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| Gator in the Everglades | | | | | | | | |
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As regular readers know, I'm on a quest to visit all the national parks before I turn 30. Over President's Day, I visited the three national parks in Florida - Everglades, Dry Tortugas, and Biscayne. It is very easy to do all three parks in a long weekend. We left New York on Friday night and returned on Monday night. The easiest way to visit the parks from NY is to fly into Miami or Fort Lauderdale. (We did the latter and spent the first night in FLL.) The next day we drove a little over an hour to Everglades National Park. Everglades National Park is huge with four main visitor areas - Royal Palm, Flamingo, Shark Valley, and Gulf Coast. We entered the park via the Royal Palm visitor center. While there, we did a ranger led tour on which we saw a lot of gators and birds.
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| Boat Tour in the Everglades |
After the tour of Royal Palms, we drove to Flamingo. We did not realize that the programs at the Marina are very close to the Shark Valley programs. Thus, we could have done the Gator program that we missed because we wanted to make sure we got onto a ranger-led program about the trees of the Everglades. After this program, we took a boat from the Marina on a tour of the backcountry. We then left the park via the same entrance we entered and drove a few hours to the Florida Keys.
Our second day of the trip took us to Dry Tortugas National Park. Dry Tortugas National Park is accessible via boat (approximately 2 hours) from Key West. The land mass of Dry Tortugas National Park is a small island with a small, old fort on it and gorgeous beaches. Most of the park is underwater and known for great snorkeling. The day was incredibly relaxing and fun. The boat takes you out to the park, you dock and spend the day snorkeling. (The boat has lunch since there are no restaurants - or any provisions - on the island. The boat also provides snorkeling gear.) The boat took us back to Key West where we enjoyed a seafood and key lime pie dinner.
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| Dry Tortugas National Park |
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| Biscayne National Park |
Our last day of the trip took us to Biscayne National Park, not far from Miami. Like Dry Tortugas, most of Biscayne is under water. We did a ranger-led canoe trip in the morning which was relaxing, fun and educational. We spent the afternoon doing some impressive snorkeling. (A dive boat takes you about 30 minutes off-shore for snorkeling.)
All in all, a great trip.
