365RVLiving.com

Everglades National Park & Big Cypress National Preserve

2026-04-30 by Martin

While spending the winter in Florida, we visited the two contiguous parks of Everglades National Park and Big Cypress National Preserve during the second half of March 2026. We spent a week at the Midway Campground within Big Cypress National Preserve, and a week at Collier Seminole State Park Campground just to the west of the parks. Both of these campgrounds are located along the Tamiami Trail, otherwise known as U.S. Highway Route 41, which is a 284 mile stretch of road connecting Tampa to Miami via Naples. Running parallel and to the south of Interstate 75, the historic Tamiami Trail offers a spectacular, scenic drive through Big Cypress National Preserve and Everglades National Park.

Established in 1947 as the first national park created for its biodiversity, Everglades National Park protects 1.5 million acres of wetland, forest, and marine habitats and the native plants and animals that call it home. With several international designations, the park provides a major source of drinking water for local residents of South Florida and recreational opportunities for all. Everglades National Park focuses on preserving the natural water flow. Conservation efforts aim to protect the park’s unique ecosystem and endangered species.

The freshwaters of the Big Cypress Swamp, essential to the health of the neighboring Everglades, support the rich marine estuaries along Florida’s southwest coast. Conserving over 729,000 acres of this vast swamp, Big Cypress National Preserve contains a mixture of tropical and temperate plant communities that are home to diverse wildlife, including the Endangered Florida panther. Big Cypress got its name from the large cypress trees that grow there. These trees create a unique swamp ecosystem. The preserve was set up in 1974. It’s different from a national park because it allows some activities like hunting and fishing. Big Cypress National Preserve works to maintain the freshwater supply for the surrounding areas. It also manages recreational activities to minimize impact on the environment.

Shark Valley Visitor Center, Everglades National Park

The Shark Valley Visitor Center offers access to one of the most popular and accessible areas of Everglades National Park. There is a 15 mile loop trail, with an observation tower at the end of the loop as well as two shorter walking trails near the visitor center. This area is known for excellent wildlife viewing, including alligators, wading birds, and other native species along the trail. The 15-mile loop trail can be taken on foot, on bicycle or on an open air tram that runs regularly during the day.

We took the two short walking trails known as the Bobcat Boardwalk, an accessible boardwalk about 0.2 miles long and the Ottercave Trail, and unpaved trail about 0.3 miles. From the visitor center we took the Bobcat Boardwalk, a short accessible trail that winds through a sawgrass slough and tropical hardwood forest. From there we walked about half a mile along the main loop trail to the Ottercave Trail. Along the way we saw lots of alligators relaxing in the creek that ran parallel to the loop trail, and a variety of birds including the ubiquitous Anhinga with its wings fanned out in the sun. The Ottercave Trail is a short trail that travels over a rough limestone surface. This hammock provides an up-close view of the sinkholes that permeate the floor of the Everglades. The trail wanders through a beautiful tropical hardwood forest with plenty of views along the way.

The photos below are from our visit to Shark Valley.

Oasis Visitor Center and Loop Road Scenic Drive, Big Cypress National Preserve

Built in the 1960s, the Oasis Visitor Center building was once a private airport with a hanger and restaurant. It was rather eye-catching from the road due to the passenger plane mounted to its roof as decoration. Later it was a service station. The building was eventually purchased by the National Park Service in the 1980s to be used as a visitor center. Outside, there is an accessible boardwalk that takes you along a canal that was absolutely chock full of alligators and afforded some great photo ops.

From the visitor center we took the Big Cypress loop road scenic drive, a which is 24 miles long and runs south of the current path of Tamiami Trail. It spans three counties: Collier to the west, Monroe in the center, and Miami-Dade to the east. Along the way we passed through mostly cypress swamp habitat, which was quite dry as we visited in the dry season (November through April). The cypress swamps are apparently considerably more flooded in the summer wet season (May through October). A couple of miles into the drive we stopped at the Gator Hook Trail and walked about half a mile along the trail before returning to continue on the loop road. This trail, a five-mile swamp walk, goes east along one of the historic tram roads, originally built by loggers for small trains to transport cypress trees out of the swamp. Some of the original cypress logs laid down for the tram rails can still be seen, as the wood is very resistant to decay. The logging industry of South Florida dwindled by the 1950s, when most of the marketable wood was harvested. Any large cypress seen today is second growth, few of the original giants remain.

