Hiking in Everglades National Park offers experiences ranging from wheelchair-accessible boardwalks and paved trails to rugged adventures in harsh wilderness habitats, including tropical forests filled with poisonous trees, coastal prairies with a base of sticky marl mud, dense mangrove forests dense with mosquitoes, and rugged, swiss-cheese like karst with jagged edges.
Most of the hikes in the Everglades are short and tame, letting you sample these wild habitats – and their delicate inhabitants, like the liguus tree snails – without plunging into the thick of them. But for those who like their wilderness wild, two backpacking trips – Old Ingraham Highway and Coastal Prairie Trail – provide the opportunity to get out there on your own, and several lengthier day hikes, including Christian Point, Bear Lake, and Rowdy Bend, provide an excellent immersion into the world’s only Everglades.
Everglades National Park – Anhinga Trail
For most visitors, the Anhinga Trail is their first and perhaps only glimpse into Everglades National Park. Its proximity to the park entrance guarantees its popularity, and wildlife here is so common and complacent you’ll hear the tourists asking “is that alligator real?” Rest assured they are. Resources Overview Location: Everglades National Park Length: 0.8… [Continue Reading]
Everglades National Park – Bayshore Loop
Providing a walk through the mangrove-lined edge of Florida Bay and the unique coastal prairie habitat within a short loop, the Bayshore Loop is an excellent sampler of what some of the Flamingo area’s longer trails (Coastal Prairie, Christian Point) have to offer. Along the waterfront, it passes through what was once the original fishing… [Continue Reading]
Everglades National Park – Bear Lake Trail
Paralleling the former Homestead Canal, an attempt by early developers to drain the coastal prairies around Cape Sable, the Bear Lake Trail takes you on a journey down an old road built of limestone fill scooped from the canal diggings. Starting at the trailhead, the trail leads you down a corridor surrounded by tropical forest,… [Continue Reading]
Everglades National Park – Bobcat Boardwalk
The Bobcat Boardwalk at Shark Valley is a popular destination in winter and spring to see migratory and nesting birds. Most visitors opt to bike or take the tram around the 14-mile paved loop through the River of Grass, which provides a stop at a tall observation tower along the route. For folks who walk… [Continue Reading]
Everglades National Park – Christian Point Trail
The Christian Point Trail is one of the more challenging trails in Everglades National Park, This is one of the more challenging trails in Flamingo, especially after the storm surge damage of Hurricanes Katrina and Wilma. After traversing a mangrove forest and entering a small prairie, it winds around in a hammock of buttonwood covered… [Continue Reading]
Everglades National Park – Coastal Prairie Trail
Ready for a hard-core Florida wilderness challenge? The rangers at the Flamingo Visitor Center don’t recommend you hike this trail, but they’ll still issue you a backcountry permit for camping if you insist. Consider it a survivalist’s destination—you’ll battle mosquitoes, unrelenting sun, and dreadfully deep and stick marl mud for the prize of camping along… [Continue Reading]
Everglades National Park – Eco Pond
One of the perrenial destinations for birding in Everglades National Park, Eco Pond sits near the end of the Main Park Road in Flamingo. During the 2005 hurricanes, a wave of salt water washed across the landscape, changing the pond’s salinity, affecting the wildlife living there. This loop still provides excellent birdwatching and wildlife sightings,… [Continue Reading]
Everglades National Park – Gumbo Limbo Trail
At Royal Palm Hammock, home of the Anhinga Trail, the Gumbo Limbo Trail is a paved path that gets you up close and personal with a tropical hammock. This was once called Paradise Key, owned by Henry Flagler, and became a state park in the 1940s prior to the creation of Everglades National Park. Although… [Continue Reading]
Everglades National Park – Guy Bradley Trail
This paved walk offers excellent views of Florida Bay and insight into the evolution of the Everglades National Park. In the early 1900s, naturalists were well aware of the vast bird life in the Everglades, and so were plume hunters, looking to cash in on the use of heron plumage as a New York fashion… [Continue Reading]
Everglades National Park – Mahogany Hammock Trail
Tree islands are tropical oases in the Everglades “river of grass,” punctuating the sawgrass prairie where there is a slight bit of elevation, enough to make an enormous difference in the flora. I’ve always loved Mahogany Hammock, probably because it’s one of the first trails I ever remember walking on in Florida, back in the… [Continue Reading]
Everglades National Park – Old Ingraham Highway
Opened in 1922 as the first motorway to Flamingo, the Old Ingraham Highway saw its share of Model Ts and other roadsters as intrepid motorists made their way down to the small fishing village on the edge of Florida Bay. After Everglades National Park was dedicated in 1947, the road continued to provide the park’s… [Continue Reading]
Everglades National Park – Otter Cave Hammock Trail
Complementing Shark Valley’s popular bike and tram trail and Bobcat Boardwalk, the Otter Cave Trail gets you out into the Everglades at a walking pace, where you’ll see much more wildlife. Although the park considers the Otter Cave Trail to include the paved access to it, the natural trail is very short but very beautiful.… [Continue Reading]
Everglades National Park – Pa-Hay-Okee Boardwalk
Pa-Hay-Okee is the Seminole word for “River of Grass,” the name Marjorie Stoneman Douglas bestowed on the Everglades while advocating to have the region protected as a National Park. This trail is a short boardwalk with a tall observation tower. Both provide a close-up look at the river of grass. Resources Overview Location: Everglades National… [Continue Reading]
Everglades National Park – Pine Land
One of my favorite Everglades nature trails, Pine Land is a showcase for South Florida’s weird and wonderful karst, a limestone bedrock that’s full of Swiss-cheese like holes, crevices, pits, and tiny caves. Pine rocklands are one of the rarest remaining habitats in Florida, and this is an excellent example atop a high point on… [Continue Reading]
Everglades National Park – Pinelands Ecotone
Unnamed, un-blazed, and wild, following an old jeep road, the Pinelands Ecotone is an extraordinary hike along the ecotone between two rare habitats – pine rocklands and sawgrass prairies. It immerses you in one of the most intriguing parts of the Everglades: its rocky, pitted karst. Created by the steady erosion of the limestone bedrock,… [Continue Reading]
Everglades National Park – Snake Bight / Rowdy Bend
It’s a wild corner of Florida, where tropical forests meet the mangrove shorelines of Florida Bay, where crocodiles cruise the saline shallows and mosquitoes thicken the air. It’s getting even wilder these days, with the unfortunate proliferation of exotic species like pythons and anacondas. But Snake Bight has always been an outpost on the edge,… [Continue Reading]
Everglades National Park – West Lake
At West Lake, the Mangrove Trail loops through a forest that has seen its share of hurricane-related damage, from salty mud flats deposited by Hurricane Donna to the storm surges of 2005 from Hurricanes Katrina and Wilma. Yet this walk still leads you through a shady tunnel, showcasing the protector of Florida’s coastline, the mighty… [Continue Reading]
