St. Petersburg/Tampa to Big Cypress National Preserve

We made our way south to St. Petersburg, which basically is a part of Tampa. A lot of people live here! The trip south was on a road that reminded us of old 99, and was similar to driving from Sea Tac to Everett on 99/Aurora. There was a continuous commercial district, town after town, for almost 80 miles, with many traffic lights. We spent 4 days here and when I downloaded our camera I realized we did not take a single picture.

The climate was great, and the beaches are among the best in the country. The entire metro. area is sheltered from the Gulf by a long thin stretch of beach. The southern tip of this stretch is where Fort De Soto is. This is an old fort similar to Fort Casey on Whidbey island. It has a great campground and the beach here was voted #1 in the country in 2005 by "Dr. Beach". The sand is as fine as powdered sugar (it felt like running your hand through a bag of portland cement).

We hit 2 of the "must see" tourist attractions and they were pretty lame. This is just a big city and besides the great beaches (which can be hard to gain access to due to development with the exception of Fort De Soto) it is just like many other big cities. When we left Tampa we headed towards the Everglades and on the way spent a night at Big Cypress National Preserve. We had planned to drive right to the Everglades but this area had the largest collection of alligators we had seen to date.

Not sure what this Gator is doing on the other's back, but he sure is happy!

This part of Florida is only a couple of feet above the water table. The whole area is actually a river, that flows out of Lake OKeechobee. If you open a map of Florida and find this lake (it is the largest in the state), the entire state south of the lake has blue "hash" marks on the map. I think these hash marks indicate the "river" that flows south into the Gulf and Florida Bay. It is a remarkable ecosystem with an incredible amount of diverse bird life and tons of Gators.

Each side of the road across highway 41 has ditches full of water. I suspect the road forms most of these waterways; and wherever you pull over there are Gators! We drove a dirt loop road and everywhere we stopped there was a large variety of birds, a lot of fish in every small pool, and gators!Around one bend we spotted a large flock of the notorious black vultures. They were hopping in the middle of the road acting quite territorial, and when we passed we noticed a particularly foul smell. Not wanting to miss anything, I was ordered to backup and investigate. There in the bush were the remains of a 8 foot Gator that they were feasting on.

The bird life was abundant and plentiful at every stop you made.

And, of coarse, there were Gators everywhere! We stayed in the middle of this preserve at a small campground that encircled a lake. As we set up camp the ranger ran up when he saw we had kids with us..."Please make sure your kids do not approach the pond by themselves. There are Gators in there. Just yesterday a large black lab was consumed by one of them..." Welcome to Big Cypress National Preserve.