Bike Ride in the Everglades

Dear Blog.  Today is Sunday, January 27, 2013. Yesterday we had a great time paddling around the Everglades in kayaks.  Today we decided to venture out on bicycles into the Big Cypress Swamp National Preserve. It is called Big Cypress, not because of the size of the trees, but because the preserve is over 2,400 square miles.  We were only going to bike a tiny 20 mile loop into the preserve.  Not that a 20 mile bike ride is tiny, but the portion of the preserve we covered was tiny by comparison.

However, before we left the campground, we stopped to say hi to the two resident peacocks. The campground owner loves exotic birds.  In addition to the peacocks, there are all sorts of parrots and even an emu.

We road our bikes over to the loop road and past the country's smallest post office located right on the Tamiami Trail (Route 41 which runs from Naples to Miami) in Ochopee, FL.  Since it was Sunday, the Post Office was closed.

Before the Everglades became a National Park there were a number of businesses located along the Tamiami Trail. In order to clear land for farming and housing developments, roads had to be built.  Large channels were dug into the limestone.  What they scooped out was piled up to make the road bed.  These channels soon filled with water, plants, fish, birds and alligators. You can adopt one of these roads if you like.

The loop took us past a number of micro-enviroments.  Since this is the dry season, many of the water holes have dried up.  The wildlife seems to be concentrated along the canals.  We found orchids blooming in one channel.

In many of the channels there were alligators sunning themselves near the banks.

When we saw this guy, we thought we would be the first in our campground to bag a python.  However, he was just a brown water snake, not even poisonous.  However, a tourist did stop us a short time later and asked us if with saw the python up the road.  Apparently, we were so busy looking left at the canal, we missed an 8 foot python stretched out on the right side of the road sunning himself on the rocks.  Such is life.

Here is a lesser or little blue heron.  While not as majestic as their cousins, the Great Blue Heron, they sure do make a ruckus when you ride your bike next to their pond.

We saw hundreds of White Ibis hanging out along the canal.

Why did the alligator cross the road?  To get to the other side before Dave and Kathy ran him over with their bikes!

We finally had to stop taking photos of alligators.  It's like taking pictures of squirrels.  There are so many of them, the folks around here just take them for granted.