Flamingo

Since we woke up in Florida City, we started our day near the western entrance to Everglades National Park. We scarfed down some corn flakes and started the long road into the park. Our first hike was the Pine Lands boardwalk, which wandered from a pine forest into a hammock (a thick stand of trees) and back into the pines.

After easing on down the road, we pulled into the Pa-hay-okee trail, which was a short boardwalk with a gentle incline. The trail ended with an overlook of the "prairie" grasses with thick islands of trees. In many ways the Everglades have not been the swampy marshland that we were expecting to see.

Our last hike of the day was at the Mahagony Hammock trail which led through a thick stand of old-growth mahogany trees. Other than seeing the gangly trees vying for sunlight, the highlight of this hike was a barred owl who posed for us right above the trail.

The end of the road was Flamingo, a ghost town that is now run as a National Park Service headquarters. Lisa and I rented a canoe and headed north on Buttonwood Canal. We were lucky to see American Crocodiles on the paddle. They are an endangered species and the southern Everglades is their only habitat in the United States.

We didn't paddle hard and had a nice five mile float, admiring the birds along the way. It was slightly disconcerting to see fish flying over our heads. Of course, they were being carried by an Osprey.

On the way back to Everglades City for the night, we stopped at Robert's fruit stand for key lime milkshakes and spicy boiled peanuts. They were delicious and turned out to be dinner for the night - yum!