As we were driving across southern Florida on US41 toward the Shark Valley entrance to Everglades National Park two and a half years ago, I kept thinking that there were too many trees. I’d been in the area 16 years before (while attending the Phish Y2K extravaganza at the Seminole Indian Reservation adjacent to the Big Cypress National Preserve), and I remembered vast sawgrass prairies with scattered hammocks (islands of trees), along with cypress stands and pine forests on the (relative) highlands. But what stuck most in my mind was the endless gator-populated water-logged grassland (sawgrass is actually a sedge, but whatever). Granted, my memory of that particular event is extremely fuzzy, due to all the booze and drugs. Still, there were too many trees, dammit. So I said, “I’m a little concerned because this doesn’t look as Evergladey as it should.”
To which my wife, the professional editor, responded, “What the hell does Evergladey mean? That’s a terrible made-up word.”
Once we got to Shark Valley, she understood. Dare I say, it was a perfectly cromulent word?
I recently blogged about our visit to Biscayne National Park, near Homestead in Florida. We visited Everglades National Park the next day, entering at the eastern Royal Palm entrance, and I said in the previous diary that I would combine that visit with our trip to Shark Valley (on the north side, and two and a half years ago) into one diary. However, after looking through our pictures from that earlier visit, I realized that to do it any justice, I would have to make a separate diary for each. Seriously, I couldn’t put that many pics into one post (well, probably i could if I really wanted, but no). So this post is only about Shark Valley. Sorry (not sorry).
In 2016, my parents house-sat for their dear friends in Sarasota, who were in Italy for three weeks. They invited us down to hang out (but don’t tell their friends!), and we happily obliged. Free lodging! We went to the beach at Lido Key, the Mote, and the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens. (I might even make a separate post about Marie Selby, because that was amazing.) Plus the house had a pool, which was nice for the boys.
We didn’t have plans for the last day and a half of our trip, so we offered the minors a choice: a day at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios in Orlando, or a day visiting Shark Valley in Everglades National Park. To our total surprise (and pride), our three hard-core Harry Potter enthusiasts chose (via blind raise-your-hand vote) to go to the Everglades. So off we went.
We reserved a spot on a tram from the visitor’s center to the observation tower seven miles into the park, then back again. This is a paved road to and from the tower, and you can ride the tram, or rent (or bring your own) bikes or hike to do it at your own speed. Turns out we were the only people on this particular tram ride, so we got a seriously up-close and personal visit to the area, as our guide and driver stopped every 15 seconds to show us something amazing (seriously, they were incredible and deserve massive raises).
Things you should know (and I’m probably wrong about most of them, as I learned them from the internet): The Shark Valley Slough runs through this area, eventually feeding into the Shark River, which reaches the ocean in the Ten Thousand Islands area of Everglades National Park. (This is adjacent to the Ten Thousand Islands National Wildlife Refuge, which is just northwest of the park. More on that in a later diary, possibly.) Supposedly, early settlers/explorers saw the fins of patrolling sharks in the river, hence the name. I also remember reading somewhere that the name is due to ancient shark teeth and skeletons being found in the area (from when it was submerged in the ocean in prehistoric times), but since I was unable to find any current sources supporting the latter explanation but plenty of sources supporting the former, the former is probably true.
Unfortunately for us, ground crews were mowing the grass around the visitor’s center, which unleashed hordes of mosquitoes. So we all coated ourselves with bug repellent (we use Ben’s from REI, which works really well), boarded the tram, and headed out.
The tram was basically an open-sided bus (it still had a roof, which was good because this was the rainy season and there were intermittent showers), with a driver and a guide. The guide eschewed his microphone, since we were the only people there and were all seated up front, and we had a good conversation between the five of us, the guide, and the driver. We hadn’t gone 30 seconds before the driver spotted a couple of alligators and stopped for a look.
And that’s how it was for the next seven miles of winding road, with constant wildlife sightings on both sides of the tram. So many gators, and so many birds! This place was teeming with life. One thing the guide and driver pointed out, however, was the total lack of small- and medium-size mammals. That is directly due to the plague of Burmese pythons, an invasive species that has dramatically altered the ecological balance of the Everglades. Which sucks.
We knew this gator pictured above was a female because she was standing watch over a group of (assuming her) baby gators. The guide and driver were exquisitely clear that we shouldn’t get out of the tram to take pictures, as female gators can be extremely aggressive protecting their young.
We eventually reached the observation tower, which closely resembled the tower at the top of Clingman’s Dome in the Great Smokey Mountains NP, which probably isn’t a coincidence. The grounds crew were at work here too, so the mosquitoes were thick. We headed to check out the tower, leaving our guide and driver to suffer the ravenous insect horde. Eventually they followed us, as the bugs weren’t so bad up on the tower. I didn’t blame them one bit.
This is a panoramic video I took from the tower, showing the endless sawgrass prairie in all directions (the area around the tower had a lot of brush). You also get a glimpse of the intermittent showers we dealt with all day.
Once we had our fill of the excellent views from the observation tower, we collected our driver and guide and headed back to the tram. The path back was a direct, straight road, but it was just as full of wildlife activity as the wavy path down. We even got to experience the classic scene of a big gator sunning itself on the road, then slowly lumbering off into the water to the side.
Just before returning to the visitor’s center, we saw one more gator, another mother hanging out with her kids.
And that was our visit to Shark Valley in Everglades National Park. My wife had been hoping to see some roseate spoonbills (number one on her birding list), but they were not around. Our guide said they migrate and weren’t present in the fall, but that turned out to be false (as I’ll prove in a later diary, maybe). Despite the lack of spoonbills, Florida panthers, and any other possible unicorn wildlife sightings, this was an amazing national park visit that will be hard to top. Or will it? Anyway, enough for now.