Everglades National Park

The Everglades is one of the largest wetland landscapes left and is home to many very unique wildlife. In fact, this park is the only place in the world you will see the American Crocodile and alligators living together in the wild. This is caused by fresh and salt water mixing allowing for these animals to co-exist. In addition to these highlights, you’ll have a chance to see manatees and Florida panthers along with other smaller wildlife. One type of wildlife you don’t want to see is the Burmese Python which is slowly destroying the park and all of the wildlife in it. If you could across one of these snakes – alert park personnel immediately so it can be captured and terminated. Besides wildlife – there are several boat tours and short walks through the diverse landscape to keep you interested for several days!

When to Go

You are going to want to visit this park in the December to April time frame. This is known as dry season and you are going to see much more wildlife, have mild temperatures, and come across way less mosquitoes during this time of year. Our latest trip took place in mid-February and the weather was absolutely perfect.

How to Get Here

Getting to the Everglades National Park is pretty simple – fly to Miami. Every major airline flies here and once you get your rental car – it is only an hour drive to get to the park. You will have two choices coming out of Miami – the northern portion of the park which includes Shark Valley (45 min from Miami) and Gulf Coast (1.5 hours) or the southern portion of the park which includes Ernest Coe Visitor Center (1 hour) and Flamingo (2 hours). We would recommend hitting all four of these areas to get the full park experience as each is quite different.

Trip Length

As mentioned above, this park is split into two sections and they are not connected to each other. For example, if you drive 2 hours to Flamingo from Miami – you would need to backtrack to near Miami and then head into the northern section of park. Flamingo to the Gulf Coast area is easily a 3 hour drive with no stopping. We would recommend at least one full day in the southern section and one full day in the northern section. If you wanted to go at a slower pace and not be rushing around due to pre-selected tour start times – go ahead and add a 3rd day. You will be able to find plenty to do and if you don’t – Miami is super close and has plenty to do including another National Park (Biscayne Bay).

Where to Stay

We would recommend either staying right outside of Miami or in Homestead, Florida. There are plenty of budget hotels in these areas and Miami also has some very nice hotels if you don’t mind spending more. On our last trip to this area, we stayed a Super 8 in Homestead for less than $100 a night and depending on the time of year – hotels in this area can drop as low as $40 a night. If you stay in Homestead – you will be about 1 hour from Flamingo and 2 hours from the Gulf Coast area. For us, Homestead made more sense as we were planning to stay in Flamingo past dark one evening and didn’t want to be driving too far in the dark as the wildlife tends to be more plentiful on the roads after dark (and hard to see).

What to Do

As mentioned above, Everglades is best done by area. We have broken the park up into four main areas below. We are going to start the trip in the southern section of the park (Ernest Coe Visitor Center and Flamingo areas) and then head to the northern section (Shark Valley and Gulf Coast areas).

Ernest Coe Visitor Center Area

If you are staying in Homestead like us, you will have a short 20 minute drive to the Ernest Coe Visitor Center to get your park experience kicked off. You’ll be able to watch the park film here and check out plenty of exhibits. After you have completed the visitor center – make the very short drive to the Royal Palm area. There are two walks we recommend here:

Anhinga Trail — 0.8 miles RT, Easy, 1 hour

This is by far the most popular trail in the park as it there is wildlife everywhere. You will see plenty of alligators, anhingas, herons, turtles, etc. on this walk. If you are lucky – you might even see a group of baby gators hanging around their mother. There will be a lot of people on this trail – but take your time as this is your best chance to get up close and personal with the wildlife in the park.

Gumbo Limbo Trail — 0.4 miles RT, Easy, 30 min

If this was the only trail here – we would probably pass on it, but since you are here for the famous Anhinga Trail anyway – you might as well take this short walk as well. You will feel like you are walking through a jungle for most of this walk and you’ll see plenty of Gumbo Limbo trees, Royal Palm trees, and ferns. We didn’t see much wildlife on this walk – but that was likely more bad luck than anything.

