Everglades National Park

If you’ve stumbled across this page by accident, I hope you’ll find the page “J&J Visit South Florida.” That’s the preparation for this little tour of one of America’s treasures. We actually spent the better part of two days in Everglades National Park, enjoying that time more than I can convey here. If you’ve never been, you should put it on your bucket list. It’s eye-opening.

Big Cypress National Preserve

The day after our kayak adventure, we left Homestead and headed north to Highway 41, which runs all the way from Miami to  Naples and the beaches on the Gulf Coast. We made it about two-thirds of the width of the state to get to the Welcome Center on the Big Cypress National Preserve. By the time we reached that point, we had driven about 25 miles into the Preserve on a highway that moved from one Miccosuke village to another, each of them separated from its neighbor by miles of cypress swamp on either side of the road. Though we were there in the dry season, we saw fresh-water canals/ditches most of the way, every one of them playing host to a lot of birds. We saw wood storks, anhingas, and herons by the score, and spent some time on the walkway at the Ranger Station watching the anhingas dive.

Getting there had taken so long that we didn’t get to drive through the recommended Loop Road to see things more closely. If we had done that we would have been even later for our ticketed tram ride from the Ranger Station at the Shark Valley entrance to Everglades National Park. After all — this trip started with that as our goal, so it had priority. Unfortunately, I got only one photograph of Big Cypress, the first one in the groups of ten photos below. You might not be able to tell from the photo, but that’s swamp water. To see the difference between that and the “river of grass” water in the Everglades, you’ll just have to visit or use your imagination. A visit would be best.

Everglades National Park: Shark Valley

I’m trying to avoid my usual preachy/lecturing tone this time, believe it or not. That means I might well use terms you don’t know; look ’em up.Now that’s out of the way, I have to explain something anyway. There are different entrances to Everglades National Park, and if you’re driving through the place, you can’t get from one entrance to the other without going outside and going around the park to get there. You could no doubt do it hiking or paddling something, but that simply wasn’t in the cards for us.

When we actually got to the Shark Valley entrance, we discovered that the parking lot was full, so they were admitting new visitor cars one at a time only when another car left. One out, one in. So even though we turned off the highway 45 minutes before our tram ride was to begin, we missed the boat, figuratively speaking. The operators of the tour took it all in stride and simply transferred our tickets to the next run, so all ended well.

The tram runs on a paved track that runs in an almost straight line from the Visitor Center about seven and a half miles south to the observation tower. The Park Ranger who was leading this tour was very good, and the driver was ready to stop at any point for wildlife sightings. I was amazed at the terrain, finally getting it through my head that though this was the dry season, all the grass we saw was growing in soggy ground if not in a few inches of water. I would love to see it again when the colors are brighter and the water about a foot deeper.

The “tree islands” fascinated me, and I had trouble not interrupting the Ranger to ask questions about what I was seeing. I eventually got answers anyway, because everything I thought of was eventually covered. I guess most people had the same reaction Judy and I did the first time we stopped to see an alligator just lounging in the wet grass not a foot from the pavement. I sort of backed away from hanging out the edge of the tram car. Somehow seeing beautiful birds along the way didn’t have that effect on us. 🙂 By the end of our two-hour trip we sort of took the other sightings in stride, even when we saw one of the two crocodiles in that part of the Park swimming along beside the track.

I know I sound like the critters were all I was interested in, but that’s not the case. I was really taken with the descriptions of the hammocks (tree islands), and I wanted to take some of those needle-less cypress trees home! The longer we rode through the area, the more sights grabbed my attention. Thanks to the Ranger, I began to make sense of how the animals and plants all depend on and contribute to the Everglades as a whole. The ride ended our day, because we still had to ride bake to Homestead. But our Everglades adventure wasn’t done yet!

I’m afraid I get a little carried away with doing these pages, and I always include so many photographs it could take far too long to load some pages.

In the hope of avoiding some upset readers, I’ve split our Everglades days into two pages. You can follow along with us on our second day in Everglades NationalPark on this page.