For two days after our cruise ended we explored the Florida Everglades. We had gone south to Florida City right at the Gateway to the Keys. We stayed in a little motel called Knights Inn and went northwest into the Everglades that same afternoon. There is one road into the Everglades from the south and it travels thru the Glades about 41 miles down to Flamingo, right on the Gulf. We jumped on one of the last boat trips of the day and spent a wonderful two hours motoring thru the mangroves to White Water Bay, 2nd largest body of water next to Lake Okeechobee. Interesting fact #1: It takes 1 yr for water to flow from Lake Okeechobee down to the Everglades. #2: The Everglades is the only place in the world where gators and crocs exist together. #3: The red mangrove is called island builder. It grows in the water, the roots grow down, leaves fall, create mulch, things grow over time and voila!....land. On the boat tour we saw crocodiles not alligators this time....wow! Differences between croc and gator: Alligator is fresh water, has black wide snout; crocodile prefers brackish salt water, has narrow snout and is more vicious. A croc will attack just because, a gator will try to avoid confrontation. Crocs only need to eat about once or twice a year. The bumps on an alligator's back are bone but not connected to its skeleton. These bumps are used like solar panels for heat. The Everglades contains very nutrient water and an abundance of wildlife. We saw a lot while gliding thru the Glades besides the crocs, mostly birds...Great Blue Heron (a nasty-tempered bird that will drive its beak thru you if messed with), Anhinga (a strange-looking bird that can dive and swim thru water after fish), Royal Terns (white birds with black caps and tails, orange feet), comorants and osprey (a very cool eagle-like bird that makes huge nests in the tops of trees). After the boat trip and a bit of looking around at the southern tip of the Everglades, evening was coming on and we had to head north again back to the motel. It took nearly an hour to get back out of the park but we still had a bit of daylight so we went on a short hike near the entrance at Royal Palm on the Anhinga Trail. As we moseyed along, daylight left and in the dim light of evening we were on a boardwalk watching several alligator glide thru the darkness of the ponds like ominous logs. The fish were jumping like crazy (we were told they were catfish) and the mosquitos were biting our exposed flesh. The evening sounds were all around us and it sounded like we were in a zoo, frogs and birds and who knows what were vocalizing! It was quite exciting but we hurried on to the truck in order to avoid numerous itchy mosquito bumps.
The next morning we got up early so that we could head up to the northern entrance of the Glades. We had a reservation on a ranger-led tram tour into the "River of Grass". This Grass River extends from up near Lake Okeechobee down to the Gulf right thru the Everglades. It's 100 miles long and 60 miles wide. It can be deceptive. It may look like solid ground but in southern Florida it's not wise to count on solid ground. There are several trees in the Everglades besides red and black mangrove. There are cypress (used by natives for canoes), mahogany, caloosa (tall & statuesque), gumbo limbo tree, and the dangerous manzanillo tree. The leaves, bark and small apple-like fruit on this tree are all poisonous (like battery acid). The early natives used the poison from this tree to put on the tip of their arrows and it was one of these poison-tipped arrows that killed Ponce de Leon during his exploration. A short time into our tram ride, the rain started to pour down, the thunder and lightening made an appearance and we were told there was a tornado warning. Our tram ride would end abruptly if the tornado became reality....yay! We escaped the tornado (didn't happen) but got pretty soaked. The tram had a roof but no sides and the wind was blowing pretty briskly! During our drive we saw a new bird that we hadn't seen before, the Roseate Spoonbill. This was a really pretty pink bird (like a flamingo) that had a weird spoon-shaped bill. Important fact: the flamingo is not native to Florida but the spoonbill is! Another important fact: Southern Florida is mostly limestone. Limestone is calcium buildup and the land in So. Florida is relatively young. After our tram tour we wanted to do something dry so we went on into the Miccosukee Indian Reservation for a tour of their "village". The Miccosukee and Seminole Indians came down from the north into Florida in the 1800s. At that time the early Florida natives had already disappeared most probably from disease and contact with early Europeans. In the village we saw samples of the Miccosukee chickee (love the sound of that!). There are cooking chickees, sleeping chickees, social chickees.....yeah, a chickee is a hut and they had a hut for every different activity. Very interesting museum! It was here that we got to hold our first (and probably last!) baby alligator. They had lots of alligator pools there and we got our fill of big and little alligators. Because of the rain there was to be no alligator wrestling (for real!) that day so we missed out there.