We were a bit disappointed with the loop drive as there really wasn’t much to see from the road most of the way, and not many places to stop along the way. As we reached the end of the loop road, we passed some canals and creeks were there we quite a few alligators to be seen.

The photos below are from our visit to the Oasis Valley Visitor Center and the Scenic Loop Drive.

Marjory Stoneman Douglas Visitor Center and Ten Thousand Islands Boat Tour, Everglades National Park

One of the highlights of our stay in the area was the Ten Thousand Islands Boat Tour that we took from the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Visitor Center in Everglades City. This was a 90 minute boat tour through a vast chain of Islands known as The Ten Thousand Islands with a maze of waterways and stunning mangroves on the coastal region of Southwest Florida in Everglades National Park. This area of the Everglades hosts a vibrant array of wildlife, including dolphins, manatees, sea turtles, osprey and shore birds. During our tour we got to see several dolphins, turtles, and various birds including ospreys. We were a little too late in the year to see any manatees who had already moved on from their winter waters. The tour guides highlighted the area’s natural resources and cultural history, which dates back thousands of years to when Native Americans lived there. Of particular interest were the shell islands that were created around the mangroves by Native Americans hundreds and even thousands of years earlier.

The new Marjory Stoneman Douglas Visitor Center had just opened a few weeks earlier. It is a very impressive hurricane proof building that reportedly cost over $70 million to build, and replaced an earlier building destroyed by hurricanes. Marjory Stoneman Douglas (April 7, 1890 – May 14, 1998) was an American journalist, author, women’s suffrage advocate, and conservationist known for her staunch defense of the Everglades against efforts to drain it and reclaim land for development. Moving to Miami as a young woman to work for The Miami Herald, she became a freelance writer, producing over one hundred short stories that were published in popular magazines. Her most influential work was the book The Everglades: River of Grass (1947), which redefined the popular conception of the Everglades as a treasured river instead of a worthless swamp.

As a young woman, Douglas was outspoken and politically conscious of the women’s suffrage and civil rights movements. She was called upon to take a central role in the protection of the Everglades when she was 79 years old. For the remaining 29 years of her life, she was “a relentless reporter and fearless crusader” for the natural preservation and restoration of South Florida. Her tireless efforts earned her several variations of the nickname “Grande Dame of the Everglades” as well as the hostility of agricultural and business interests looking to benefit from land development in Florida. She received numerous awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and was inducted into several halls of fame.

Douglas lived to 108, working until nearly the end of her life for Everglades restoration. Upon her death, an obituary in The Independent in London stated, “In the history of the American environmental movement, there have been few more remarkable figures than Marjory Stoneman Douglas.”

The photos below are from our visit to the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Visitor Center and Ten Thousand Islands Boat Tour.

We really enjoyed our two weeks in the Everglades and Big Cypress area. It is a unique ecosystem with come iconic plants, trees, and animals. The parks cover a vast area and there are lots of things to do in the area, and several parts of the park and visitor centers that we didn’t get to during our visits.

St. Augustine, Florida

2026-02-09 by Martin

Founded in 1565 by Spanish settlers, St. Augustine it is the oldest continuously inhabited European-established settlement in what is now the contiguous United States. The city served as the capital of Spanish Florida for over 200 years. It became the capital of British East Florida in 1763 and continued as the capital after the 1783 Treaty of Versailles in the Second Spanish Period. Spain ceded Florida to the United States in 1819, and St. Augustine was designated one of the two alternating capitals of the Florida Territory, the other being Pensacola, upon ratification of the Adams–Onís Treaty in 1821. The territorial government moved and made Tallahassee the permanent capital of Florida in 1824.

