Everglades National Park

I took a couple of pictures at night of the Bus on the casino parking lot……… 

 

We left the casino on Monday morning and drove to Everglades National Park.  The park has two campgrounds……. Long Key (about 10 miles from the entrance) and Flamingo (38 miles from the entrance).  We knew that neither had utilities (other than a single location to dump waste tanks and take on drinking water), and that Flamingo had facilities for our 40’ rigs.

Here are pictures of the Park sign, our rigs in the parking lot and the lobby of the visitor center…….

As we drove to the Flamingo campground, it began to get really cloudy, and then the sky let loose with a good 30 minute downpour.  The campground had a lot of standing water, but it seemed to drain into the swamp rapidly.  It dried up and the next day was sunny and very nice.

We have been seeing references to panthers all over south Florida.  They had a statue at the visitor center, and we saw “watch out for panthers” signs going into the park…..

Speaking of road signs, we are used to seeing “elevation” signs in the mountains to point out high altitudes, but these caught us by surprise……

On Monday night, Patsy got some nice sunset shots around our campground site……..

 

On Tuesday, Mark and Sue took a 5 hour canoe trip in the park.  Patsy and I opted not to sit in a canoe for 5 hours!!  We took the car and toured the park and the surrounding town.  We toured the following areas:

Mahogany Hammock (Everglades NP)…..

 

 

Biscayne National Park (in nearby Florida City)…….

Biscayne offers a glass bottom boat ride to see coral and fish.  We were too late in the day to get on it today, but we may do it on the way back from Key West, if we don’t see better sites in the Keys.

When we returned to Everglades NP, we visited the Royal Palms area.  We got a lot of up-close looks at gators and birds.  Here are the best (my judgment) by category:

Gators…………….

     

Birds……………….

      

We think that the Everglades National Park is one of the best that we have seen.  In the campground area where we are staying, they are adding electrical connections to about 40% of the campsites.  We also used Patsy’s “Senior Pass” for National parks, and saved the $10 Entrance fee and got the campsite for 1/2 price!!

Tomorrow, we will leave and head for our KOA reservations on Sugarloaf Key, which is about 15 miles from Key West.  That is where I will post this blog update, because although I had ATT phone cell service here, we did not have Verizon so that I could use my computer device for internet!!