Before I share this leg of the trip, while we were in St. Augustine, we did some ‘decorating’ in the trailer. You may recall last summer we had some issues with our refrigerator, and we weren’t sure if the dealer would have to replace it, so I removed all the stickers that adorned the doors – stickers we’d bought in the different places we’ve visited. Well, I needed to do something with all those memories, so I got creative, took pictures of each and then created collages that I printed and framed. So the refrigerator now has stickers from our most recent trips, while our ‘sticker history’ is decorating the wall above our dinette. I’m really happy with how they turned out! Here they are, on the fridge and then on the wall…

We spent Valentine’s Day driving South along the Florida coast, from St. Augustine to Davie, FL (just West of Ft. Lauderdale). We arrived at our KOA campground mid-afternoon and learned at check-in that, due to construction at the campground, the WiFi isn’t working. Apparently, construction crews keep hitting the lines while they’re working. Ugh. Fortunately, our cell signal is decent enough that we’ve been able to manage (thankful for the cell signal booster that we bought last Fall – it’s definitely helping) because the thought of camping without the Internet is pretty crazy! LOL. The campground definitely has a lot of work being done – patios being put in with nice new furniture, and lots of new landscaping. It’ll be beautiful when it’s done, but in that ugly stage right now with construction all around.

For our first full day in South Florida, we drove about an hour South to the “Shark Valley” area of Everglades National Park. This section has a 15-mile loop road that you can walk or bike, or pay for a tram ride, and there’s an observation tower at the far end of the loop. We brought our e-bikes all this way, largely for this loop, and we made it about four miles out and decided we’d had enough and turned around. I’m sure the tower would have offered some cool views, but neither of us was motivated to make the full ride. The road was bordered by water where several large reptiles were hanging out. We weren’t sure if they were alligators or crocodiles, but I did hear one of them say “see you later”, so they must be alligators. Crocodiles would have said “in a while”! Sorry for that “Dad joke”!

From Shark Valley, we drove to Fort Lauderdale, and visited the Bonnet House Museum & Gardens. It’s a really interesting place, built in 1920 by Chicago-born artist Frederic Clay Bartlett and his wife Helen Louise Birch. The house is not at all pretentious, and is filled with art and whimsy. The grounds are beautiful, and they were setting up for a wedding that evening – fabulous venue!

On Sunday, we drove to one of South Florida’s other treasures, Biscayne National Park. 95% of the park is water, so it’s best seen by boat, but we decided to enjoy it as best we could from land. We started at the visitor center, where we watched the movie; we found it entertaining when the park ranger in the movie was wearing a scuba diving suit rather than the usual gray shirt and broad-brimmed hat!

From the visitor center, we enjoyed a picnic lunch, and then walked along the jetty trail. Lots of people were fishing, and some were catching, too. One little girl was so excited, yelling “I got a keeper”. It was a scenic walk on a hot day in February!

After Biscayne, we went back to the campground to relax for a while, and then headed North to Coral Springs to have dinner with my cousin Michele and her family. Loved being able to spend time with them during our travels!

Monday was a return trip to Everglades, this time to the middle of the park, a bit further South than Shark Valley. We started with the movie at the visitor center and learned about how even a small change in elevation can mean a dramatic change in the ecosystem – Everglades has nine different ecosystems throughout the park, and it’s the largest wilderness east of the Mississippi River. We also learned that Everglades is not a swamp as many people think, because the water is all moving faster than it would in a swamp.

From there, we headed to a really unique and interesting area of the park – the Nike Missile Site HM-69, a relic of the Cold War. This site operated from 1965 (just after the Cuban Missile Crisis) until 1979 and was the last remaining site in the Continental US. Most of the missile sites were situated so they could reach Russia over the North Pole, so they were further north (like Minuteman that we visited in South Dakota); this location was specifically chosen for it’s proximity to Cuba.

Next stop was the Royal Palm Visitor Center which provides access to two very different trails. We started with the Anhinga Trail, named for the birds which frequent the area. The trail goes through a freshwater sawgrass marsh, and we saw lots of wildlife.

From there, we made the very short walk to the Gumbo Limbo trail which meanders through a shaded hardwood hammock. The two trails are about 10 yards from each other, but are so completely different – it’s just fascinating. I guess there was just enough elevation change. The Gumbo Limbo tree that this trail is named for is also called the ‘tourist tree’ because the bark is red and peeling, just like a tourist’s sunburn.

We made one final stop in Everglades, to see one of their famous “Z trees”, so named because of how the tree grows with an interesting angle to it. It’s said that early Native Americans bent these cypress trees as directional guides.

Not too far from the park entrance is a popular tourist destination, “Robert is Here” fruit stand. A 6-year-old boy named Robert opened a fruit stand in 1959 to help his father, and to get attention, the father put up signs that read “Robert is Here”…the name stuck. They had a huge selection of really unusual tropical fruits, many that I’ve never heard of. After you walk through the fruit stand, you come upon a small zoo…filled with a huge variety of animals from tortoises and goats to turkeys and lizards. It was fun to walk around, and the place was packed with people getting smoothies and Cuban sandwiches.

With that, we headed back towards our campground and stopped to run a couple of errands.

Overall, it’s been a very hot few days in South Florida – mostly in the upper 80s – which is a bit of a heatwave for this time of year. We would have preferred temperatures in the 70s, but we’ll take this over the single-digit temperatures and below-zero wind chills in Chicago!

Tuesday was a quiet day – grocery shopping, another wash for the truck which was absolutely covered in pollen, and a trip to the gym. It was our last day in this part of Florida, and on Wednesday, we headed about as far South as we can go, to the Florida Keys and our campground on Big Pine Key (about 2/3 of the way to Key West). Stay tuned as we explore the Keys over the next week!