We’ve been contemplating hitting another theme park while on the eastern portion of our trip and we finally decided on Busch Gardens in Tampa. It was recommended by some friends and everything we’ve read about it makes it seem like a sure bet. With that destination in mind, we headed north towards Miami and west on Highway 41 through the Everglades – another place we wanted to check out. The Everglades is large – comprising a good chunk of southern Florida. It was interesting to see the landscape – a combination of forest - not of the northwest type obviously, grassland and swamp. The kids enjoyed seeing alligators in the wild along the side of the road as we drove.
We followed our typical routine of waiting until late in the afternoon and getting a feel for where we would end the day before searching for a camp spot. In this case, we needed a campground as the state park we were in the past couple of days didn’t have laundry facilities. There were surprisingly few campgrounds around – we were in the middle of the everglades so I guess it kinda makes sense – so we went with Trail Lakes in Ochopee, FL pulling in right at dusk. Jim pulled up to the night managers spot and I hop out of the passenger seat to talk to the guy and I’m immediately attacked by bugs. I’m not sure if they were mosquitoes or black flies or some evil combination but they were aggressive and there were tons of them. The night manger apologized for the bugs and quickly pointed me to a campsite. As I turn around Jim and Nancy, who had remained in the RV, are laughing hysterically. I was literally surrounded by a cloud of bugs. Needless to say we armed ourselves for battle with mosquito repellant – the kind with deet not the greenie, organic stuff - and bug spray before heading to the laundry. Nancy said that you know conditions are bad when you have to RAID spray the laundry room before you can put a load in and then hit the dogs with it before they come back in the RV.
As it turns out, this place had more to offer than the RV park. It was the epitome of the quirky roadside attraction. It had a “zoo” of sorts which amounted to a old, metal pole building with a combination of swamp animals – snakes, turtles, gators and birds of all sorts – that his place had taken in over the years. The centerpiece was a 20’ python – thankfully it remained caged although the guy showing us around offered to take it out for us. No thanks!! This place also serves as headquarters of sorts for skunk ape research. One of the guys here has made it his life’s work to pursue and document this phantom creature which is basically the everglades version of sasquatch. If you think I’m making this up you can check it out for yourself at www.skunkape.info. The whole deal was really odd. Not surprisingly I took a little heat for the choice as Nancy wasn’t totally satisfied with the accommodations.
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| Camping in the Everglades |
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| Everglades landscape |
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