After you have wrapped up Royal Palm – get back in the car and make the short drive to the Pinelands. There is another short trail in this area (0.4 miles round trip) or you could have a picnic lunch at Long Pine Key campground. Yes – there are pine trees in the Everglades as weird as that seems. See photographic evidence below! Once you are done here, drive a little bit further down the road to Pa-hay-okee Overlook and you’ll find a short boardwalk trail (0.2 miles round trip) where you’ll see a lot of grasslands, birds, and gators.

Another great stop a little further down the road is Mahogany Hammock where you will find a 0.4 mile round trip walk in a grouping of Mahogany trees in the middle of the wetlands. This is a nice relaxing walk and you’ll certainly see birds and possibly a gator or two as well. This area offers a stark contrast to the typical landscape in this park.

Flamingo

Before you get to the Flamingo area, there are a couple more short walks nearby that are worth your time. West Lake Trail (0.5 miles round trip) will take you through white, black, and red mangroves to the shore of West Lake. If you are luckier than us – the boardwalk will be repaired from Hurricane Irma which struck in August 2017. We visited in February 2019 and as you can see below – this trail was totally destroyed. Once done here – make a quick stop at Eco Pond. You can walk around the pond (0.5 miles roundtrip) if you feel like it. Or you can just walk up to the edge and see if you can spot some of the wildlife – birds, turtles, alligators, etc. We were not very lucky with this, but we have heard this is typically a great spot if you haven’t gotten your fill of alligators yet.

Find a parking spot in Flamingo as you will spend the next few hours here. This is a good place to grab some food at the local store or from the food truck right behind the store. While there are some walks to go on here – you are here to get out on the water! But before you do that – walk behind the store towards the canal and take a look around. There is a very good chance you are going to catch a glimpse of something not many people see in their lives – the American Crocodile. The crocodiles hang out in this area as it is where the salt water mixes with fresh water. Crocodiles generally prefer salt water while alligators prefer fresh water and this is one of the few places on Earth where you can see crocodiles and alligators with each other. You should be able to easily tell the two species apart as the crocodiles are going to have much pointier snouts and their teeth generally show when their snouts are closed.

If you are super lucky – you might even see a manatee in the canal! It’s time to get on the water now though where you’ll have a much better chance at seeing manatees. There are two boat tours that take off from this spot and we recommend doing both back to back before heading out of the park for the night.

Back Country Boat Tour – 90 minutes ($35 per in Feb 2019)

Pick up your tickets (as you need to make advance reservations to be safe) at the store and board the boat. We took a 3pm tour on our trip – but there are several tours each day. This tour is going to take you away from Florida Bay and into the back country of the Everglades through the Buttonwood Canal. Be on the lookout for wildlife here as you cruise through in Coot Bay. You will eventually find yourself in the massive Whitewater Bay. There will be someone on board giving you commentary the whole way and he/she will also answer any questions you have on the plant and wildlife. Once you cruise around Whitewater Bay for a bit – you will turn around and head back to Flamingo.

Florida Bay Boat Tour – 90 minutes ($35 per in Feb 2019)

Once you get back from your Back Country tour – you’ll probably have some time to grab more food if you wish or simply walk around the Flamingo Marina in search of more wildlife. Next up is the Florida Bay Boat Tour which is your chance to get out on the huge Florida Bay and search for manatees, sea turtles, ospreys, and dolphins! We chose the 5:30pm tour so that we had something else to look forward to – the amazing Florida sunset. Similar to the Back Country tour, you will have a naturalist on board to answer your questions and help you spot wildlife. The naturalist will also correct you if you mis-identify wildlife such as the person on our tour who thought every bird he saw was a bald eagle…

At the conclusion of the amazing sunset – it’s time to head back to your hotel which is likely 1-2 hours away. You’ll have to drive extra carefully as a lot of the wildlife in this park comes out at night to lay on the park road as it is much warmer than the surrounding area in the dark. Be careful and enjoy the extra wildlife views on your way home for the night!

Gulf Coast Area

You will need to get up pretty early on Day 2 as you’ll either have a 1.5 or 2 hour drive depending on whether you were staying in Miami or Homestead to get over to the Gulf Coast area of the park. There is a lot to do today and the first boat tour you want to catch in this area likely takes off pretty early (9:30am for us which meant a 9am arrival to check in). There are no worthwhile trails/walks in this part of the park – but again, you are here to get out on the water and find some wildlife!

