The Florida Everglades

This is the Everglades.................

Leaving the Marco Island area, we drove east along the Tamiami Trail.  Stopped first for a couple of days at Midway campground.  A surprisingly nice place to spend a few days.  Near to the Oasis Visitor Center and Shark Valley.

Then we drove to Long Pine Campground which is near the Everglades National Park entrance.  Originally we had planned to spend almost a week at Flamingo at the southern tip of Florida, but the worst "mosquitoes in 20-30 years" caused us to change our plans.  We rented a car in Homestead and then used Long Pine as our base of operations. 

Headed over to the Anhinga Trail to see the turtle eating alligator, also some nice walks.  Then took a day trip down to Flamingo, checked out where we had planned to spend almost a week, and decided that we made the right choice.

We did some biking including a ride with a park ranger through the open saw grass areas, through the pines, and by the hammocks.  Really loved the Long Pine area!

And we must mention, we only stopped 3 times at Robert is Here for smoothies and milkshakes.  We had to control ourselves.