We visited St. Augustine, Florida on New Years Day 2026 while staying at the Encore Bulow RV Resort near Flagler Beach about an hour away. It was busy in Saint Augustine that day, and we were happy that we had booked the hop-on-hop-off Old Town Trolley tour which allowed us to park remotely and take the shuttle around town at our own pace. The St. Augustine trolley tour has over 20 stops, is 8.5 miles long, and takes about 90 minutes from start to finish if you were just to stay on the trolley bus. Another benefit of the Trolley tour is that the drivers provide commentary and historical information on the city as you travel around.

Our first stop was to visit Castillo de San Marcos, the oldest masonry fort in the continental United States. The fort has been operated by the National Park Service since 1933 as the Castillo de San Marcos National Monument. It was designed by the Spanish engineer Ignacio Daza, with construction beginning in 1672, 107 years after the city’s founding while the city was still under Spanish control.

Castillo de San Marcos was attacked several times and twice besieged. Possession of the fort has changed five times, all peaceful, among four different governments: Spain, 1695–1763 and 1783–1821, Kingdom of Great Britain, 1763–1783, and the United States, 1821–date (during 1861–1865, under control of the Confederate States of America). Owing to its strategic cannon placement and star-shaped design, the fort was never breached or taken by force throughout its various stages of sovereign ownership.

The Castillo is a masonry star fort made of a stone called coquina (Spanish for “small shells”), which consists of ancient shells that have bonded together to form a sedimentary rock similar to limestone. Native Americans from Spain’s nearby missions did most of the labor, with additional skilled workers brought in from Havana, Cuba. Construction began on October 2, 1672, and lasted twenty-three years, with completion in 1695.

After visiting the Castillo, we walked along St. George Street which is one of the most recognizable and visited areas in St. Augustine. It’s a pedestrian-only route through Historic Downtown, lined with colonial-era buildings, courtyards, and a mix of museums, restaurants, shops, and historic landmarks. St. George Street follows a colonial roadbed first laid out in the 1700s. Many of its buildings are original structures or faithful reconstructions on historic foundations. Part way along St. George Street we stopped for a good lunch at the Burrito Works Taco Shop, and then a little further down the road we had dessert at the Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream Store.

After getting back on the Trolley shuttle we toured around some more areas of the city and saw some of the original historic St. Augustine homes before hopping off to walk around the outside of the original Hotel Ponce de Leon, and now Flagler College. Originally a luxury hotel built by millionaire developer and Standard Oil co-founder Henry M. Flagler, built between 1885–1887, the winter resort opened in January 1888. The hotel was designed in the Spanish Colonial Revival style and is the first of its kind constructed entirely of poured concrete, using the local coquina stone as aggregate. The hotel was one of the first buildings in the country wired for electricity from the onset, with the power being supplied by DC generators installed by Flagler’s friend, Thomas Edison. Since 1968, with the founding of Flagler College, the original building and grounds of the hotel serve as the centerpiece of the campus of Flagler College.

We also walked around the Hotel Alcazar across the street from Flagler College that was also constructed by Flagler using the same poured concrete method. Both hotels appealed to wealthy tourists who traveled south for the winter on his railroad, the Florida East Coast Railway. The Alcazar had a steam room, massage parlor, sulfur baths, gymnasium, a three-story ballroom, and the world’s largest indoor swimming pool; however, after years as an elegant winter resort for wealthy patrons, the hotel closed in 1932. In 1947 Chicago publisher Otto C. Lightner purchased the building to convert the old hotel into a hobbies museum. He used the space to house several collections, including his own extensive collection of Victorian era art. He then turned it over to the city of St. Augustine and the museum opened to the public in 1948 and operates to this day as the Lightner Museum.

