You can't get much farther south than this in Florida without going to the keys.
The campground was surprisingly large and spacious with all pull-through sites for the RVs. There were a bunch of black vultures hanging around, and we enjoyed watching them pick at campfire cooking remains and (once) investigate a plastic bag on a neighbor's picnic table.
The absolute highlight of this trip were the wild manatees at the nearby Flamingo Marina. When we first walked by, there were 3-4 of them right next to the path just rolling around and playing together (or so it seemed). This is the closest I've ever been to wild manatees and I couldn't get enough of them. We went back to try to see them again but never again got quite this view.
We walked on most of the non-submerged trails in the park. Unfortunately, even though it was the 'dry' season, many of the trails were still under water. Additionally, all the trails in the southern part of the park are no longer maintained to preserve an endangered ground plant. However, the northern part of the park had many boardwalk-ed or paved interpretive trails that were very pleasant to walk on, and we saw all sorts of birds and a couple of alligators.
In some ways I'm sure most of you would think every day must be a holiday for us now. I have to say though, being so remote at this park, deep in the national park surrounded by nature, I really *felt* like I was on vacation. The closest grocery store was an hour away - we stocked up when we first got there and then didn't leave the park until time to move on - and there was no Verizon coverage. Most of our day to day lives don't feel so much like vacation - we still have chores and maintenance etc., and we're usually parked close to civilization in a relatively urban location - but this really did feel like vacation. So it was a wonderfully relaxing week!
This was the first time we went to a park without *water* hookups. Fortunately they had a clean water filling station, so we filled up the fresh water tank and managed to last the 5 days we were there. AND through some lugging of dishwater to the dish-doing-station we also managed NOT to fill up our gray tank. Win-win! I'm feeling more confident about our ability to conserve water.
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