Whoa. The Everglades and then the keys deserve a lot of space. There's not much reception/wifi 'round here. I don't really remember much from the day we arrived in the Everglades. Most Florida campgrounds close at dusk, and when dusk is 5:30 that doesn't give us a lot of time. We picked up a hotel coupon book at a rest stop with a coupon for a $40 motel as a last resort, but fortuitously found a little parking lot of a conservation area that worked just fine for camping; we're low-maintenance and generally leave no trace. Then getting up and leaving before dawn was great - we jetted down the coast and hit the Miami area by noon and were finally able to get to a campsite before sunset and see some stuff. We camped at Flamingo and within an hour of arrival were swatting mosquitoes like pros. It's the dry season currently, which supposedly means there are fewer mosquitoes than usual, but we threw the clothes back on that we had stripped off in the morning and retreated to the tent early.
The Everglades are amazing - a sea of marshy grass river with islands of mini-jungles and birds everywhere. It turns out you can't make it far off the roads/boardwalks on foot; there are a ton of water trails if you take a canoe/kayak, but that's for another visit. We did a couple of boardwalk trails and listened to a ranger talk about alligators and moved to a different campground. On one of the trails packed with fellow tourists, anhingas dove in ponds for fish and alligators dragged themselves up on the paved trail while nutso tourists took photos with their DSLRs and 1000mm lenses three feet away. It was insane - like a zoo without cages and the animals weren't fazed by humans! We watched from afar as a family walked right up to an alligator despite the warning signs to keep back five meters (not to mention the gator opening its mouth in warning), including an old woman who loudly scraped her walker closer to get a better look.
The hammocks (tree islands) and the rest of the area have some crazy diversity. Pines, lots of huge ferns and tiny ferns, mahogany, palms, mangroves, strangler figs, airplants, orchids, cypress, and tons of other stuff I've never seen before in a dense pile of of a jungle. And then the birds, which are everywhere you look - vultures, hawks, ospreys, herons, egrets, grebes, anhingas, etc.
We left the glades this morning feeling like we saw a good cross-section. We thought about skipping the keys entirely, but a big point of this trip is to see things we have never seen and might never be motivated to see again. Which is the case with the keys: beachy, touristy, tipsy, cheesy, sunburned and seashell-themed. It's beautiful as well and might not be intact our entire lives, but if you weigh the pros and cons...
So we went snorkeling in the chilly ocean off Key Largo! And we went to Shell World and Sandal World and a crappy flea market at a storage facility and a reef state park in search of a beach, though it wasn't so hot by then.
Back on the mainland, we've stopped at Denny's to enjoy their wifi and $2 menu. We'll stay in Big Cypress Preserve and inch back up the west coast tomorrow.
yes, that is a donkey kicking "high prices"
Erin lounging and making coffee @ Truck-stop
We try and start the morning off with a good hearty breakfast
We saw alligators and ficuses in their natural environment...
Mangroves!!!
we might be too cool to snorkel
