Travel with Terri Guthrie

AN AMERICAN TREASURE: EVERGLADES! Florida THE

by Terri Guthrie | photos courtesy of Terri Guthrie

Can you name the third largest National Park in the United States? It’s Everglades National Park, which spans over 1.5 million acres in south Florida! It’s also where seven million Floridians get their daily water supply.

Here, water is the lifeblood. It is a subtropical marsh region often called “River of Grass.” The Everglades is often referred to as a “swamp,” but in reality, it is a giant, slow-moving river 60 miles wide, 100 miles long, and generally only one foot deep.

The water moves very slowly southward from Lake Okeechobee across a limestone shelf to Florida Bay and into the Gulf of Mexico. It is a safe haven for a variety of birds, mammals, reptiles, and amphibians. The Everglades is the only place in the world where the American Alligator and the American Crocodile co-exist. It is also home to the Florida Panther, one of the most endangered species on earth.

We started our tour with an exhilarating airboat ride at Everglade City Air Boats. We chose it because the boats are equipped with personal two-way headsets to clearly hear the captain’s narrative and help soften the loud sound of the boat motor. We saw lots of wildlife like alligators, birds, and raccoons. This is a real adventure as we zipped in and out of narrow mangrove tunnels. It honestly was surreal as the mangroves are so thickly tangled and artistically interwoven to form dense thickets. This is the largest mangrove ecosystem in the Western Hemisphere!

This park is an American Treasure. What an amazing gift and opportunity we have been given to enjoy and experience this now and for all our future generations!

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