When you close your eyes and imagine the Everglades, you wouldn’t be alone if the first thing that came to mind were swamps and alligators. In a way you’d be right. It is full of both swamps and alligators. But you’d also be missing the bigger picture. The Everglades is actually one of the most diverse ecosystems in the world. And at its core is one massive slow-moving river – 60 miles wide and 100 miles long — which sustains not only myriad types of flora, but also numerous bird and animal species (including humans).

The Everglades National Park was established in 1947 to protect over 1.5 million acres of this sub-tropical wonderland.

While the park’s edges are less than hour from the popular tourist destinations of both Miami and Naples, getting there is only a first step. Given its size and lack of significant hiking trails, many visitors feel overwhelmed when planning a visit. Instead of exploring on their own, they end up just booking a half day van tour from Miami. You can do better. To aid in your adventure, this guide includes an overview of each public area of the park, how to get there, specific touring ideas, and thoughts on where to stay. Happy adventuring!

Navigating the Park

The Everglades National Park is massive and extremely diverse. Given this, figuring out what you want to see and how to get there in advance is important. This section of the guide provides an overview of each of the main areas of the park.

Shark Valley is home to the Everglade’s iconic sawgrass freshwater sloughs. Its views, easy alligator viewing, and proximity to the Miami (45 minutes without traffic) make this the most visited and easiest-to-get-to section of the park.

To get oriented, I recommend taking the 2-hour tram tour that leaves from the Shark Valley Visitor Center ($27 for adults and $14 for children as of 2020). It’s a fun way to see different views, while learning about the Everglades from a trained naturalist guide. Alternatively, you can bike a portion (or all) of the scenic 15-mile loop road at your own pace. Don’t miss hiking up the Observation Tower midway through the loop for panoramic views of the sloughs in all directions.

This section of the park is also known for its airboat tours, which let you zip through large swaths of the river of grass (as the Everglades is also known) and get close up to alligators in their natural habitat. (More on these tours in the next section of this guide).

Everglades City (Gulf Coast Visitor Center): Here you’ll be greeted to entirely different views from Shark Valley. This section of the park protects the coastal estuaries where the freshwaters in the sloughs flow into the Gulf Coast. Expect to see beautiful cypress trees and mazes of mangrove forests throughout. Note that there are no roads or trails in this section of the park. Instead, you’ll have to get on the water if you want to explore. (Options for doing are included in the next section of this guide.)

South Road (Royal Palm and Flamingo): accessed through Homestead, a single park road will take you through the last vestiges of hardwood forests near the park entrance, through freshwater marl prairies, cypresses, and coastal marshes, before leading you onto the beaches along southern tip of mainland Florida.

Without stops, this drive takes less than hour. However, I recommend going slowly, stopping at the pullouts, and walking all of the short platform hikes along the way.

Confusingly, there are two visitor’s centers near the park entrance. The first is the Ernst Coe Visitor Center, which has a number of informational exhibits. Less than 10 minutes away is the Royal Palm Visitor Center. Stop at both, and make sure to walk the Anhinga trail at Royal Palm (0.8 miles round trip), where you are almost sure to see alligators amid the lily pads.

Pro tip: This south section of the park is filled with hardcore bird watchers, many with powerful binoculars and scopes. As you drive toward Flamingo, you’ll often see them stopped along the road in seemingly random places. Do yourself a favor and stop to chat with them. They often have found beautiful birds hiding nearby that they’ll point out to you.

Finally, at the end of the road you’ll get to Flamingo Visitor Center, Marina, and Campground. While there, consider renting a kayak to paddle one of the “trails”, or book a motor boat tour. (More details on both options are included in the next section of this guide.)

Alternatively, Flamingo has the park’s only long (and very muddy) hike, the Coastal Prairie Trail.

Marjory Stoneman Douglas Wilderness: this area of park between the Gulf Coast Visitor Center and Flamingo Visitor Center is a maze of tidal estuaries, filled with exotic wildlife and mangrove forests. It’s meant to be explored in days (not just an afternoon). To aid in your adventures, the park service has built dozens of backcountry campsites which can only be accessed by boat. (More on exploring this area of the park below.)