10,000 Islands Cruise – 90 minutes ($38 per in Feb 2019)

This is a great boat ride to kick off your second day in the Everglades. You will head out in Chokoloskee Bay and then into Indian Key Pass before checking out several of the mangrove islands in between. Yes, there is some nice scenery on this cruise – but you also have a great chance of seeing some wildlife. Dolphins are almost guaranteed. We saw several dolphins and they even followed us for quite some time playing in the boat wake. Another likely wildlife spotting is the manatee – though we were very unlucky in this regard. The boat captain mentioned he typically sees manatees on his cruises.

After you complete your cruise, it is time to head back into Everglades City (slightly north of your current location) and take a tour not associated with the National Park. There are tons of different vendors in Everglades City – but we chose Captain Jack’s Airboat Tours as it had good reviews and also had a combo tour which offered the chance to get out in the Mangroves while also getting a separate airboat tour of the grasslands. The National Park has a Mangrove Wilderness Tour listed on it’s website in the Gulf Coast Area – but it continues to say “coming soon” and has said that for the past several years – so who knows. The other interesting aspect of this combo tour is that it comes with the opportunity to hold an alligator as well as visit an animal sanctuary and see an alligator show. We didn’t take advantage of these last three options due to time constraints – but they sound pretty cool!

Mangrove Airboat Tour – 60 minutes ($73 per in Feb 2019 for the combo Mangrove/Grassland Tour)

This is the quintessential Everglades experience – and it isn’t even in the park! You will be given noise cancelling headphones and will be taken out into the mangroves to fly around on the airboat. When we were there in February 2019 – there had to be only a few inches of water around the mangroves – but the airboat had no problem flying around anyway. We saw dolphins out in the main canal and then were able to spot several alligators near the mangroves. When you think of the Everglades – this is the first thing that comes to mind and it was an awesome experience.

Grassland Airboat Tour – 30 minutes ($73 per in Feb 2019 for the combo Mangrove/Grassland Tour)

No dilly dallying at the conclusion of your Mangrove Tour – you will need to get back in the car and drive for 15-20 minutes back the way you originally came early in the morning to get to the location of the Animal Sanctuary which is also where the Grassland Airboat tour takes off from. This is a similar airboat experience, but instead of being deep in the mangroves – you are out in the open grasslands and it is much easier to spot alligators. And yes, there are plenty of them. The operator also will show up the ability of these airboats to turn on a dime in some of the wide open spaces the grasslands have to offer.

If you have time after this tour concludes – hang out and watch the alligator show and stroll through the animal sanctuary. It is a popular thing to do as the parking lot here is typically packed to the brim. However, if you are like us – you’ll need to back in the car and head towards Shark Valley.

Shark Valley

You now have one area of this National Park to visit – Shark Valley. And this might be one of the more memorable areas of this particular park. If you were in the Gulf Coast Area, you will make a 45 minute drive back east to the Shark Valley Visitor Center. If you have time, you can take a 30 min detour by turning right at Monroe Station onto a scenic loop road into Big Cypress National Preserve which we highly recommend as you’ll get some great views of forested wetlands and also have more opportunities of seeing wildlife. A lot of the water appears to be pure black in the woods which is very interesting to look at.

Once you arrive at the Shark Valley Visitor Center – park your car and head inside to either purchase or check in for your tram tour if you had a reservation (highly recommended as this area gets really busy). There is 15 miles of looped road here – but unless you want to rent a bicycle and bike the entire path – your only option is a 2 hour guided tram tour. We recommend the tram tour as it is narrated and you will get lots of interesting stories and it isn’t very expensive – $25 per person in February 2019. The tram is open air – so you won’t have any issues snapping pictures of the grasslands and wildlife along the way. And you’ll see plenty of wildlife – from alligators to turtles to many species of birds. It’s possible you might even spot one of the hated pythons and if you do – make sure to point it out to the naturalist so someone can come back and destroy it.

After your tour – you have successfully seen pretty much all there is to see in Everglades National Park. Head back towards Miami (about an hour) and hang out in the city or head to some of the other National Parks in the area (Biscayne Bay or Dry Tortugas). Miami is also a great spot to take off to Virgin Islands National Park for a few days of relaxation!