Who can visit Florida and skip the Everglades?  Not us!!!!

We decided to take advantage of Dave’s Senior pass and camp in National parks.  The one we wanted was not available the first night of our stay so we chose another one.  I WISH we had gotten a picture of our campsite, which we normally do.  This site was so large and secluded that we really felt like we were off on our own.  There were no hook-ups at all but could manage for one day and it was so beautiful that it was worth it.  The next day, we got all the way to Flamingo where we parked for 3 nights and had electricity.  We had no phone or WiFi at all and that really took us by surprise.  We hate to be out of touch with our families in case of emergency but Jo was able to survive without Facebook.  I bet that surprises some people!

We toured the quite a bit of the park and found out that the reason we have seen so many alligators and manatees is because it is the dry season.  When it is dry, the wild life seeks out water so they are more concentrated.  That was lucky for us!  Aside from being a little (little???) skittish around the alligators, the birds and flowers are just beautiful.  We also saw a crocodile, which lives in proximity to the alligator here.

Manatees

Crocidile

Alligator

Osprey nest with mother feeding her young

Since he grew up on a farm, Dave is always interested in crops.  We took back roads to get to the Everglades and went passed a lot of fields of produce and ornamental trees and flowers.  Dave was especially interested in the sweet corn, all tasseled out.  Wow, much shorter than Minnesota sweet corn.  It was also interesting to see some fields ready to harvest, some already harvested and others in between.  The growing season doesn’t stop so crops are in all stages.

A sweet corn field we saw on the way to Homestead.  Fully tasseled and almost ready to harvest.  Very short!!

Crocodile watch in the everglades!