Source: official NPS map of sites between Flamingo and Gulf Coast Visitor Centers, see: https://www.nps.gov/ever/planyourvisit/wilderness-trip-planner.htm

Planning Your Adventure Activities

While you can see some of the park from the road and viewing platforms, most of its wonders are far from them. So, in addition to a good pair of binoculars, I recommend you budget time to get into the tall grasses and tidal estuaries on an airboat, motorboat, or kayak as well.

Airboats: Because the sloughs are massive, extremely shallow, filled with dangerous creatures, and covered in sensitive grasses, getting out into them can seem tricky. Walking isn’t possible, and traditional motorboats would get stuck. The solution is taking an airboat. These boats are flat-bottomed and propelled by a GIANT fan, which enables them to cover miles shallow waters in minutes and safely get you right next to the animals you want see.

There are numerous airboat tour companies. Some like, the Everglades Safari Park, have physical locations and on-land attractions for kids too. Others are merely a person with a boat who’ll take you out into the Everglades wherever he/she wants to go. To be honest, I don’t think you can go wrong either way.

Pro tip: while many airboat tour companies geo-pin themselves as “inside the park” on Google Maps, few of them actually have physical locations at all, and many aren’t even allowed to operate inside the National Park itself. Instead, after booking online or on the phone, expect to meet someone at gas station near the park entrance, who will then direct you to an airboat parked in the water somewhere nearby. Once aboard you may (or may not), actually go inside the Everglades National Park boundary. Many tours end up in the sloughs to the north (technically the Everglades Wildlife Management Area). I’ve done both types of tours. They are both helpful for getting a sense of the ecosystem and getting up close to its many native species, including alligators.

Motor Boats are a good way to explore the coastal areas near both Everglades City and Flamingo. In addition to general sightseeing tours, there are multiple types of specialty tours depending on your interests, from fishing, to dolphin viewing, to bird watching, and photography. (Use this link to browse the latest NPS authorized guide list.)

Paddling:

Day trips: while most National Parks boast about their hiking trails, the Everglades NP is known for its seven paddling “trails”, all situated near the Flamingo Visitor Center. Whether you are a beginner or quite advanced, the Park Service has done a nice job creating “trails” that accommodate all skills. No need to bring your own kayak either. Renting equipment is easy and cheap with Flamingo Adventures, who has a physical location right near the marina. Alternatively, you can also do kayaking from Gulf Coast Visitor Center (official paddling guide for this section of the park can be found here). There was no official outfitter from the NPS when I went for this section of the park, but multiple companies in the nearby area could deliver kayaks to you there, including Everglades Area Tours.
Backcountry: a multi-day paddle would be a very special way to explore the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Wilderness. This area of the park is true wilderness, though the park service has helpfully built dozens of backcountry campsites (including a mix of on ground, beach, and elevated platform ones) throughout to facilitate exploration. Careful planning is required to navigate this section of the park. If this interests to you, check out the park service’s backcountry trip planner as a first step. Next, find a good outfitter or guiding company. While I haven’t made the trip yet myself, I had multiple conversations with Everglades Area Tours. They were very helpful, and talked me through all sorts of packages they offer, including equipment only, multi-day guided tours, shuttle services, and boat assisted base camps.

When to go

While I’m sure all seasons have their charms, try to plan your trip between November and March. This window is best for minimizing exposure to mosquitos and next-level humidity. Still, note it can be quite hot even in the winter months. Always bring plenty of water and sun protection, whenever you visit. Lastly, even in the dry season, bug repellant is a good idea, especially if you’re planning to be out near sunrise and sunset.

Where to Stay

Front Country Camping: there are only two front-country campground’s the Park. Both are in the south section. The Long Pine Campground is near the entrance to the park and the Flamingo Campground is at the end of the road. The Flamingo Campsite in particular is known for good stargazing as it’s very far from any city lights. You can reserve both RV and tents spots online through the Everglades Guest Services.

