A five-hour drive and we are in Flamingo campground and
Visitor Center. Reservations are a
good idea for electrical sites but this time of year we could do fine on a non electric site. It
is unusually rainy and cold here for the “dry season” at the Everglades. Mosquitoes aren’t too bad, except early
morning and late evening. We are
armed with Deep Woods Off . The
problem is when they get in the camper!
Lots of smashing going on in there!
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| Osprey nest at visitor center near campground |
Today was a 2
hour cruise through the Everglades from the Flamingo Visitor Center. Saw an alligator, manatees, lots of
birds and poison trees--$35 a person with great commentary—well worth it. Attended a ranger talk and able to see
manatees right at the dock!
The rangers say the alligators here aren’t big enough to chow
down on humans—we are wondering about that! Hmmm! We’re
keeping Bailey on a short leash!
The next day was a Ranger led caravan of cars from one pond
to another with Christy’s great commentary. We learned so much.
We decided to proceed onto the George Coe Visitor center and watch the movie there and sat on their back porch in rocking chairs and watched the rain. Very peaceful. The rain stopped so onto Royal Palm area to the Anhinga Trail. This is hard to believe but there are vultures there that attack rubber window seals and wind shield wipers. You can imagine this destruction would not be good for the RV and its occupants! They have tarps and bungee cords to cover your vehicle so we spent 20 minutes securing two large tarps to the RV and went confidently on our way down the raised boardwalk trail. Half way around the ½ mile walk it started pouring rain and got very windy. We were soaked down to our skins by the time we got back to the RV. The tarps had blown off and all was exposed for vulture abuse. Luckily the vultures didn’t like the storm either so we were saved.
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| Egrets feeding and congregating |
We decided to proceed onto the George Coe Visitor center and watch the movie there and sat on their back porch in rocking chairs and watched the rain. Very peaceful. The rain stopped so onto Royal Palm area to the Anhinga Trail. This is hard to believe but there are vultures there that attack rubber window seals and wind shield wipers. You can imagine this destruction would not be good for the RV and its occupants! They have tarps and bungee cords to cover your vehicle so we spent 20 minutes securing two large tarps to the RV and went confidently on our way down the raised boardwalk trail. Half way around the ½ mile walk it started pouring rain and got very windy. We were soaked down to our skins by the time we got back to the RV. The tarps had blown off and all was exposed for vulture abuse. Luckily the vultures didn’t like the storm either so we were saved.
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| Vultures eyeing the rubber on that white van |
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| After the storm |
Seventeen years ago we brought Carrie down here in our first 34 foot RV. One of the memorable things we did was go canoeing through 9 mile pond into the mangrove tunnels. Our "video girl" took some unusual video that trip that we still laugh about. It was such a nice memory we wanted to repeat it again. This ranger led trip was free. It was 3 hours and the trail markers were hard to see so we were glad to be with an expert. It was perfect weather which was a pleasure after all the rain.
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| Gumbo Limbo Trail |
Sunday was our last day and Pete's favorite! During the Cold War and Cuban Missile Crisis a Nike Missile Battery was placed in or adjacent to the Everglades and the Park Service has a historic presentation of this time in our history. Our presenter was retired Coast Guard and gave a riveting description of the goings on in southern Florida regarding events in this region.
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| Nike Missile |
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