We were starting to see billboards that read Airboats and Alligators! and a line from The Sound of Music kept running through my head. These are a few of my favorite things…
The children were tired of hearing excerpts from the fifteen Everglades library books I had brought along, and my husband looked sleepy as he drove us into the last small town before the Big Cypress National Preserve. Out my window were lots of barn-like factory buildings with black-haired men hauling crates of produce into the backs of semi-trucks. The convenience store had signs in Spanish, and I tried my hand at translations, which I had not quite finished before the town flickered out of sight.
It was the climax of boredom. The excitement of a new adventure had lost its luster for the children about six hours prior. It was time for a pick-me-up, a bit of I-told-you-we’d-see-lots-of-gators—in other words, it was time for a proper introduction to the swamp. Big Cypress, the western swampy side of the Everglades, knows how to do that.
We took the scenic road, appropriately called Scenic Loop Road, to our campsite. It is a twenty-seven mile dirt road that begins with a large amount of potholes and tall scrub obscuring the view of the swamp. It is a test of faith. The faithful soon discover the road and the view improve.
Swaths of prairie-like grass cover shallow water. Scattered mini cypress trees are dotted with egrets and herons. One feels in tune with the sway of the wind in the saw grass. Just when you have decided that you might actually be the grass...the view changes to a swampy jungle. All the trees tangle together for the light, but mostly there is dark. Dark shadows are in all that tangle, and I decided that most of them were alligators, and probably a Burmese python or three.
All of this would not impress the children too much, except that some of the dark shadows showed themselves by way of lying statue-like on the shoulder of the road. The first gator to be seen was only about four feet, but it didn’t matter because it was that coveted moment of oh my god it’s a gator and it is literally one foot away from the side of the vehicle I am currently hanging out of!
We saw twenty-six up-close gators in the hour drive, and most of them large. Twenty-seven if you count the big dead one half hanging out of the swamp that the vultures were feasting on. As the only ones on this silent road, we were at our leisure for getting out and getting properly hissed at, and then watching the insulted gator swim off. Her long tail swished with ease, guiding her along as her thick back legs hung idle, enjoying the ride. She was a picture of reptilian elegance.
Let’s Fast Forward Now
We spent a peaceful night at Big Cypress National Preserve. Nary a panther or python to be seen (which is no surprise,) but a polite owl spent a great deal of time singing me a lullaby. Next stop, Everglades National Park, one hour away.
We were standing at the main entrance visitor center when I heard an older lady with a heavy northern accent say “I’m just outside of Miami. I’m at the Everglades.” She really emphasized those last words, like she was really proud of herself. It was something like saying Oh no, I never buy sunglasses unless they are designer. The Everglades is posh, y’all. While Big Cypress is a preserve, which is kind of the Walmart of national parks, The Everglades is Target—both products were made in the same place, but you pay a lot more money for one of them.
We took the obligatory photos of the children sitting atop the panther statue, and headed to our campsite…the smallest group campsite I’ve ever seen.
But this is The Everglades, and it’s super posh, so let’s stay on task. Yes, there is a great deal of beautiful River of Grass scenery. There are several nice boardwalks made for short trails—the glamorous way to hike. There are a bunch of ranger-led programs, which kind of makes me think of it like the camp in the movie Dirty Dancing, except instead of a botched abortion scene there could be a person needing a blood transfusion after being bitten by a thousand mosquitos.
There are some beautiful scenes of water plants swaying and colorful birds flitting about, but there was something missing. The Everglades has a reputation for being wild. It’s supposed to have terrifying thirty foot-long pythons and alligators around every corner. And yet, in the two days we spent there we saw a total of seven gators, and most of them far off, compared to 26 in one hour at Big Cypress. It was as though the gators had Everglades National Park’s number—they probably all had a meeting and made a unanimous decision. The papa of all gators—probably an old sixteen footer named Al—said to the congregation There are far too many tourists here now, everyone head to Big Cypress!
The campground does have the luxury of toilets and showers, but with them you get a fully booked campground with a lot of noisy people in close quarters. The pine trees against the setting sun make a lovely scene above the ruckus, but there was no owl to sing me a lullaby, just some distant crickets.
Fast Forward Again
We’d left the park, and I was watching my husband clean the meat off a frog’s leg and produce some very sad looking little leg bones. Grilled bits of chewy gator tail dipped in seafood sauce were set in front of the children. Just beyond the tables was a field of sugarcane and some unwanted looking coconut palms that the children had already inspected for fallen souvenirs.
I told my husband that I thought Big Cypress National Preserve was a whole lot better than Everglades National Park. I mean, I’m glad Everglades National Park exists, but it wasn’t all that wild feeling with so many people around.
I opted not to eat the gator tail. I had an image of that lovely water dragon at Big Cypress, with her long trail swishing through the water like the swaying of a woman’s hips. I’ve got lots of respect for her, and her cypress swamp.
This is for you @corvidae, in case you make that trip you’ve talked about into the deepest reaches of the deep south. I also recommend you get a copy of Everglades Patrol by Tom Shirley for some ambiance reading during your stay. And check out the Ah-Tah-Thi-Kee musueum on one of the Seminole reservations—the drive out there to the middle of nowhere just above the Everglades is a beautiful picture of old cracker Florida—cattle fields with sable palms popping up all over them, between rivers of grass and canals full of wide-leafed water plants with birds hopping on them. Also, there were some very friendly crows out there keen to eat my lunch with me.