After getting fabulous tans and a restful 10 days in the Keys, it was time to get back to reality aka the “mainland”. My little sisters, Charline and Chantal were due to fly into Miami in a couple of days, so we decided to explore the famed Everglades of southern Florida.
The drive wasn’t too bad. It was only about 1-2 hour drive to the Everglades from Marathon. We decided to stay in the heart of the Everglades at a campground/tourist attraction called Gator Park. We chose this particular park because it was 1) the closest one to Miami and 2) the fact that I am obsessed with gators.
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| Florida folks love their gators! |
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| Roadside Airboat rides in the Everglades |
The next day, we did a drive through the Everglades. We first toured Shark Valley. Funny name for a place that has no sharks (that we know of). What this place IS famous for is how close you can get to alligators. You can opt to take a two hour trolley tour around Shark Valley or you can walk down the trails to enjoy nature. We took the latter option and walked for a while. We saw about 7 or 8 alligators all within 2-3 feet from us. Obviously it is advised to keep a safe distance from these creatures, but if you dared, you could walk right up to the gators.
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| Shark Valley Gator! The concrete path you see in the right hand corner was where we were walking!!! |
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| Hello Mr. Alligator... |
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| Believe it or not, these guys are just teenagers... |
The next touristy thing we did was drive down Loop Road. Loop Road is a “scenic” drive that people can take that will take you through a rural portion of the Everglades. Most of the road is paved, but half of the journey is unpaved roads. While we were there, some heavy rains made the road unsafe for us to drive on, so we weren’t able to do the entire drive but we did a good portion of it.
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| Loop Road...duh |
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| The part that we couldn't go through because the road was soo bad... I thought the Festy could handle ;) |
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| Our mild attempt at breaking the rules and driving down the path anyway |
You wouldn’t believe how many gators there are in Florida!! On this drive alone, we saw around 30 gators in various lakes, banks, and roadsides! It was almost like you couldn’t drive 1 mile without seeing a gator or two! It was amazing driving down this road!
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| Jeff getting up close and personal with some Gators |
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| Looks innocent enough.. |
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| Watch out birdie!!! |
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| You'll never know what's in the water... |
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| Pretty scenic drive |
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| This one is more like it... a little bigger than the Shark Valley Gators |
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| Eyeing us...ahhh!! |
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| Florida has awesome clouds... |
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| Prairie life |
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| More driving... |
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| Decent sized gator... |
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| What you lookin' at!? |
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| Gorgeous lake.... but looks can be deceiving... |
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| ...zoom in and see HERDS of gators swimming about... |
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| He's crazy... |
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| um.. no thanks.. |
We did discover some dispersed camping within the Everglades. Dispersed camping otherwise known as “boondocking” is camping offered to civilians free of charge. These are free because you are camping on public lands and there aren’t any hookups. Most of the times, these campsites are much more scenic than your regular pay campsite.
On our way out of Loop Drive, Jeff decided he wanted to ride on the hood of the car to get some action shots. Well, based the Festy's unexplained appeal to the poh-poh, of course we got pulled over. We haven't gotten a ticket yet in the Festy (knock on wood), but it's just funny how cops just love to pull us over. Maybe they just want to see who would drive such an awesome and hip ride. ;)
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| Getting some action shots... |
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| 'laxin' on the Festy.... enjoying the sun... |
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| Oh no... 5-O! |
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| Jeff has always told me that cops don't like to photographed, especially when they're pulling you over.... so I got a rear view mirror shot... :) |
Our last stop in the Everglades was the Clyde Butcher Museum. Here you could do a guided tour of walking through the actual swamp with the gators. Um… no thank you.
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| Driving in the National Florida Panther Refuge... no panther sightings though :( |
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| Baby gator |
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| I love this picture because if you look at it closely, there's a hidden gator in the right hand corner.. |
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| Swamp life... |
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| More swamp |
I could have spent days in the Everglades hiking the trails, gator “hunting”, and just driving around, but we had to get to Miami for some sistah love and yoga. I will say that I totally regret not partaking in an Airboat ride (Huge open air boats powered by fans), but maybe the next time we're in Florida (or Lousiana)
See you in Miami!!! Ayyyyyyeeeyyye!
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| hellllooo miiiami!!!! |