Rather than take the trolley shuttle back to our parking spot we walked back along the Matanzas River which is part of the Intracoastal Waterway. We passed the pair of copies of the marble Medici lions that guard the entrance to the Bridge of Lions, a double-leaf bascule bridge that spans the Intracoastal Waterway and connects downtown St. Augustine to Anastasia Island across Matanzas Bay.

There was a lot to see in St. Augustine, and our one day visit took us around the highlights. The most interesting part of the visit for us was the Castillo de San Marcos. One could certainly spend several days exploring the city and looking at the historic buildings and neighborhoods in more depth. Photos from our visit are included below. Click on the thumbnails for full size images.

Fort Sumter National Historical Park, Charleston, South Carolina

2026-02-062026-02-05 by Martin

We visited the Fort Sumter National Historical Park in mid-December 2025 while staying at the Thousand Trails Oaks at Point South RV Park in Yemassee, South Carolina just under an hour and a half away.

Fort Sumter is one of 40 fortifications that were built following the War of 1812 and up to the start of the American Civil War. These forts are collectively known as the Third System of Seacoast Defense. Today, Fort Sumter is an incomplete sea fort near Charleston, South Carolina, where the battle that sparked the American Civil War took place. Built on an artificial island at the entrance of Charleston Harbor, it remained unfinished on April 12, 1861, when attacked by Confederate Forces and greatly damaged. Efforts at rebuilding after the civil war never completed the fort’s original plan, but since the middle of the 20th century it has been open to the public and operated by the National Park Service.

Fort Sumter Tours provides access to Fort Sumter via their frequent boat service. The boat trip took about 40-minutes each way and we had about 1-hour on the island to see Fort Sumter. There are two departure locations for the tours: Fort Sumter Visitor Center at Liberty Square in downtown Charleston, and the Patriots Point Naval and Maritime Museum on the opposite side of Charleston Bay. We decided to book our trip from the Patriots Point location because of the ample parking at that location compared to the Visitor Center.

As well as being the departure point for the Fort Sumter boat, Patriots Point also has the World War II aircraft carrier, USS Yorktown as its centerpiece. In addition to the USS Yorktown, Patriots Point Naval & Maritime Museum has a fleet of National Historic Landmark ships, the Cold War Memorial, the only Vietnam Experience Exhibit in the U.S., the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, and the agency’s official Medal of Honor Museum.

On our arrival at the Fort, one of the Park Rangers gave a brief presentation on its history. Most famously, Fort Sumter is notable for two battles, the first of which began the American Civil War. The First Battle of Fort Sumter began on April 12, 1861, when South Carolina Militia artillery fired from shore on the US Army garrison. These were (both sides agreed) the first shots of the war. The bombardment continued all day, watched by many happy civilians. The fort had been cut off from its supply line and surrendered the next day. Major Robert Anderson took the flag with him as they evacuated.

The Second Battle of Fort Sumter (September 8, 1863) was a failed attempt by the Union to retake the fort, dogged by a rivalry between army and navy commanders. Although the fort was reduced to rubble, it remained in Confederate hands until it was evacuated as General Sherman marched through South Carolina in February 1865.

A widely announced “End of the War” celebration took place at Fort Sumter on April 14, 1865, which leads some to now claim that the Civil War started and ended at Fort Sumter. The now-Major General Anderson, though ill and retired, came to the ceremony and raised the flag. The assassination of President Lincoln, which occurred on the evening of that date, almost immediately overshadowed the festivities.

A massive concrete blockhouse-style installation, currently painted black, was built in 1898 inside the original walls, armed with two 12-inch M1888 guns, one on a disappearing carriage. Named “Battery Huger” in honor of Revolutionary War General Isaac Huger, it never saw combat. This battery was deactivated in 1947, and in 1948 the fort became Fort Sumter National Monument under the control of the National Park Service.

Our boat tour gave us about an hour at Fort Sumter, which was just about enough to tour the Fort and small museum that is located in one of the buildings. The park rangers were very knowledgeable in providing information on the history of the fort. It was interesting to see mortar shells from the Civil War still imbedded on some of the walls around the fort. Much of the original brickwork was destroyed during the Civil War battles and was not rebuilt. The bricks were manufactured locally, mostly by enslaved people, and you could still see finger prints of the original brick makers in some of the surviving bricks.

