Everglades

With our baseball adventure completed for the time-being, we decided to work on a previous (and unfinished) parks tour -National Parks.  Jim and Ann have now seen 25 National Parks, but most of those happened long before the kids came along.                    

                                    

                                     

Today's visit was to Everglades National Park, found in southern Florida. It covers 1,542,526 acres of both fresh and salt water ecosystems, and is host to countless species of animals, some of them quite endangered.

SO beautiful!!

We saw an amazing variety of birds

two kinds of turtles

and two kinds of lizards

as well as a startling array of insects

But we REALLY got lucky with this guy!!

Does anyone else find this funny?

With only a day to visit, and much of this cut short by weather, there was much of this vast park we were unable to see.  This beautiful photo display was based on only a couple of short hikes.

But from that, our assessment is that this is a must-see park.  

However, a warning:

BRING YOUR INSECT REPELLENT!!!!

...or better yet, a complete net bug-suit (repellent only partially works)

Nobody will tell you in advance about the SWARMS of mosquitoes.  

Think Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, but much smaller!

If you are not armed, DO NOT get out of your car!

Well, this is pretty much the end of the 2014 adventure.

We have one more day to be Miami tourists, and then on our way home.