If you are hoping to stay near Shark Valley or Everglades City, additional camping is available outside the National Park in one of the Big Cypress National Preserve’s 7 campgrounds.

Hotels: Being so close to Miami it’s easy to find hotels for all budgets if you’re planning a day trip into the park. This is a good jumping off point whether you plan to explore Shark Valley or Flamingo. However, if you have an early morning boat tour (or want to stay out late) near Gulf Coast Visitor, hotel availability is low (and costs are high!) around there. Book a spot a month + ahead during busy season to find the best deals. While there are some motels in the small towns near the Gulf Coast Visitor Center, the closest major areas with large numbers of hotels are Marco Island and Naples.

Personal Reflection

I loved my time in the Everglades, especially the areas in the south of the park. Something about the environment made time slow down for me. Perhaps it was the lack of mountains to climb vs. other parks, but the flat trails and easy paddles brought me into a place of deep peacefulness and observation. For instance, I’m not a “birder”, but I sat perfectly content for hours watching various birds in the park. When I close my eyes I can still clearly see the egrets “dancing” on the water as they tried to woo a mate, ibises and spoonbills swooping in and out of cypress boughs, anhingas preening, and an osprey emerging from the lake with a snake in its talons.

Even though I know these sights were signs of the dance of life and death always happening in the Everglades, being with it in this way, so far from cell service or other distractions, and with nothing to do but watch, brought to me a place of deep stillness and contentment.

Later, I would learn the ecosystem itself has been undergoing slow deadly pressures on a different scale altogether. These learnings shook me from my state of peaceful contemplation into more intense emotions.

Every tour guide, local, and park ranger I met who’d been in Florida more than 20 years wanted to tell me about “the shrinking” and “slow death” of the Everglades. I heard countless stories about how Americans have dredged, pumped, dammed, and tried to fill in large swaths of the Everglades over the last two centuries.

This type of destruction is not only an ancient phenomenon. Nearby agriculture, urban development, toxic dumping, and climate change all continue to contribute to the shrinking and damaging of numerous areas within the park boundaries.

Listing all of the environmental degradations done to the Everglades could fill up pages of this guide, but one recent story really jumped out to me. Since the 1990s, there has been a proliferation of dangerous predatory invasive species through the park. This includes hundreds of thousands of 20+ foot Burmese Pythons (!), who escaped from locals homes and pet stores. Today, those pythons have bred beyond the point of control, and have become a danger not only to all all sorts of bird species, but even to alligators and humans too.

Despite our mixed record of stewardship of the Everglades, the ecosystem remains essential to human habitation of South Florida. Without its fresh water sloughs, which fill up aquifers, it would cost a fortune to transport enough water to support the millions of people and density of water intensive agriculture in South Florida. Despite this, actually getting the political will protect the ecosystem has been a constant battle. Pressure for development close to the park’s eastern edge remains intense. Poisonous levels of mercury and fertilizer run-off are recorded annually in many sections of the park. And rising sea levels threaten ever larger sections of the coastal habitat. Meanwhile, in a strange reversal of history, billions of dollars have been spent on artificial pumps, passages, and dams in recent years not to drain the Everglades (like in times past), but in an attempt to keep the freshwater sloughs on “life support” (as one guide tartly told me.)

As a country we give a lot of lip service to protecting our wild and beautiful places. And, part of that is undoubtedly true. We have protected millions of acres of land from development. However, the history and trajectory of the Everglades also shows me that too often it’s also become the excuse to allow other forms of reckless development and environmental mismanagement elsewhere. Sometimes, it’s easy to not even notice. However, in the case of the Everglades, our collective unwillingness over decades to deal responsibly with these the complicated tradeoffs between development and preservation may ultimately destroy large portions / all of the lands “protected” within the park, and will have untold economic costs on the millions of people who live in the lands nearby it.

Conclusion

Thank you for reading my National Park Adventure Guide to Everglades National Park. I hope you have a wonderful time exploring.

As always, if have any comments or suggestions on how to make this guide better for the next reader write them below or contact me directly.

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