Everglades National Park / Biscayne National Park

While visiting the Everglades and Biscayne National Parks, we stayed at the Long Pine Key Campground for three nights. This campground was located within the Everglades National Park and did not have any hookups, so we filled up our fresh water tank and used solar power. It was pretty cloudy and there were some trees shading us, so we were careful not to waste power. Mainly, that meant not watching as much TV, which was nice, since it motivated us to play games instead. I won RACK-O, Marissa won Qwirkle and Randy won Sequence, so we all felt good about ourselves afterwards. 🙂

We toured the Everglades on the first full day, beginning with a 30 minute airboat tour at Gator Park. We got to see several gators close up, which was pretty neat. There were also birds, fish and turtles. Plus the boat ride was fun, too! After we got back to the park, we wandered around the gift shop and looked at the small gators they had fenced in. We thought it was cool that a very large gator had wandered onto their property and was laying just outside of the fenced area. I’m glad they’re pretty lazy creatures and he wasn’t interested in us at all. They also had a little Wildlife Show, where the guy showed us a small alligator and crocodile and explained the differences between them. He was really funny, so we all enjoyed the show. He brought in a couple of large alligators, too, as you can see in the videos below.

(FYI, Marissa took some of the Everglade photos below, including the cool flying birds!)

After leaving the Gator Park, we drove to the Everglades National Park’s Shark Valley Visitor Center for a Tram Tour. Fortunately, I had read the warning to allow plenty of time before our tour time to park, since the parking lot fills up and you have to wait in line for someone to leave before someone else can park. We had about a dozen cars in front of us, so we sat in line about 30 minutes before we got into the parking lot. We had planned to eat a picnic lunch in the park, but just ate it in the truck while we waited instead, so it worked out fine.

The Tram Tour lasted about two hours and the guide talked the entire time, giving us LOTS of information about the everglades and wildlife. It was interesting. At first, we would slow down for alligators, for people to take pictures, but after seeing a few of them close up, we started passing them up quicker. We got off the tram once to walk up a long ramp to an observation tower. I feel like between those two tours, we got a nice overview of the Everglades, seeing examples of its various types of habitats.

Before heading back to the RV, we stopped at quirky place called Robert is Here and got a couple of smoothies. We also picked up a few weird varieties of fruit to try. One is supposed to turn black when it is ripe and taste like chocolate pudding. And another gets super soft then tastes like egg custard. I’m looking forward to tasting them once they’re ripe!

The next day, we drove to Biscayne National Park’s Dante Fascell Visitor Center. We all grabbed stuff on our way out the door, but when we got to the visitor center, we realized we had all neglected to grab the dry bag that had our sunscreen, bug spray and Randy’s wallet in it — oops! The gift shop was out of sunscreen, but our guide had some to borrow, and we bought more bug spray, so it worked out fine. We did the 3.5 hour Jones Lagoon Paddle Board Guided Tour, which we all enjoyed. We rode in a jet boat for about 30 minutes to get out to the area where we paddle boarded for a couple of hours through the lagoon and mangrove forests. Thankfully, we didn’t see any alligators up close while on the paddle boards. But we did see some other cool marine life. I was hoping to see manatee or nurse sharks, but we didn’t.

On our way back to the RV, we stopped to eat at Mario’s Cuban Cuisine, which our guide recommended. It was pretty good, but not my favorite flavors of food. I liked trying something different, though.

As we were packing things up to leave, it started pouring rain, so we just hung out in the RV for a while longer until it mostly passed. I was super thankful that the rain had held off for a couple of days, and that we had good weather while in the National Parks! It was definitely a great couple of days!