Everglades National Park

Over a year ago, before the pandemic hit, we scheduled an 8-night stay in Everglades National Park. So, we left our friends in Chiefland, FL and made the long 9 hour drive to the park on January 25th to return on the 2nd of February. We made the most of our time riding bikes, kayaking and taking lots of pictures. We even took a day trip to Key West. Here are some of the highlights of our week.

Anhinga Trail

We spent our first full day traveling the length of the main park road from the visitors center near the entrance to Flamingo at its terminus. We stopped at many of the short hikes along the way, with the highlight being the Anhinga Trail located at Royal Palm. This short boardwalk hike is famous for the wildlife you are likely to see, including the large birds that swim to catch their meals for which the trail is named. When the anhinga are finished with their underwater activities, they must dry their feathers before they can take flight. You will often see them in trees along the water’s edge with their wings spread out to dry.

We enjoyed this section of the park so much that we actually returned a couple more times in hopes of getting even more pictures and video of the wildlife. It wasn’t until our last day in the park that we got to see a turtle and it appeared to be laying eggs at the very edge of the trail.

One bit of caution for the Royal Palm and the Anhinga Trail is to be wary of the vultures in the parking lot. They are notorious for creating significant damage to vehicles as they walk all over them and pick at anything that is rubber on the vehicle. We witnessed one vehicle getting its windshield wipers ripped off by the beasts. They do provide tarps for you to put over your vehicle. We chose to park as far away from them as we could and escaped our three visits without an incident.

Shark Valley Bike Ride

One of the must do attractions at the Everglades is a bike ride along the trail at the Shark Valley entrance to the park. This area of the park is on the north side off of route 41, about an hour’s drive from our campsite. It was well worth the trip!

The bike ride is about 15 miles and we counted over 2 dozen alligators along the trail. The gators come out of the water and sun themselves along the narrow strip of land between the water and the bike path. On several occasions, a good portion of the alligator’s tail would be sticking into the path. We quickly realized that the alligators were pretty content warming themselves in the sun and rarely moved a muscle.

At the halfway point of the ride is an observation tower that allows you to get 50 feet above the ground for a unique view of the surrounding swampland. While we were up there taking in the view, we overheard one of the volunteers describing the location of an anhinga nest containing two infant anhingas. The location was along the section of the trail that we already traveled and we decided to complete our loop and then repeat the section to find the nest. The nest was in the woods a bit, making it difficult to get good pictures but Dan managed to capture a few.

Kayaking in the Everglades

We chose this lifestyle so we could get out and see our country at our own pace and collect memories and experiences instead of stuff. We’ve had some extraordinary experiences since being on the road, like our bike ride in Glacier National Park this summer. The kayaking trail we took here in the Everglades is another incredible experience.

The trail starts out across a small pond, enters the mangroves and meanders through the wetlands. The trail is marked by white PVC pipes that are stuck into the ground and protrude out several feet out of the water. The frequency of these markers vary as you paddle along and at times they can be so far apart that subsequent markers cannot be seen upon passing the current marker. This added a little bit of thrill to the trek as we could only imagine what it would be like to get lost out there. Luckily, Dan had the trail route mapped out on AllTrails and we never really felt like we could get lost.

We really enjoy our inflatable kayak from Advanced Elements, but the 15′ tandem kayak was not the most nimble water craft to have on this curvy trail. On more than one occasion, we drove the nose of the kayak into the mangroves and had to push back and desperately turn the kayak around the many hairpin turns we encountered. This only made the outing that much more fun and the 6.2 miles were covered in about three and a half hours but felt much shorter than that.

We shot quite a bit of video with our GoPro and have included a movie of the experience for your enjoyment. Amy will tell you, however, that the most interesting parts of the trail to photograph or film were also the most difficult to navigate and she was left to attempt that on her own as Dan took pictures. On more than one occasion, the camera needed to be put away so that we could work in tandem to get the kayak through a particularly gnarly section of the trail.

Other Activities

We took advantage of our location to venture out on a couple of day trips. The first was a short trip across the town of Homestead, FL to nearby Biscayne National Park. This park is 95% water and its main attraction is snorkeling and scuba diving. Given that we do not normally do those things, the activities for us were minor so we walked the grounds of the visitor center and learned what we could about the park and bought a magnet for the fridge. We now have 26 magnets from National Parks and 13 other magnets from national monuments and historic sights, all of which we’ve visited since hitting the road.

Our second road trip from the Everglades was a long day trip to Key West. The 140 miles took just over three hours and we left around 6:00 AM to arrive in Key West shortly after 9:00 AM. We did the requisite tourist activities like taking our picture at the southern most point in the continental US and stood under the mile 0 marker for US route 1. We walked around the historic town that appeared to have as many chickens running around as people. Google it and you can find out why.

We had a nice outdoor lunch at First Flight Island Restaurant, the southernmost micro brewery in the states (there were a lot of self proclaimed “southernmost” things in the area). After lunch we did some more walking around, working our way towards one of the island’s premier places to get key lime pie. If you were to ask Amy, this is the real reason we drove all the way to Key West in the first place. The pie was very good and, having done all we really wanted to do, we headed back.

In order to break up the drive back, we decided that one piece of key lime pie just wasn’t enough and a stop would be necessary. We had heard good things about Mrs. Mac’s Kitchen in Key Largo so we stopped here for a second helping of pie. This turned out to be a bit better than what we had in Key West and the stop served as a nice break from driving across the keys.

If you ever get the chance to visit the Everglades, a local must-stop attraction is Robert is Here. This is a large fruit stand and so much more. It has an interesting history and provides anything from rare fruits and vegetables to emu and ostrich eggs. One of the best things you can get at the fruit stand is a key lime milkshake or any of the other dozen or more flavors of thick milkshakes available. Let’s just say Amy may have had more than one such milkshake during our time in the Everglades.

Additional Photos

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