Florida Trip, part 2

After Biscayne NP we headed south and west to the Everglades. I'm not gonna lie, I went to the Everglades with a misconception that the park was a giant swamp. All the portrayals of the park I had seen had led me to believe this. I didn't do a lot of in depth research before we went just because I like to be surprised, and I was pleasantly surprised. The Everglades isn't a swamp because the water does not stagnate, it is constantly flowing through the park, although after they built a road cutting the park of from its water shed, most of the flowing is man made.

We got there late (Flamingo Campgrounds) and it was pitch black. We had reserved a spot on the beach but couldn't find our way there. Since we needed to use our headlights to set up camp we decided to spend our first night in a car site. The next morning we found the walk-up beach sights to see if it was worth moving our camp. We were just sitting on the beach, trying to decide, when we saw the most incredible sight of the vacation. We saw 2 dolphin fins headed towards us. Looking around I saw that we were alone and no one else was seeing this. The dolphins started doing something that they only do in the shallow waters of coastal Florida (no where else in the world!) It was something called mud ringing where they chase fish into a shallow bay and circle the fish over and over stirring up mud. This causes the fish to panic and jump out of the water to escape and when they do the dolphins leap out of the water and snap at this fish. Our pair of dolphins only caused one or two fish to jump, one dolphin jumped to catch it but missed. The pair then swam away. I was too caught in the moment to take a proper video, I didn't realize that I wasn't even pointing the camera in the right place until it was over but here is a link to a video that shows what I describe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxALc14MA_A . Needless to say, we decided it was worth it to move camp, pulled up our tent whole and transported it via the roof of our Jeep to the new site.

After we went to the visitor center and told the ranger what we had seen he explained the behavior and told us it was a very rare and special sight to see. I felt very honored by the dolphins to have seen it. That day we also learned was not ideal for canoeing in the park due to the high winds so we decided to drive up north to an area called Shark Valley. You can rent bikes or take a tram around an area of the park that is a good example of the "sea of grass" part of the Everglades.

We saw lots of gators and birds

There is also a cool observation tower that gives you a good view of the park.

Looking down on the way up to the viewing deck

Pano of the Glades, the big area of water is a man made barrow.




After spending a few hours in the Shark Valley area, (I want to go back and spend a whole day here) we moved on towards Everglades City. I had heard there were a lot of manatees there and I was obsessed with seeing manatees. We got there around 430 and saw a sign for boat rides to see manatees and dolphins. Since it was run by a park approved contractor I assumed they were low impact and wild life friendly (unlike those horrible air boat rides that were offered just outside of the park, so much noise pollution and damage!) The lady who sold us our ticked said they had been seeing too many manatees and dolphins that day to count so we hurriedly bought tickets. After we boarded the boat, the captin told us it was too windy and they hadn't seen anything all day. I was crushed and nervous about the wind due the fact that I get sea sick. But all was not lost, we didn't see any manatees but we saw a pod of dolphins. It was the only pod of dolphins they had seen all day and I was convinced that I had good dolphin mojo. They were hard to capture on video though. This one was the best.