Florida part 3: North Everglades National Park

After spending some time in the south of the park it was now time for the northern part. Everglades feels like a must while visiting Florida, so despite the heat I didn't wear shorts but long sleeves and long pants.
From Miami and straight to the west is the Tamiami Trail. It's the most southern road between the west and east coasts, at least when driving a rental :-) and it cuts straight through the Everglades. On the south side of the road is the park and on the north side the rest of the glades. Half way throu i cuts through the south part of Big Cypress National Preserve. The goal for this day was to make a stop at both this parks.

First stop was Shark Valley and no, there are no sharks here :-) But there is a pawed road that stretches in to the park. It's about 25 km and is open for visitors on foot or by bike and trams / buses is regularly taking visitors out for a tour. To keep a safe traffic environment on the one way road, the trams goes in one direction and bikes in the opposite direction.Very clear instructions are given that stop and get off the bike when a vehicle is approaching. We decided to rent some bikes just to have the possibility to stop when we liked and to get a closer and more natural experience.



Just about in the middle of the loop road stands a tower. It's open for visitors to walk up and enjoy the grand view. The road to the tower is straight as a nail and this day the wind is quite heavy and of course we are pedalling in to the wind. But since it's a well visited place we pushed on.



Already after a couple of hundred meters we had the first sightings of alligators. The were laying on the road and I think they were trying to get warm in the sun. Safety instructions states that one shouldn't go closer than 5 meters, but the road wasn't that wide so we just slowly passed by, hoping for the best. Alligators is said not to see humans as food, well as long as we were standing up anyway.




Exited of this encounter we looked forward for the next meeting. But as the wheels kept turning we started to realise that we didn't adjust the bikes as much as we should have done and upon that the fully loaded camera backpack started to get heavier. Let's just say it was a real good work out both for body and mind :-)
At the turning point beside the tower is a restroom, but there is no water that is drinkable. Luckily we had brought about 3 liters of water along, which in normal cases would last this kind of trip. When arriving to the tower we were down to just one liter left. The constant opposite wind and the blazing sun had taken it's toll. Is this the end? Were we to be alligator food out in nowhere? Isn't that a hungry vulture up there just wainting for us to fall down? Well it wasn't quite that drastic but we hadn't seen any other people and no wildlife either (except that vulture then) so morale was slowly getting lower.



After a nice break at the tower we started back towards the starting point and now the road had more curves and small ponds on the sides so it should be more interesting we thought. Travelling with the wind in ones back was really a morale boost. The landscape was swooshing by with an alligator here and there out in the wet grass.



A keen look out was the only way to spot these animals, because they were not easy to see. But it would take all the way to the end before wildlife were up in numbers and close to the road.



So sum up some experience of Shark Valley: I'd say it's quite enough to take a stroll around the visitors centre to save both time and money. Or we just had a bad luck due to the weather. To much water on the prairie which meant that the animals were spread out and out of sight.