Boat Tour

 

We took a boat tour from the marina.  

One of the first things we saw was an osprey nest.  We were told that ospreys mate for life and return to the same nest each year so each year the nest gets bigger and bigger.  There is one nest three times the size of this one.

This is an osprey we spotted taking a quick bath in a puddle along the road after we had see the nest.

The trees along the canals the boat tour went through were very interesting.

  A lot of the trees with the roots growing into the water are called mangroves.  Manatee also live in the Everglades but we did not see any.

This red trunked tree is called a gumbo limbo tree

.  The trunk is red so the locals call it a "tourist tree" because the skins of tourists are red after they visit the Everglades.

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This is a Tri-colored Herrin.  It is blue, white and grey.

We saw this crocodile. This is the only place in the world where American Crocodiles and American Alligators live together.  The crocodile prefers salt water and the alligator prefers fresh water and both salt and fresh water are present at the Everglades.  There are some places in the Everglades where both fresh and salt water are present and that is called an estuary.

Another crocodile.

Crocodile.

Crocodile.

Tri-colored Herrin

This is a green iguana.  We were leaving a trail we had taken to see alligators.  We did not see any alligators but as we were getting into our car, this iguana lumbered out of the woods onto the curb.

The same iguana.

After the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, the United States built four Nike Missile Sites in Southern Florida as a way to protect Miami from missile attacks from Cuba.  They have all been deactivated now but during the winter months, tours are available at this site.  We think that would be a neat tour to take but we are here at the wrong time.

We stopped in the Flamingo Visitor's Center and talked to a man who told us he was Cuban and had come to the country with his family when he was only 10 years old.  He was very anxious to tell us that he was conservative and loved this country.  He knew a lot of history about the Everglades.  One thing is told us was that Key West likes to brag that  they are the southernmost point in the United States but he says there is a road in the Flamingo area that is the southernmost road in the continental United States.   He was a very interesting man to talk to and we could tell he was proud to be an American.