#everglades
12 posts tagged.
Alligator Etiquette — What Every Florida Outdoors Person Should Know
1.3 million American alligators live in Florida. You'll see one if you spend any time outdoors here. Almost all incidents are preventable with five rules locals know by heart.
Alligator vs Crocodile — Florida Is the Only Place Where Both Live Together
Florida is the only spot on Earth where the American alligator and the American crocodile share an ecosystem. Here is how to tell them apart, where to find each, and why the crocodile's comeback is one of the quieter conservation wins of the last fifty years.
Anhinga Trail — Everglades National Park's Easiest Eye-to-Eye Wildlife Encounter
Eight-tenths of a mile of paved boardwalk over Taylor Slough, four miles inside the Homestead entrance, and in dry season every wading bird and alligator in the southern Glades funnels in. The easiest big-wildlife walk in Florida.
Big Cypress Loop Road — 24 Miles of Dirt Through Florida Panther Country
Everglades National Park has a paved scenic drive and a million visitors a year. Two miles east, Big Cypress National Preserve has Loop Road — 24 miles of dirt through cypress dome swamp, alligators in every roadside swale, and the most reliable Florida panther territory in the state. You'll see almost no one.
The Everglades Back Country — A Day Trip Most Floridians Never Take
There's the Everglades you've heard about — the airboats, the gift shop, the boardwalk with the alligator at the end. And there's the Everglades you walk into, 90 minutes from where the buses turn around. The second one is the one worth your day.
Florida Airboats — How to Pick an Ethical Operator, What the Hype Hides, and What the Sawgrass Actually Sounds Like
Most Everglades airboat tours sell theatre — engine-noise gator feedings, scripted laps, no real ecology. There's a better way to do it. Here's how to pick a small-boat naturalist outfit, what an airboat is actually doing in the sawgrass, and why feeding a gator is illegal and ends with the gator dead.
Florida Bay Backcountry — A Multi-Day Kayak Expedition Through the Last American Wilderness
The Wilderness Waterway runs 99 miles through Everglades National Park, from Everglades City to Flamingo. You sleep on elevated wooden platforms called chickees, eat what you carry, paddle through mangrove tunnels nobody's named, and share the water with the only American population where…
Florida Mosquitoes & No-See-Ums — When They Hunt, Where They Win, and What Actually Works
Florida has about 80 mosquito species plus the no-see-um midge that goes right through window screens. Here's the field guide from someone who lives here: the worst windows, the worst zones, and what actually repels them vs what's folklore.
Lake Kissimmee Snail Kite — Florida's Specialist Raptor at the Headwaters of the Everglades
There are roughly 3,000 Florida snail kites left, and they all live here — in a chain of lakes most Floridians have never paddled. Lake Kissimmee is the easiest place to see one without chartering a boat. Here's how to do it right.
Robert Is Here — The Last Real Fruit Stand in Florida and the Homestead Gateway to the Wildest Everglades
A 7-year-old started this stand in 1959 with a hand-painted sign and a pile of cucumbers. Sixty-seven years later it sells fifty kinds of tropical fruit you've never heard of, makes the best milkshake in Florida, and sits eight miles from the wildest entrance to the Everglades.
Shark Valley — A 15-Mile Bike Loop Through the Everglades with Alligators on the Pavement
Inside Everglades National Park, an hour west of Miami, there is a 15-mile paved loop road closed to cars. You bike past alligators basking on the pavement, wading birds working the slough beside you, and a 65-foot observation tower at the south end with views to the Florida Bay horizon. Three…
Ten Thousand Islands Kayak Expedition — Mangrove Tunnels, Oyster Bars, and the Wildest 3-Day Paddle in Florida
Thirty-five thousand acres of mangrove islands south of Marco. Launch at Chokoloskee, paddle out to Tiger Key or Pavilion, sleep on a beach where the only footprints are raccoons and your own. Three days, two nights, twenty-eight miles, five other boats if you're unlucky. The expedition planner.