actually panther and lion trails, not truthfully drive-able roads, let's call them nature trails. On some of them you can hire a guide to point out vegetation and wildlife, and those trails are nicely done up with foot bridges across savannahs and paths with a fair amount of safe ground between you and the bush. Others are risky with uncertain soil, danger lurking all around and signs to make your hair stand on edge, such as Drive under 30 MPH to allow lion survival - in case you hit one. They are nocturnal which makes the sign all the more creepy to think anyone would dare drive in this sea of grass at night.    The Everglades spread (not stretch) from this entire southwestern corner of Florida all the way to Miami and clear to the southern borders of the peninsula. Literally thousands of square miles. Hard to believe and digest that people do live within this remote area. The Seminole Indian tribe has its entire reservation in here. There are people and families who endure the heat and wildlife for their entire lives. I spent some time on getting a handle on this fact and the Cole family mentioned in LOVE CHASE is my perspective on such backward and backwood folk. Around home - Kissimmee - we have what is termed "swamp people" who live tucked in corners of Lake Toho and the Kissimmee River Basin. There lives more rumor than fact about these folk but they are out there and they make it known that if you go canoeing up the wrong creek, you're shot and killed for gator bait. I suspect there are mostly swamp people out in the glades.  There are also fishermen who liked the territory enough to remain there and in fact there are some good books sold at the local information center about these people - including photos.    Once finished with tripping over mangrove roots and fighting off insects and gators we returned to Marco Island and civilization. But Marco Island is over rated, not much to do, see or enjoy. We turned our attention to the one thing such places always have when all else fails - the people; local and tourists. Most locals were not friendly, although a few definitely were. One young waiter at the Sandbar - a really great local bar and grill, exceptionally so - gave us a laugh when he mentioned that he adores going to Kissimmee for Disney and Old Town, and why would we bother coming to Marco if we lived in Kissimmee?  Long story, we replied. Then we had a thrill when we finally got to the one place all of Marco Island's residents encouraged us to visit: The Snook Inn. Gosh! what a place. It is the Bay Shore Hotel of Marco Island; on the Bay, with a full restaurant to die for, an outside bar, patio seating along the bay and rooms to rent upstairs - just like the Bay Shore Hotel was. We didn't visit it but once, yet we got the feeling it was as much THE spot as the Hotel ever was.   Come the second day at Marco island and we were gnawing at the bit to leave, but had paid for that night, so we remained. Mostly we poked into corners we hadn't the day before and found nothing worth staying for. Besides a little tropical depression called Katrina was spriling out of control over Miami, so we wasted no time in leaving. Finally on Monday we headed home.    On our way to the, last week,  Glades we passed through Naples, one of America's rich and famous neighborhoods. If you're heading this way, avoid it, it's the typical "I thought I was rich so I built an expensive house on top of the other guy's expensive house and don't think I've even paid the place a visit. Hey, I needed the right-off!"    Glad to be Home,    Cathy and Joe Read Desert Joe's Reply, click here.

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