Adrian was able to get a weekend off from work so we decided to go down to Everglades National Park. We're 3 hours away and we drove down on New Years Day. I had never been south of Jupiter so it was exciting to see the very south end of Florida.
We stopped for lunch/dinner in Homestead. We had a cooler packed full of food for all other meals.
We just did a quick overnight trip and camped in the campgrounds in the Park. The boys are always excited to get snacks and treats they don't normally get. We got to the Park just in time to pitch our new tent before dark. This was the first time using our new tent. When it got dark we walked around the campground with our flashlights. Adrian kept noticing some small reflections in the grass from our lights. As we checked out the reflections we noticed each one was a huge spider. They were everywhere in the grass in all the campsites. Yikes, we we're pretty grossed out. As it got dark the mosquitoes started getting really thick. So thick that they swarmed our lights and were all over us. We hurried and got ready for bed running around frantic to keep the mosquitoes off of us. We've never experienced mosquitoes so thick.
We did not sleep much during the night. Adrian and I could not get air mattress to pump up. The boys had inflatable beds to sleep on, but they did work well for the boys. We all got little sleep that night. It was extremely humid and warm all night and we all ended up sleeping on the hard ground. I got up and went to the restroom in the night at the toilets they had at the campgrounds. I ended up with 12 mosquito bites on my bottom in the half minute I was there :(
We woke up and everything soaked in thick dew. We hurried and packed everything up because we had a canoe reservation that morning.
I really wanted to go canoeing through the mangrove trees. We were told we needed to paddle for an hour to get to the mangrove trees that were really neat to canoe through. Well, in short, we never made it to the mangroves. We paddled up a river for some time. It was very hot, in the mid 80's. The kids were complaining because of the heat and Malachi had tossed one of the oars overboard without us noticing so we ended up going back looking for that. We had 4 oars, one for each of us. We were out in the canoe for maybe and hour and a half.
We saw an alligator on the side of the road and stopped for pictures.
Can you spot the alligator behind them?
We did a small hike through the thick trees. It was very pretty and cool to walk through.
The trail took us along side of a large lake. The lake was so smooth you could see the cloud reflections. It was very calm, quiet and peaceful. Except for the mosquitoes feasting on us of course.
We ended up running out of the trees for the last bit of the hike. As pretty as it was, the mosquitoes were unbearable. After the hike, the boys were tired and we headed home. Overall it was a good trip. The vegetation we saw was no different than what we have around our house, so we were slightly disappointed about that.
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