As part of the original construction, cavities in the brick walls were filled with “tabby concrete” which is visible in many areas where the original brickwork has been destroyed. This is a type of concrete made by burning oyster shells to create lime, then mixing it with water, sand, ash and broken oyster shells. The shells are still clearly visible in the exposed concrete that is still in place.

We had recently visited many Civil War sites on our east coast travels, and it was particularly interesting to visit Fort Sumter as the site where the Civil War started.

Pictures from our visit are included below. Click on the thumbnails for the full size images.

Wright Brothers National Memorial, Kitty Hawk, North Carolina

2026-01-23 by Martin

We visited the Wright Brothers National Memorial just outside the town of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina while staying at the OBX Campground and RV Park in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina just a few miles down the road.

The 428-acre park is situated on the Outer Banks, a chain of barrier islands along the Atlantic Coast. This park, established in 1927, is the site where Wilbur and Orville Wright made the first airplane flights in human history. They had three criteria for their flight testing location: wind, sand, and isolation, all of which could be found in the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

We started our visit at the visitor center. There was a very nice display and timeline showing the history of Orville and Wilbur Wright’s annual summer visits to Kitty Hawk that started in 1900. It was during these annual summer visits that the two brothers, bicycle makers from Dayton, Ohio, initially developed non-powered (glider) flight, and then moved on to powered flight. The visitor center had some very interesting displays including tools that the brothers would have used, and a recreation of a small wind tunnel that they designed and built to test different wing profile designs. The visitor center also has a full size replica of the Wright Brother’s aircraft “The Wright Flyer” in front of large picture windows that overlook the site of their first flights and the Wright Brothers monument on the nearby dune. It was interesting to learn about the Wright Brothers systematic engineering approach to solving the problem of powered flight, and how in doing so, their experiments proved wrong some of the prevailing aerodynamic theories of the time.

The site of the first flights is just outside the visitor center along with replicas of their workshop/living quarters, and aircraft hangar. Markers show the take-off and landing points of the first four successful powered flights in human history made on December 17, 1903. The longest of the three flights was 852-feet in length and lasted 59-seconds.

We walked to the large stabilized sand-dune known as Big Kill Devil Hill at the far end of the park with its huge stone monument to the Wright Brothers. Thousands of times, the brothers trekked up this and three nearby dunes to conduct glider experiments. These efforts paid off as they mastered their flying skills and refined their flight controls that would help with their later powered flights.

The design of the granite monument features an Art Deco style which highlights bold geometric shapes. A notable part of the monument is the inscription that reads, “In commemoration of the conquest of the air by the brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright. Conceived by genius. Achieved by dauntless resolution and unconquerable faith.” The monument also features curved, wing-like designs on either side and a lit beacon at the top which functions similarly to a lighthouse. The Memorial started construction in 1928 and was dedicated on November 19th, 1932, with Orville in attendance as well as prominent aviators and politicians of the time. Today the monument continues to sit atop Big Kill Devil Hills as one of the highest points in the Outer Banks.

Located to the south of Big Kill Devil Hill, a life size sculpture represents the Wright brothers’ first flight. Dedicated in 2003 as a gift from the State of North Carolina, the bronze and steel sculpture reenacts the historic first flight. Orville pilots the machine, Wilbur runs alongside, and the witnesses who assisted with the flights that day look on and cheer.

The Wright Brothers National Memorial was an interesting visit to an iconic site in the history of powered flight and had a very informative visitor center. We were able to walk around the entire site in a few hours.

Pictures from our visit are provided below. Click on the thumbnails for full size images.

Harpers Ferry National Historical Park

2026-01-12 by Martin

We visited Harpers Ferry National Historical Park in West Virginia in late October 2025 while staying at the Hagerstown/Antietam Battlefield KOA Holiday about an hour away.

