On our recent trip to Florida during Thanks Giving in November 2014 we visited this park. Everglades National Park is the third largest national park in lower 48 states after Death Valley in California and Yellowstone in Wyoming.
We started our day early and reached the main entrance at Homestead, Florida. It was a sunny day and the weather was favorable.
We reached Ernest C. Coe Visitor Center. This is the first stop before entering the park. We collected some maps of the area and looked at the educational exhibits at the visitor center.
This ‘borrow pit’ is actually a manmade pond at the visitor center and hence the name. Anything built in the marshy Everglades starts with a high platform of crushed rock created by ‘borrowing’ earth near the construction site.
The main road from this visitor center leads through all the trails and viewpoints to the Flamingo visitor center at a distance of about 38 miles from the main entrance.
A few miles up to the road we reached the Royal Palm Visitor Center. There was a small shop with souvenirs and some books. This area has lots of vultures flying around and there were warning signs notifying us to use the provided plastic tarps to protect our vehicle’s rubber parts from them.

Royal Palm Visitor Center
This place is the gate way to one of the most popular trails of the park named Anhinga Trail. This trail is full of wildlife and covers a diversity of landscapes in a vast array of boardwalks and paved stretches. It was a short trail but we managed to witness a variety of the ecosystem.

Anhinga trail skirts the edge of a fresh water slough where wildlife is likely to appear at a close range.

Anhinga trail is named after the Anhinga; a spectacular bird; found in abundance along this trail. They often have their back to the warm sun and their wings out to dry.

Another trail originating from Royal Palm Visitor center is the Gumbo Limbo trail. This is a short trail of about 0.4 miles that tunnels through a topical hardwood hammock.
Our next stop was the Pay-hay-okee trail.

An observation platform halfway around this trail provided a chance to view this Everglades wilderness as it appeared to the early inhabitants.
Next we reached the Mahogany Hammock trail. This boardwalk bridges the sawgrass river and enters a lush green island- a tropical hammock.
We reached the Flamingo Visitor center, about 38 miles from the main entrance.

Skull of an American crocodile. The information board also mentions that Flamingo is one of the best places in the United States to see a crocodile in the wild.

They say Flamingo is the gateway to Florida bay, where the Rivers of Grass meet the Waters of the Ocean.
This was a refreshing trip and and I enjoyed watching the Alligators in their natural habitat. The Everglades offered a great place to unwind and be with nature.