The Everglades: A multitude of ways to get wild

Part three of three

Perhaps the best way to begin experiencing the Everglades is to plunge right in. You can literally get your feet wet on this subject by going on a swamp walk, slogging through a cypress forest under a canopy of trees, with a guide to point out orchids that could otherwise be overlooked and make sure you get back to dry land.

The tours are offered by the Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park, and also at photographer Clyde Butcher’s gallery in the Big Cypress National Preserve. While wading through hip-deep water known to be frequented by alligators may sound risky, the real danger is dropping your camera or your car keys into the muck under the water. To see similar habitat and still keep your feet dry, or for those dependent on a wheelchair, the Fakahatchee also offers a boardwalk, in the process of being renovated and expanded, along the Tamiami Trail. Perhaps the area’s most famous boardwalk takes visitors through the last remaining stand of virgin bald cypress trees at the Audubon Society’s Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary.

Everglades National Park also offers conventional visitors centers at several access points, with the one outside Everglades City being the most convenient for west coast-based visitors. But the closest, and one of the best, is located right between Marco Island and Naples at the Rookery Bay Environmental Learning Center. Here, like in the National Park Service’s facilities, you can learn about the area’s natural surroundings in air conditioned comfort.

The Everglades City visitors’ center can be a jumping off point for a boat tour through the mangrove and open water portions of the national park, with the possibility of spotting manatees and porpoises, and the certainty of viewing a multitude of exotic bird species. The area has become increasingly popular for eco-tourism, and what used to be remote mangrove keys are regularly visited by tour groups in kayaks, Jet-Skis, and shallow draft boats, as well as local fishermen. Backwater charter fishing captains are happy to help you catch your limit.

Canoeing or kayaking offer an ideal way to get “up close and personal” with the natural surroundings. Tours are available from many starting points, but one of the most interesting and least known is up near Lake Okeechobee. Fish Eating Creek is what many people imagine the Everglades to be, with the certainty of spotting dozens of alligators as you paddle through a cypress swamp. The campground in Palmdale rents canoes, and will shuttle their canoe or yours upstream through multiple locked gates in private hunting reserves to begin your float downstream. More tourists will take the Jungle Cruise ride in Disneyworld on any given morning than paddle Fish Eating Creek all year, so guess who is getting the authentic wilderness experience.

But for many, visiting the Everglades means one thing – an airboat ride. Powered by aircraft propellers, with flat bottoms to glide over “skinny water” and even mudflats, airboats were invented for the Everglades and have long provided a way to zoom over terrain too wet for walking and too dry for conventional boats.

But environmental concerns are bringing an end to the airboat era. Already banned in most of the ENP, airboats are now being phased out of the surrounding area as well. Only those who can document airboat use going back to 1989 are eligible for a (non-transferable) permit. Operators including Wooten’s along the Trail, and Jungle Erv’s in Everglades City, can still offer you the chance to see the ’Glades like a Gladesman, as the area’s pioneers call themselves.

The other mechanized – and equally controversial – form of motorized transportation through the swamps is the swamp buggy. These four-wheel drive vehicles with their massive tires and raised seating platforms bear little resemblance to the streamlined speedsters that headline the races held at the Swamp Buggy Grounds each winter. Wooten’s will take you on an oversized bus-like swamp buggy, but for the most authentic experience, cadge a ride with one of the Florida crackers who uses their personal buggy to head out to a hunting camp grandfathered into the wilderness.

Bring your bicycle, or take a tram tour, along the Shark Valley Loop Road accessed from the Tamiami Trail 72 miles east of the Gordon River Bridge, and you will be rewarded with a bird’s-eye view over the swamp from the lofty observation tower.

To really “see it like a native,” your Everglades experience needs to include an overnight stay. Camping, by boat, is possible in the 10,000 Islands, with the caveat that right now, you will be sharing your site with millions of mosquitoes and no-see-ums. They bite with a ferocity and abundance hard to imagine if it has not been experienced. Speaking of feasting, state park campgrounds in Collier-Seminole and Koreshan State Parks let you camp, and still get out to grab lunch at a restaurant.

One personal springtime trip to the old Watson Place, the lonely homestead of early pioneer and notorious murderer Ed Watson, was summarily ended after about two minutes by an immense hoard of salt marsh mosquitoes, attacking relentlessly in the middle of the day, despite the two-hour cruise needed to get there. Incidentally, you can visit the spot where Watson met his end, gunned down by a deputation of Chokoloskee citizens in 1910, if you visit the Smallwood Store, a fascinating collection of artifacts from the pioneering period just past Everglades City. The Rod & Gun Club in town is also worth a visit, as is the Museum of the Everglades just down the street.

For the hardcore, the Wilderness Waterway runs 99 miles from Chokoloskee to Flamingo at Florida’s southern tip. You can paddle it in a week if you push, and pass through perhaps the wildest and loneliest stretch of coastline in the continental United States, with human habitation of zero. A small powerboat can cover the trail in a (long) day.

If backpacking is your passion, the Florida National Scenic Trail runs basically the length of the state, from the Big Cypress National Preserve in our backyard, all the way to the Gulf Islands National Seashore near Pensacola. End to end, it measures about 1,100 miles, and the southern stretches are marshy and muddy, even in the dry season. Bring extra socks.