A gunkholer is a person who practices gunkholing. You may not be familiar with the term. A lot of people aren't. Some dictionaries do not provide a definition of the term but luckily for us we live in the WIKI age and they have a great explanation which suits my purposes. One doesn't wish to cross the line into plagiarism on one's first post so I won't post their definition here. You can just skip over there, check it out, determine for yourself if this is something that might appeal to the inner primitive in you and then skip on back over here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunkholing. Rest assured that I am qualified to write about gunkholing because recently my daughter Lauren and I visited a place in the south eastern extremities of Everglades National Park where 28 years ago I naively and foolishly stepped off the rented houseboat and sunk in the gunk to my armpits. Nowadays in my "olden" years I try to keep the gunk below the knees or avoid it all together by hovering above it in a very shallow draft vessel of some sort. Not too long ago in the Clam Pass Park estuary just west of Marker 25 I found myself literally up the creek without a paddle. I was walking a grid pattern while knee deep in mangrove muck and dragging my feet hoping to hook my metal kayak paddle with a foot. I had dropped the paddle overboard and it hadn't resurfaced. No-one had ever claimed that it floated, but I had mistakenly assumed that it would. Who would make a paddle that doesn't float? After a scary half hour imagining all the different ways I was going to trudge, swim or waddle through the muck to get home without a paddle, I kicked it and recovered it. One of the reasons I was in this isolated spot is that on the Clam Pass Canoe and Kayak Trail in Pelican Bay in north Naples Florida, there is a secret mangrove tunnel that leads to a cross-over to a magnficent stretch of beach with no buildings on it and at low tide you do have to negotiate the gunk to get there.
Actually as evidenced in the pic below I much prefer sandy landings, which culminated in my first travel guide published by KDP
COLLIER BEACH GUIDE
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Blogger and Author with "Gunkhole Gertie"
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I walked all of the 35 miles of beaches here to get the right "vibe" for REACH YOUR PERFECT BEACH IN AND AROUND NAPLES FLORIDA. I intend to employ the same level of diligence in exploring the islands. I quite enjoy gunkholing. Unknowingly I had been doing it for years, always looking for a beach or a small cove or a harbor from Prince Edward Island in Canada's far east to the San Juan Islands in Washington State's far west, that had neither buildings nor people on it. A lot of retirees or semi-retirees golf, sail or play tennis. I have done all of those things and have concluded that gunkholing (until it is discovered and becomes the next big Baby Boomer thing) is the cheapest, biggest, bang for the buck. I can go all day on a gallon or two of gas (or none if I choose to paddle) and find an island upon which I can be "King for a Day". If I choose to rent the island, I inevitably offer nothing in exchange and if there is another person anywhere in sight, I will offer an effective voodoo incantation courtesy of my Haitian co-workers at Clam Pass Park that is surprisingly effective in getting them to leave. Some day soon, I am going to claim an island like those old Spaniards did and see what happens. It is not clear from the picture above that in this instance we are no where near a beach. I am standing in the middle of Florida Bay a couple of miles north of Islamorada at approximately N24 58.33 and W80 39.58. I say approximately as it was not long after Lauren took this picture that in an attempt to remove some specie of stinging insect from this overloaded and very small 13 foot craft (recently dubbed Gunkhole Gertie by Kevin McCaffrey my documentary filmmaker friend from New Orleans) I stupidly knocked my handheld Garmin GPS over the side. I had intended to murder or maim the miserable critter but instead caught the external antenna of the GPS with a panicked side swipe of my arm. The manufacturer claims that it floats and it does. Ah, truth in advertising at last. We circled and were able to pick it up but soon the real truth emerged. It is apparently water resistant but not waterproof. You can splash it and still use it but you can't float it and expect to use it. You've gotta love this very creative use of the English language started by "Mad Men" back in the day, don't you? Well so much for gunkholing on the cheap but it is worth noting that a new one at West Marine with all of the coastal waterways of the entire country still costs less than a new driver or a couple of rounds of golf. So, Saturday I sold my stacker kayak trailer and got enough from the proceeds to buy a new Garmin 78CS and even got change. They say it floats! With a new GPS, Gunkhole Gertie will be unstoppable. They say there are 10,000 islands down here. Stay tuned. Only 9.994 to go.
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Daughter Lauren "Lost in the Everglades".
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No longer "Lost in the Everglades". Just a few hours later while waiting for Mr. Right at the Islamorada Fish Company in the Florida Keys.
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