Today we wanted to visit the northern part of the Everglades.  We made it to Shark Valley and discovered that we wanted to do the tram tour that they offered.  We ended up deciding to do their last tour at 4:00pm.  This allowed us time to drive along the Tamiami Trail (US Hwy 41).  Following much of this road is a small canal that treated us to many more bird and alligator sightings. 

We drove down to Chokoloskee Island and took a picture of us at the Chokoloskee Bay, then turned back and stopped at the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas Visitor Center where we had a picnic and enjoyed seeing the brown pelicans diving into the water for their meal.  We looked again for manatees but didn’t have any luck spotting one.

Back on the Tamiami Trail we stopped for the film and a short boardwalk at the Big Cypress Preserve Visitor Center.  I finally read a little about the Florida panther.  Since they are more nocturnal, it is unlikely we will be able to spot one.  I did learn that a male panther needs 200 square miles of land to roam and a female needs 80.  There is a lot of land here preserved for the panthers, but it is definitely no wonder that they are endangered.

Heading back to Shark Alley for our tram tour, we had planned to take the Loop Road in Big Cypress Preserve to see what we could see.  We weren’t one minute down the road before we saw an alligator crossing the road.  We’ve seen a lot of alligators here, but Alex had just said that she wanted to see a gator cross the road, and God gave us that special sight!  Right after we finished watching the gator we took a look at how long the loop would take us and realized that we didn’t have the time, so we turned around and headed back to the main road. 

The tram ride gave us lots of alligator viewing opportunities. The most special on the tram ride was seeing at least six baby alligators with their mama.  We also saw another group of alligators that consisted of a mama and one and two year old babies.  I was surprised that they don’t grow faster than they do.  Even the two year olds were still relatively small.  We saw many birds: White Ibis, Great Blue Herons, Great Egrets, Snowy Egrets, and Purple Gallinules.  Our tour guide was very excited to point out a Great White Heron to us also.  He said that he has only seen five Great White Herons in the eight years he has worked at the Everglades.  Knowing that, I was extra excited for the opportunity to see one!

After our tram tour, we were done for the day and drove back to the campground for dinner and downtime.  Our friend, Kaitlan, who lives in Naples, drove over to our campground to visit with us – which included the traditional trip to Walmart (there isn’t a whole lot to do in our small town, so that is often what the kids do).  It was great to see her!

Rebecca