We got to sleep one hour longer this morning - yay! But then it was up and on the bus for a ride back to the Everglades. We went to a different place in the Everglades than we did last night - the Everglades is a really big place (60 miles wide and 100 miles long)! We went to Shark Valley, which had no sharks and is not much of a valley! (although geographically it is a slight valley from west FL to east FL). On the drive there we passed a fire that the ranger later told us had burned 33,000 acres of the Everglades so far.
Anyway, we saw MANY American alligators! It was quite exciting, especially when the ranger let us get out of the tram and walk around the perimeter of a borrow pit and one of the alligators in the water very slowly came toward a group of people! That area (where we were walking) is usually under water so most of the time tour groups can't go there. But since everything was so dry, we were able to walk on the squishy ground.
We also saw many birds - Great Blue Heron, Great Egret, Red Shouldered Hawk, Anhinga. Also there were large soft shell turtles. The mosquitoes were not too bad, thank goodness. There was a slight wind, so it was not so terribly hot. The tram took us to a large lookout tower where we could see more alligators, birds, etc. from a better vantage point. The Everglades certainly is a "River of Grass"
Next and last stop - Miami International Airport. The traffic was horrible getting there, mostly because there were many people there trying to get a look at the world's largest commercial airliner, the Airbus A380 [see the link http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/Lufthansas-Airbus-A380-Lands-at-MIA-123663829.html]. Finally we got to the terminal, said goodby to our friends, and went on our merry way. What a FABULOUS trip! One that we will always remember!
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