On our Miami FnL trip, I took the opportunity to go out to Everglades National Park on November 11, 2007. Erin, Dave, Emily, Beth and Alex decided to come as well. This was really awesome overall, but was less “hiking” than “driving through the park and checking out all the nature trails.” That said, it was still pretty cool. Anyway, we came in from the east entrance to the park, and drove all the way to where that road ended, at Flamingo. To my shame, I forgot my camera, but to my utter bafflement and pleasure, Emily lent me hers.
The first stopping place was Royal Palm, which contains both the Anhinga and Gumbo-Limbo trails, both 0.5 mile loops. The first trail we went on was the Gumbo-Limbo Trail. I thought this name was particularly intriguing, but it happens to be the name of a tree, and not related to some crazy stories about your dinner ending up in a place you can’t get it. alas.
The Anhinga Trail is named after these crazy birds. They are fishing birds, with the long beak common to that, but their coats don’t shed water, so after they fish, they have to stand in the sun with their wings widespread to dry off. This starts off at the edge of a swampy zone, but has a bunch of wooden walkways to get you out further into the swampy zone. Once you get out there, you pretty much feel like you’re in the middle of this infinite water and grass place. And then you start to see the alligators. Those jerks scare the crap out of me. They look like they’re molded out of some primordial plasticine hatred. They look old.
One of the multitude of gators. They blended in fairly well.
We then cut into the cars and drove to one of the next little nature trails, the Pineland Trail, another 0.5 mile loop through some *totally* different terrain. The trees are all crazy and skinny and set pretty far apart, due to the particular nature of the soil that they grow in. It’s definitely not like anything I’d ever seen before. There were a whole mess of snails hanging out on branches of various plants as we went by, just waiting for the right season for them to come out and play. They were quite beautiful. It was really bizarre to be just a couple miles down the road from the alligator swamp we had just been in and then be walking along through this thin crazy pine forest.
all tall and thing
After a very brief drive forward, we got to the Pahayokee Overlook “Trail”, which is a quarter mile loop. This is a boardwalk loop cutting above what I believe is sawgrass so not having to walk through it was certainly appreciated. The overlook yields a truly magnificent view – open grassland, open sky, appearance of going on forever. Being only a few feet higher gives you a really massive sense of perspective over this amazingly flat landscape. See the first photo. Yeah. That’s right.
We then headed on to the Mahogany Hammock Trail. Alas, this doesn’t lead you to the world’s nicest all wood hammock. I quote from the internet “Hammocks form where the limestone bedrock emerges above the water level of the everglades. If bypassed by fire for a long time, hardwoods like Swietinia mahagoni (mahogany) become established and form a jungle-like “island””
Anyway, you walk over another bridge to get to this area, and once you’re in, you’re lost (well, on the trail, but bear with it) in this tangle of trees going each and every which way. It’s a profusion of roots and limbs that looks like it could take over everything…if only it had any real soil to be in. As I put it “all sorts of freaky tree fronds, branches, roots, craziness, growing everywhere.” And if you didn’t realize that craziness could grow, well, you do now!
Seems a little inefficient, but whatever
We drove out more or less to the end of the park. You can tell, because you get to the ocean. This is apparently about as south as you can get in the mainland US, so, go us! The West Lake Trail was another one ducking through some crazy growth, and then looped around on a boardwalk over some water. The Eco Pond Trail was a nice loop around a lake…well, nice, except for the fact that we were getting wicked eaten by a crazy pile of bugs. Unfortunate.
After this, we stopped at the marina at the end, and had ice cream. Ice cream is always the answer after a full day outside, even if a large portion of it was spent driving from place to place. On the way back, we stopped at the Anhinga area again, and checked out some more gators. Those things creep me out.
