Everglades and Biscayne National Parks

We said goodbye to Key West and their rum and headed back up the Keys. If you've never driven on Highway 1, it takes a good 3 to 4 hours (depending on the day) to drive from Key West to Miami. The Keys make up about 800 islands in the area and it was a fun experience. As we were leaving the keys, we drove by Marathon's Seafood Festival and decided to stop to check it out! It was a fun, small festival with some yummy food, music, kid rides and shopping. The girls got to hold a lobster at one of the tents!

Trip Details:

Where: Everglades and Biscayne National Park near Miami, FL

Campsite: Encore Miami Everglades

Length: 4 days

Itinerary:

Day 1: Travel day/Rest day/Pool Day/Laundry Day :(

Day 2: Everglades Airboat Tour

Day 3: Biscayne National Park and snorkeling adventure

Day 4: Everglades National Park

Everglades National Park:

Charlotte's Highlights: Boatride was a lot of fun. The tour guide was great and we got to see a lot of alligators and I got a flower!

Paige's Highlights: Liked the boardwalk - it was peaceful and quiet!

Adults Highlights: Riding in the airboat and seeing all the gators! The Overlook point was really cool to see that vast expanse too!

Biscayne National Park:

Charlotte's Highlights: Liked seeing the shipwreck because there was so many fish and I got to swim through a BIG school of fish.

Paige's Highlights: liked exploring the shipwreck!

Adults Highlights: 100% loved snorkeling along the coral reef!

After the festival, we traveled up to Miami and had a rest day at the pool. The next day we went up north a little bit to enjoy our airboat tour at Everglades Holiday Park and were on the hunt for alligators! This was a fantastic tour! We saw so many alligators in the mangroves! Our guide handed Paige and Charlotte some bird food for the birds to come up closer to us! And he also picked a lily flower and gave it to Charlotte!

We learned that there are over 200,000 alligators in the Everglades! There are three different ways to tell alligators and crocodiles apart: An alligator's snout is wider in shape, their coloring is black compared to the brown-green of a croc and alligators are smaller!

After the ride, we got to watch an alligator show.... let's be honest, it was a bit cheesy but the girls loved it! This man picked up a 200 pound alligator and did a few tricks.

After some more swimming and a nights rest, we were ready to head to Biscayne National Park. We got our obligatory sign photo and headed toward the dock to our snorkeling adventure. We learned that this national park is 95% under water, so snorkeling was a great way to check out this national park!

The tour took us 20 minutes west of Miami into the Atlantic Ocean to two different stop to snorkel: Coral Reef and a 1966 Mandalay shipwreck. We didn't get a lot of photos of this since we forgot our phone bag, but I've never seen such beautiful purple coral! And the second we hopped into the chilly water, we saw a sting ray! When we got to the second stop at the shipwreck, we got to swim through a school of fish to get to the wreckage. There were SO many fish there, it was the girls favorite of the two!

Our last day we headed into Everglades National Park to do a few hikes and find some more alligators!

First, we checked out Nike Missile Site in the Everglades. This was obviously more for Aaron than the girls, but had some interesting information about how it was formed. It was built during the Cuban Missile Crisis and would house 2-3 missiles ready for launch during it's active years - however it never needed to launch any. While these were mainly surface to air missiles, they could be tipped with nuclear bombs as well. Overall it was just really interesting seeing behind the fence of what used to be a topic secret facility.

We hiked 2 trails while we were in the Everglades. Our first one is a must do, Anhinga Trail. This trail is less than a mile loop boardwark with a few lookouts out to the mangroves. We saw a lot of wildlife including a few gators, birds and fish. It was a really pretty walk. After that trail, we took Gumbo Limbo Trail (less than a half mile) though some dense brush to see another part of the Everglades landscape.

We also took part of the scenic drive, Loop Road (aka State Highway 9336), toward Flamingo Visitors Center and stopped at Pa-hay-okee Trail. Again, this was a very short trail (less than a quarter mile) that lead to an observation platform to see some vast views of the park.

We had some fun adventures, but were ready to head more north to Cape Canaveral to visit Kennedy Space Center. So we hopped in the car for our next stop!

Thanks for coming on our adventure. Until next time....

~ Mary

PS... How many times in your life will you be able to say that you saw a sign that warned you about vultures damaging your vehicle? Apparently, we put our lives and our car's life on the line for your reading enjoyment. :) Me on the other hand, I'm more likely to die from Paige's stinky feet. Hahaha