Everglades National Park

Monday, 1/4/15 - Traveled north to Homestead, FL where we parked in  Mobile Home and RV Park.  It is beautiful here and the weather has finally cooled down.  I saw on TV that Key West cooled off too, so I guess we just picked the hottest and stickiest time to go the furthest south!  Tom took the opportunity to do the laundry.

Tuesday, 1/5/15 - Mom joined us for her first tour since she rejoined us on 12/5.  We went out for breakfast and then headed for The Everglades.  First we stopped at the Visitor Information building in town.  The ladies there were very helpful.  They gave us all the directions we needed (the entrance to the park was about 10 miles away) an told us about a fabulous fresh fruit and vegetable stand on the corner where we turn.  We planned on going there after the Everglades National Park.

We entered the main Visitor Center and were treated to a lot of information about the different sections of the park.  The entire Everglades National Park is 734 square miles and covers most of the southern part of Florida.  They had wonderful displays.  We decided to take the Anhinga Trail located at the Royal Palm visitor building.  It was a couple of miles away.  We entered and walked to the trailhead of the Anhinga Trail, which was about 1/2 mile through the glades.  Here is Mom and Tom at the beginning of the walk.

Mom and Tom on the Anhinga Trailhead

The weather was wonderful - a little windy, but cool.  We saw mostly birds and plants--no gators today.  Here are some of my pictures:

Wood Stork

Heron or Crane

Green heron (my picture)

Green Heron (from a book)

my prancing Great Heron

The prancing Great Heron walked with me.  I took a video, but again, it was too big of a file to put into this blog, so you will have to ask to see it when we get home.  He was beautiful.  The lacy feathers on his back just fluttered in the wind.

Here is a Pond apple tree with lots of bromiliads.

Pond Apple tree with bromiliads

Now to answer my question about what these birds are (from my Everglades airboat trip--last blog),  This is a picture I took on the boat ride where the boat tour guide called this a snake bird.

Snake bird is actually an Anhinga

They actually call it a snake bird because it is a diving bird and when it dives is moves its long neck like a snake.  It is actually called an Anhinga (the same name of this Trail - it was named after this bird). I found this picture in the Visitor Center.

Anhinga

As to the second bird, I called it a blue bird with an orange beak.  Here is my boatride picture again.

bluebirds with orange beaks

And here is a picture from the inside of the Visitor Center and outside on the front board.  It is called a Purple Gallinule.

In the Visitor Center

outside the Visitor Center

After we finished our walk, we went back to the main Visitor Center to watch a 16 minute film and get more pictures.  Tom found a small room that I did not see the first time.  It had professional pictures of birds of the Everglades.  Here are the ones I could get (the rest were in bad reflective light).

some sort of a heron

A Crocodile

Flamingos

And my favorite:

a beautiful white bird

It was a great visit at the Everglades.  We headed back to the RV, but first we had to stop at the fruit and vegetable stand called "Robert is Here".  I read his story on the flyer.  In 1959, Robert's dad wanted to sell his cucumbers to the passerby tourists (they are the corner near the entrance of the Everglades National Park), so he put his son Robert, at the age of 6, out on the corner with his cucumbers.  He didn't sell any.  His dad, believing that EVERYBODY couldn't hate cucumbers, they must have just not seen Robert.  He added 2 homemade signs to either side of the vegetable table which said, "Robert is Here".  The next day Robert sold out by noon.  The second day a neighboring farmer added his tomatoes to the stand, and the fruit and vegetable corner was born.  By the age of 9, Robert had hired 3 neighbor ladies to help him sell while he was in school, and he bought 10 acres surrounding the corner for his business.  Robert is still Here.  We wandered through the corner market and I was amazed at the variety of tropical fruit, most of which I have never seen or heard of.  Robert, of course, is there to explain what each fruit tastes like and how to eat it.  We bought quite a bit of fruit and vegetables, but the big splurge was for a Guanabana half (also called a Sour Sop-$10).  Robert said it tastes like other citrus fruits with the creamy flavor of banana or coconut.  It looks like a watermelon only white instead of red meat,with seeds,  and much smaller.  We will see, it is in the refrigerator now.

Tomorrow is another travel day.  We are headed north, up the Florida gulf side.