Everglades National Park

Although I have lived in Florida for over 30 years, I have never been to the Everglades. With our Mini-T in tow, Dave, Murphy, and I headed south. Our Mini-T is a smaller travel trailer we recently purchased for our trip to Alaska this year. We wanted to be more nimble in getting around Alaska than we could towing our larger 5^th wheel. Wendy & Gary, friends from St. Pete, joined along towing their Airstream travel trailer.

Our first stop was Monument Lake Campground in Big Cypress National Preserve. Big Cypress abuts the northern boundary of the Everglades National Park and near the Shark Valley entrance to the Everglades. We camped 3 nights and had fun exploring the preserve and the Everglades in that area. Our first adventure was driving on a 24-mile loop through the preserve which took us 2 ½ hours! It was slow going as the gravel road was full of potholes and we were on the lookout for alligators, snakes, and birds. Dave did an awesome job navigating with Wendy and I often saying “stop!” for a reptile or bird sighting.

Bright and early the next day, Gary, Wendy, and I headed for Shark Valley to board the 9 a.m. tram for a two-hour tour. Dave graciously stayed back with Murphy as we wouldn’t be back until after noon. We learned so much about the Everglades from Mike, our tour guide. After returning from the tour, we picked up Dave and Murphy and enjoyed a scrumptious lunch of freshly caught shrimp and homemade Key Lime Pie in nearby Everglades City. During lunch, the three of us shared as many of the interesting facts we learned from Mike as we could remember, some of which included:

Everglades National Park, created in 1947, encompasses 1.5 million acres in the southern tip of Florida.

Historically, the water flowed south from the center of the state along the Kissimmee River into Lake Okeechobee, the overflow filling the freshwater marshes through the Shark Valley and Taylor Sloughs. We learned a slough is a very slow-moving body of water. I always thought of the Everglades as a swamp, but it is actually a slough as the water flows during the wet season (May – November) at 0.002 miles per hour. Sadly, man has created issues for the once pristine park, channeling water off for development, farmland, and introducing toxic chemicals in pesticides and fertilizers. There is a restoration project underway to build a bridge where there is currently a roadway to allow the water for flow more freely south.

The park is home to more than 60,000 American Alligators and several hundred fish-eating Crocodiles. The female alligator lays eggs in a nest once a year and her hatchlings stay with her until they are 3 years old. Only 10% of the hundred or so eggs she lays each year hatch. The others are eaten by predators even though mom keeps a watchful eye on them.

One of the more disturbing facts was the introduction of the exotic Burmese Python in the 1970’s, when pet owners in south Florida realized they couldn’t keep them and flushed them down their toilet. They can grow as long as 25+ feet and weigh up to 200 pounds. They have no natural predator and have wreaked havoc on the delicate Everglades ecosystem. Since 2009, they can be hunted for a reward. The current estimate is anywhere between 100,000 and 500,000 pythons live in the Everglades and only 10,000 are killed each year.

We also learned about the hardwood hammocks, cypress tree domes, willow bays, and about the many species of birds that call that Everglades home. We were blessed to see a rare Purple Gallinule while on the tram tour.

As we headed to our next Everglades campground in the southern tip of Florida, we stopped by Robert Is Here fruit stand near Homestead, FL for milkshakes. Our good friend Johan who had kayaked in this area recommended Robert’s. Thanks Johan! You were right, the milkshakes were terrific! I enjoyed a blackberry and Dave had a chocolate shake. They had a milkshake with a fruit I had never heard of…Canistel. Wendy bravely tried one, and noted it didn’t have a distinctive flavor.