How to Explore Florida's Everglades
Everglades National Park offers a diverse ecosystem unlike any other place in the continental United States. Visitors to the park spend days or weeks exploring the country’s largest subtropical wilderness. Known for its swamps and alligators, the Everglades is also home to sawgrass prairies, hardwood hammocks and a variety of wildlife, including the endangered Florida panther. The park is open year-round with peak season extending from the middle of December through the middle of April.
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Instructions
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Check out a visitor center before you begin your visit. There are five visitor centers providing access to the park from various points in Florida. The Ernest F. Coe Visitor Center in Homestead offers art exhibits, brochures, educational displays, canoe rentals and boat tours. The Flamingo Visitor Center, located in Flamingo offers natural history exhibits, information, rentals and back country permits. The Gulf Coast Visitor Center in Everglades City also offers back country permits, tours and rentals. Shark Valley Visitor Center, located in Miami, offers sightseeing trams and bicycle rentals.
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Camp in the park to immerse yourself fully in the Everglades experience. Flamingo and Long Pine Key Campgrounds are open year-round and can be reached by car. Both campgrounds offer water, dump stations, picnic tables and hiking trails. Flamingo also offers cold water showers. For the more adventurous camper, 47 wilderness sites are located along 156 miles of walking and canoe trails. Camping reservations are accepted up to five months in advance.
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Take a tram tour. The Shark Valley Visitor Plaza offers a two hour tram tour through the sawgrass prairie. Naturalists act as guides and point out native plants, birds and trees. The tram stops at an observation tour at the half-way mark of the tour for a bird’s eye view of the Everglades. Tram tours are offered five times during the day and reservations are suggested.
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Fish the waters of the Everglades. Fishing can be done in both the inland and coastal waters. Sea trout, redfish, snapper, bluegill, bass, snook and tarpon are among the fish most commonly caught. If you want to fish in both freshwater and saltwater areas, you will need to buy two separate Florida fishing licenses.
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Plan a bicycle tour of the park. The Shark Valley Visitor Center offers single gear, coaster brake bikes for rent for a different view of the park. Bikers ride on a 15 mile paved road, giving you a close up view of wildlife and plants.
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Rent a canoe and explore the park. Travel by canoe allows easy access to the marine areas and estuaries in the swamps. Canoes can also travel through areas not accessible by larger boats, allowing visitors to see many species of water birds, fish, manatees and sea turtles. Canoes can be rented at the Flamingo marina.
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Book an airboat tour. Tours are available from both the Miami and Naples area. Depending on the company chosen, tours can last for one hour or more. Air boats take passengers deep into the Everglades through mangrove swamps, prairies, pinelands, estuaries and hardwood hammocks.
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Go for a hike. The park offers numerous trails that lead visitors through scenic areas of the park. Trails are open year-round and are easily reached from the main road. To minimize sharing your walk with mosquitoes, the park recommends walking during midday and avoiding the early morning and evening hours when mosquitoes are most active. Trails are available at every visitor center.
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Tips & Warnings
You will have the best luck bird watching in the dry winter months at either Shark Valley or Royal Palm. Try visiting in the early morning or late afternoon.
Resources
- Photo Credit John Dunlap
