Way back in April, when I posted “The Real Florida for Kids - Eco-discovery in Lowry Park Zoo,” I promised two more posts featuring special places in Florida where kids can truly experience Florida’s unique natural habitat. Well, it’s taken this long to get to part two: “The Mysterious Everglades.”

Imagine this. A river of grass: a slow-moving sheet of water spanning thousands of acres, sometimes seen, sometimes not, covered by golden sawgrass as far as the eye can see, and broken up only by hammock islands where cabbage palm, royal palm, live oak, gumbo limbo and West Indian mahogany thrive. There is a silence here. It’s a place of forbidding bogs, cypress knees protruding from dark water, spidery airplants clinging to tree limbs, life-sustaining mangroves, showy bromiliads, bright green fern, and the elusive ghost orchid.

It’s home of the resilient Miccosukee Indians, the slow-moving, fast-acting alligator, the sultry, endangered Florida panther, and long legged wading birds. It’s fascinating and fragile; controversial and compromised. (For adults, a great must-read is Michael Grunwold’s “The Swamp.”)

For kids it’s a fabulous one-of-a-kind adventure! They’ll love skimming over the endless sheet of water mirroring the blue sky and puffy cumulus clouds above while perched up high on an airboat. What a ride it is! It’s thrilling and exciting, and they’re sure to see alligators sunning motionless on a bank or moving silently through the water, with only snout, eyes, and a piece of broad back exposed. They’ll spot soft-shell turtles with long noses that serve them well as snorkels as they paddle just beneath the surface. They’ll see birds everywhere - long-legged wading ones: great blue herons, white ibises, snowy egrets; soaring, sharp-eyed ones: osprey and eagles; awkward-looking ones: anhingas perched on tree limbs with waterlogged outspread wings drying in the sun, and giant wood stork, appearing way too big to be balancing on cypress tree limbs.

For a quieter ride (airboats are run by airplane propellers and are very loud) in deeper water, take them on a guided boat tour out of Chocoloskee or Everglades City through the mangrove-lined estuaries of the isolated Ten Thousand Islands, where they’ll encounter slow-moving gentle manatee, playful dolphin and countless wading birds. It’s quiet and pristine, and riding through mangrove tunnels is awesome!

The magnificent Everglades can be accessed from both the southwest and the southeast coasts of Florida at various locations along US 41(Tamiami Trail) which traverses the Everglades from just outside of the Naples/Ft. Myers area, all the way to Miami.

From the west coast side, really interesting and exciting are either a full day Everglades trip (no children under 5 allowed) or half-day excursions (for kids of any age). Chokoloskee and Everglades City, both simple “old Florida” fishing communities tucked deep into the Everglades, are about a half hour out of Naples, and about an hour and a half out of Miami. Everglades National Park can be accessed at various visitor centers near Tamiami Trail. Closest to Miami is the main park entrance, the Ernest Coe Visitor Center in Homestead. Further west is Shark Valley Visitor Center, and closest to Florida’s west coast is Gulf Coast Visitor Center is at the intersection of Route 29 and Tamiami Trail near Everglades City.

On the Miami end of Tamiami Trail/US 41, airboat safaris depart from several concessions along the way, and the Miccosoukee Information Center and Cultural Center at MM 70 offers the chance to experience the lives of the Miccosoukee, descendents of Indians who escaped deep into the Everglades in the 1850s, successfully elluding deportation out west.

Take your kids to the Everglades … it’s fascinating and real.

Alligators Sunning

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