Most famous for abolitionist John Brown’s 1859 attempt to start an armed slave revolt by seizing the U.S. Army Arsenal, we came to learn during our visit that Harpers Ferry is also associated with a variety of other people and events that influenced the course of US history. Harpers Ferry witnessed the first successful application of interchangeable manufacture, the arrival of the first successful American railroad, John Brown’s attack on slavery, the largest surrender of Federal troops during the Civil War, and the education of formerly enslaved people in one of the earliest integrated schools in the United States.

We started our visit at the park visitors center which is located about a mile outside of the main town of Harpers Ferry. There are options to take a trail along the Shenandoah River into town, or a park service shuttle bus that runs every 15-minutes or so. We chose to take the walking trail into town, and about half-way along the trail we decided to intercept the Appalachian Trail which veered away from the river and followed a hilly ridge before dropping back down into the town.There were several interesting landmarks along this short section of the Appalachian Trail including the original town graveyard where we saw the headstone of town-founder Robert Harper, and the Jefferson Rock where, during a visit in 1783 Thomas Jefferson wrote “On your right comes up the Shenandoah, having ranged along the foot of the mountain a hundred miles to seek a vent. On your left approaches the Patowmac [Potomac], in quest of a passage also. In the moment of their junction, they rush together against the mountain, rend it asunder, and pass off to the sea… This scene is worth the voyage across the Atlantic.”

As our short journey along the Appalachian Trail came to an end, we descended down some stone steps into the town of Harpers Ferry, passing a number of historic buildings along the way. After having lunch at the “Almost Heaven Bar and Grill” located in a historic building across the street from the train station, we visited the John Brown Museum which presented a lot of detail about John Brown’s life as a dedicated abolitionist, and the specifics of his (ultimately failed) raid on the town armory which sought to spark a general uprising of the area slave population.

Brown was captured on October 18, 1859, by a detachment of U.S. Marines under the command of Army Colonel Robert E. Lee. Brown and six of his men were imprisoned in nearby Charles Town. Virginia seized the opportunity to try “the insurgents.” Brown was soon found guilty of treason against Virginia, conspiring with slaves to rebel and murder. He was hanged on December 2, 1859. John Brown’s last written words on the day of his execution predicted the Civil War. “I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think, vainly flattered myself that without very much blood shed it might be done.”

We enjoyed wandering around the town and seeing both the reconstructed buildings as well as the ruins that remain and include the foundations and footprints of a number of the original armory buildings. It was interesting to visit the building now known as John Brown’s Fort that was the Armory’s fire engine and guard house. It was in this building that John Brown and several of his followers barricaded themselves during the final hours of their ill-fated raid of October 16, 17, and 18, 1859. The building is now located just a couple of hundred feet from its original location, which is marked by a monument to John Brown.

We enjoyed visiting “The Point” where the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers meet. From this location, we could see three states – Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia – as well as the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers. We walked over the rail bridge that crosses the Potomac River to the Maryland side of the river. The rail line travels through a tunnel at this point, and we returned back over the bridge to finish our visit to Harpers Ferry. Before heading back to the visitor center on the shuttle bus we stopped at a couple of interesting historic buildings.One of the buildings had partially excavated floors that showed the location of earlier building foundations and an alley-way. The other building included a display of gun making equipment that would have been used by John H. Hall, a New England gunmaker who spent several years in the mid-19th century tooling new workshops and perfecting precision machinery for producing rifles with interchangeable parts – a novel approach at the time for an industry which was traditionally based on the manual labor of skilled craftsmen. This approach known as the “uniformity principle” of interchangeable manufacture, is said to have helped lead the change from craft-based production to manufacture by machine within the US.

Our visit to Harpers Ferry offered a fascinating insight into the life and legacy of John Brown, as well as the events leading up to the Civil War. Our visit focused on the town of Harpers Ferry, and it will be interesting to return some time in the future and visit some of the other more remote areas of the park that include some 22 miles of hiking trails.