Everglades National Park
Back in Early February, Lauren and I embarked on a week long vacation in Florida. We set out to visit each of the 3 National Parks and have a small beach vacation at the same time, although we went about it a little unconventionally. In order to maximize the trip and spend the most amount of time in the parks, we rented a sprinter van and camped each night.
We flew into Miami and headed to pick up the sprinter. We picked up the van at the dudes place of work and headed to the grocery store to load up on groceries. But first, we needed some Cuban Food! We had a few different Cuban meals on this trip, each one was better than the next. The guy we rented the van recommend a little hole in the wall place that we headed for. He recommended the meal to get. He said, get the 47. Of course the menu was all in spanish, so I really had no idea what I was in for. I got what he recommended, and to be honest, it was amazing. I never would have considered ordering it. It was some kind of flat flank steak, seasoned to perfection and fries. Lauren had a Cuban, because she is a basic bitch! Not a person in the restaurant spoke English, so there was a lot of pointing at the menu as my high school Spanish, wont cut the mustard in Miami. Senor Scott would have been disappointed.
Once we got some groceries, we set out to the Everglades. It’s funny how quickly Miami stops and it just becomes so rural, so fast. Miami just stops and the Everglades start. We went from the stereotypical Miami dudes to hillbillies in about 2 miles. We made it out to the campground right at dusk. We stayed about 5 miles from the gates to the Everglades North Entrance. The first night in the van was without shore power and his battery system in the van, wasn’t really working that well. Power shut off around 2 am and it got hot and sticky in there. I didn’t get a ton of sleep as I am a hot sleeper and Lauren is a cold sleeper, so she didn’t even notice it. As I was sweating balls, totally awake, my thoughts turned toward the next days adventure.
We had planned to do a fan boat tour in the Everglades and see some Alligators. We got to experience both of those things on the tour. I was able to get a couple of decent photos of the Alligators. We saw about 4 wild ones on our tour. Pretty neat creatures. They can hear a heart beating in the water from 200 feet away, the boat operator said.
As we were getting done with the fan boat ride, the clouds started rolling in. It was about 75 degrees all day, so people in Florida were in parkas and I was in shorts. After the fan boat tour, we headed into the North Entrance to see some of the park. There was about a 90 minute wait to get into the park…Lauren and I decided to wait it out as there were people turning around all over the place, as they couldn’t bear that inconvenience. It was neat enough. Not much to see unless you rent a bike or do a 15 mile loop hike around the park. We really wanted our stickers and patches though and we did a small loop trail to see some wildlife. Blue Herrons and Egrets were a plenty, which was neat to see them up close.
Once we finished up there, it was about 3 pm and we decided to head to the beach in Miami and meet up with a couple that Lauren knows from her home town for supper. So we made the trek to the beach. We arrived just as full blown rush hour was going on, so traffic wasn’t too terrible. Since it was only 75 and cloudy, we had the entire beach to ourselves. It was amazing! These sad sack Miami people were couped up inside while it was gorgeous outside!
We chilled on the beach and headed to the supper club, right on the water, overlooking downtown Miami, across the bay. We had an amazing meal, with an amazing view, but I was tired. We had about an hour to get to our next camp spot. We hit the road and arrived around 9 pm. It was a camp spot from a dude that was kinda like AirBNB, Apparently 9 pm is too late and we were locked out. So we camped that night on the street, right next to the place that I paid for, It was super lame and our battery system wasn’t working again, so it was another miserable night. The next day was Biscayne National Park and another beach day. More on Biscayne in another blog.
The next day we hit up South Beach and it was a zoo. So many people, but it was hot and sunny and a great time. I had a 2 hour work meeting that day on the beach, so Lauren explored by herself as I sat and talked business. After the meeting wrapped up, we loaded up the Sprinter and headed to Little Havana for more Cuban Food. I had a Cuban Sandwich as I am a basic bitch! Lauren had a really good looking seafood dish. After the two miserable nights of sleep and having complained and ultimately cancelling that last night at the campground from the guy that locked us out, we decided on a hotel for a night before we headed to Key West.
3 days later…After leaving Key West for a few days, we headed back to the Everglades and camped one final night. We did a sunset cruise through the park and wildlife sanctuary, bird watching and taking photos. Lauren always says I get in the zone when I put a camera in my hand. This time was no different. Im sure she was bored stiff. We saw so many different species of birds and I got some decent photos. Some of them are super noisy as I was using the 200-600. I switched out to the 70-200 as it really started to get dark, but a lot of these photos were just too noisy for bird photos. Lots of ISO 10,000 images, which I really didnt use any of these. Not the greatest images.
Arriving back at the campsite, I was delighted to have shore power and a functioning AC, as it was quite warm that night. We cooked up some brats and started to pack things up as this was out last night before we headed to the airport.
Portions of the Everglades are in a dark sky area, and it was crystal clear out that last night. I set the camera up to get some Astro. February isn’t really Milky Way season for great Astro, but I was able to get some okay shots with the sprinter in there. You can see a galaxy in one of the wide angle shots, which I thought was pretty neat. The light dome of Naples and Miami was quite intense in the photos. Not sure how the classify this as a dark sky area, unless they are counting looking straight up!
Overall, the wildlife of the Everglades was pretty cool, but I thought the other two national parks were better. Now we didn’t venture too deep into the Everglades, so I might be selling it short. It was a great vacation and I will do one final blog for the last national park, Biscayne National Park.
Equipment used:
Sony A1
Sony 70-200 f/2.8
Sony 200-600 f/5.6-6.3
Sony 1.4 Teleconverter
Sony 14mm f/1.8
Tamron 17-28mm f/2.8
Benro Polaris Astro Edition
