Apples and Alligators (November 2024)
Apples
November began with a trip home for our daughter. At the time she was living in Virginia. One of the activities we did with her was to go to an apple orchard in North Carolina with our granddaughter as well. We drove up to Hendersonville, NC and went to Justus Orchard to pick apples, eat donuts, drink cider, and play. We had a great time.
Alligators
Toward the end of November and early December we planned to drive to Florida and visit the three Florida National Parks. All three of these parks are built around water. We also planned to stop at Key West.
Florida Keys
On our way to Key West we drove down Highway 1 across the Florida Keys. We stopped in Marathon to visit the Florida Keys Aquarium Encounter. This is a great place to take children. They get to interact with some sea life, watch divers feed the fish, and have a nice picnic. The location is stunning as well.
Key West
We had a busy day in Key West. We started by walking around Mallory Square. We know it is quite busy at night but we were tired from driving and knew we had a busy day coming up, so we just spent the afternoon sightseeing instead of battling the crazy crowds at night. After Mallory Square we walked over to the Southernmost Point in the continental United States to get our picture by the buoy. However, the line was very long so we took some side pictures of it. Next, we walked over to the Hemingway House. It is a great museum and grounds. We got to see lots of pictures of Ernest Hemingway and the house looks like he just walked away for the afternoon. We got to see the famous six-toed cats. Though I didn’t actually count the toes.
Our next stop was the Key West Butterfly and Nature Conservancy. This was a great place. There were butterflies everywhere. But they also had flamingoes, songbirds, tortoises, and tropical plants (pictures from here were taken from their Facebook site). We also made sure to have key lime pie. We stopped in two locations for the key lime pie. Our first stop was the Key Lime Pie Bakery. Our second stop was Kermit’s Key Lime Pie Shoppe. Both were delicious. We slightly favored the ambiance and surroundings for Kermit’s Key Lime Pie Shoppe.
The next morning, we got up early to take a 2 1/2 hour ferry to Dry Tortugas National Park, our 36th national park. These are 7 islands just west of the Florida Keys. We arrived at Garden Island which is home to Fort Jefferson. This is a 3-story masonry fort built between 1840-1870. It even has its own moat. We explored the fort, walked the beach, and wadded in the ocean. We also walked over to Bush Key. During high tide the path is covered with water. It was a beautiful beach walk and there were lots of nesting birds along the way. We took the ferry back to Key West and then drive north through the Keys and made our way to a motel near the Everglades for our next stop.
Day 1
Most of our visits to national parks have been one day visits. We arrive at a park early in the morning and stay until the evening. We do and see as much as we can. This trip to the Everglades was different. We had a hotel room for three days and nights, so we were going to see and do as much as possible during that time.
The Everglades is a subtropical wetland ecosystem spanning two million acres across central and south Florida. In effect, it is a very slow-moving river of water. We walked the Anhinga Trail through a section of wetlands where we saw Anhinga birds and a couple of alligators. Throughout the day we hiked through mangroves, pine trees, mahogany forests, palm trees, and sawgrass.
Later that day we drove across the Everglades to the Guy Bradley Visitor Center. We took a Florida Bay Boat Tour for a 1 ½ hour tour with a naturalist on a single deck catamaran. The wildlife we saw on the tour included alligators, crocodiles, manatees, snowy egrets, white ibis, blue herons, hawks, and ospreys.
Day 2
This was Thanksgiving Day so we took it easy by staying around the hotel all morning. In the afternoon, our non-traditional Thanksgiving included a 3 hour canoe paddle through the Everglades. We were the only ones on the tour led by our personal naturalist tour guide, Amanda, who was working on a master’s degree in marine biology. 3 hours is a lot of paddling. Look closely and you will see the 10-foot crocodile we nearly ran into.
Our Thanksgiving meal that evening was a shrimp boil and Key Lime Pie for dessert.
Day 3
We drove to the Everglades Safari Park Air Boat Tours where we watched an alligator show and took a ride on an airboat. This was something that Tammie wanted to do since she was a child. The ride was a lot of fun.
Finally, we drove to the Shark Valley Loop Road. We rode in an open-air tram with a ranger to the Sharp Valley Lookout Tower. When we got there, we got a closeup view of an alligator who made the national news that week. The alligator killed a very large python and was resting with the remains of the python right next to him. We got there the day after the video was recorded.
Key Biscayne National Park was the 38th national park that we have visited together. 95% of the park is water (Biscayne Bay). We enjoyed walking the many trails along the bay. Unfortunately, our boat tour canceled, but we still had a great time seeing the sites. This was our last national park trip this year. We visited 18 new parks this year. The next morning, we began our drive towards Orlando and the Hilton Grand Resort.
