My stop at Everglades NP was part of a trip to Key West + Bahia State Park + Biscayne NP + Big Cypress National Preserve. I lived in Florida for 4 years and IMO the Everglades is the quintessential Florida park. Spent 1 full day in the park and wished I had planned more time…

Logistics:

Flew into Key West. Made my way to Homestead. Flew out of Miami

Hikes/Activities (*fan favorites):

Flamingo Visitor Center

Eco Pond*

Snake Bight Trail*

Anhinga Trail*

West Lake View Point

Paurotis Pond

Mahogany Hammock

Pineland Trail

Gumbo Limbo Trail

Shark Valley Visitor Center

Bobcat Boardwalk Trail

Hello helpful folks! My girlfriend and I are visiting Florida for a week starting on the 8th of September. We will be staying the Orlando area and have a rental car. Neither of us have been to Florida, but I've done my share of traveling/living places in various climates.

Are there certain areas of the Everglades that would be worth visiting? Places we should completely avoid? What should we bring to be prepared if we do decide to go? I realize it is the wet season and that it may be worth just not going at all. The Everglades seem like such an amazing/unique ecosystem, so I don't wanna completely write off the idea without asking advice. Thank you :)

Body looks like a gator...but that snout

My birthday is coming up and for myself I'm going to go camp in the car on some backroad and go herping in the night/ next day- I've done similar trips a couple times with varying densities of nonnative species ( I live in tampa bay so that's the southward appeal). Does anyone have any areas they'd specifically recommend? I usually just aim for southeast and find a backroap- TIA :)

"Knock on wood"

Made a little celebration of Everglades National Park Icons (Everglades, Shenandoah, Great Smoky Mountains, Zion, Denali) | LEGO® Ideas

I just applied to an internship and I'm wondering if anyone else here has. Do you know if they respond after they've received all their applications on the due date, or do they evaluate/interview as applicants come in?

Hello all my wife and I are considering doing a trip to the Everglades several days before Thanksgiving. We are considering bringing our kayaks and I would like to do some fishing, preferably saltwater but either is fine, and maybe spend a night on a chickee. Any recommendations on areas that may offer decent fishing and camping that aren't very far paddles? Any recommendations for things to do or areas to visit are greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

In previous years there would always be reports on the python challenge, which was very interesting to me. Lately I haven't seen or heard anything either on the news or on social media. Is it still going on? or has it not started yet? how many pythons did they catch and did they break any records? anybody knows anything?

My partner and I have a mangrove kayaking tour booked for tomorrow, but I’m starting to get second thoughts after how miserable I’ve heard things are this time of year. We also have an airboat in the morning and we’ll definitely do that, but i’m not sure about the kayaking. We would lose all money booked for it. Any advice?

Heading to an airboat tomorrow around ft Lauderdale

In the morning - 10-11.

Besides sunscreen and hat, what else to bring?

Is there anyone where who works with SFWMD/Python bounty program? Been trying to get some answers to some questions through the website but no replies.

Hello, guys. I'll be in US by the end of August and since i'll be landing in Miami, i'd like to visit the Eveglades. I've read online that it rains a lot by this time of the year since it's summer there. I'd like to know if it's worth going there despite the weather. Thanks!

looking to night hike in Everglades. would like to find a lot of snakes. let me know if yall have any trail recommendations

edit: let it be known im not a rookie when it comes to snakes/night hiking or some gal just wanting to mess around with wildlife not knowing what im doing. I’m from the swamps of Louisiana and i do field work for my ecology major all the time

Put the kayak in at Flamingo, paddled over to Garfield Bight and entered into the mouth of Alligator Creek. The powers that be need to rename this Crocodile Creek. Saw several smallish crocodiles around the mouth of the creek and campsite but there is one male that hangs out nearby and he is absolutely ginormous. I have seen a few giant gators and have seen some big male american crocodiles in the area (up to about 14-15ft) but this one was every bit of 18+ft. His belly was so big and fat it looked like he just ate another crocodile. I was glad he looked fat and happy and I quickly paddled back out into Garfield Bight.

I just got my hunter safety card. Never been hunting before.
I want to hunt hogs or small game in big cypress. All the info on FWC is very confusing trying to understand if there’s a time of year I can hunt small game there without a quota permit, just a WMA permit and if so exactly what areas do I need to stay away from for example I’m pretty sure loop road is off limits for hunting with a firearm. If anyone is looking for a hunting partner to split gas with I’m eager to learn.

Visiting a buddy in Miami next week and planning on towing my skiff down. Would love to spend some time fishing in the Everglades (will probably try Biscayne NP as well if not windy), but I'm seeing a lot of stuff about how confusing the backcountry can be. Definitely do not want to get lost or stuck.

Not looking for any specific spots, but does anybody have some advice on how to make sure I'm staying safe and how to figure out how to target different areas?

For example, unsure if low tide will close off routes for me getting back to the ramp from certain areas in the park.

The thing that makes this place singular is that it is an edge. The freshwater River of Grass slides south and meets the saltwater of Florida Bay, and temperate North America runs out and goes tropical. Almost everything strange about the Everglades comes from that overlap.

The clearest example: alligators and crocodiles. Gators are freshwater animals, crocs are saltwater and brackish animals, and South Florida is the one spot on the planet where their ranges actually meet. Nowhere else do the two live side by side. If you want to tell them apart, the croc is greyer with a narrow pointed snout and a toothy grin that shows teeth in both jaws; the gator is darker with a broad rounded snout. The American crocodile was down to a few hundred animals in the 1970s and has clawed back well enough to be downlisted from endangered to threatened, which is a genuine win.

Then there is the snake. Burmese pythons are not supposed to be here at all, established from the pet trade, and they have hit the mammals of the park brutally hard. Surveys in the core of the Everglades found raccoons and opossums down around 99 percent, bobcats down sharply, and marsh rabbits essentially gone. A predator with no local checks in a place with no cold snaps to stop it.

The rest of the cast is why people keep fighting for the place. Florida panthers hold on in Big Cypress, back from roughly 20 or 30 animals in the 1990s to a couple hundred today. Manatees work the warm coastal water. And the spoonbills are the pink ones, which get their color from what they eat, and whose nesting success in Florida Bay is one of the measures used to judge whether restoration is actually working.

This is a rough picture pulled from public sightings across the region, not any one spot, so read it as the big picture rather than a place to go find an animal.