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Everglades 101: Take an airboat ride
There ought to be a law: Every child who grows up in South Florida is required to go to the Everglades at least once. Period.
The importance of the great River of Grass will probably escape most young kids, but it doesn't hurt to plant that seed early and often.
So we headed west to take an airboat ride over the weekend. This is about as easy an introducation to the Everglades as you can get. Including drive time, you can do it in two and a half or three hours. Our 11-year-old daughter really enjoyed the outing, but we left our grumpy teenager behind. ("That's boring." Whatever.)
We went to Everglades Holiday Park, but there are other options.
This campground/tourist attraction is just west of Weston on Griffin Road, past U.S. 27. (Be sure to go to the website to print out a coupon.) There's a snack stand (gator bites!), a kitschy gift shop and, after the hourlong airboat ride, an alligator wrestling show.
The gator handler gives a little history lesson, and explains why the Seminoles no longer have to resort to wrestling (blackjack, anyone?). Then he demonstrates a few different ways of subduing the very big gator. And, for an extra $5, you can hold a baby alligator and snap a picture. Awwww.
The main event, though, is the airboat ride. Boats go out every 20 minutes or so, and carry 20 or 30 people for an hourlong tour. The biggest surprise? No mosquitoes! And it wasn't too hot either, especially when we were moving over the water. Our driver, Deborah, took off with a blast -- "zoom, zoom, zoom." (Bring earplugs if you are very sensitive.) She slowed down to gives us ecological lessons. We saw vultures and gators and plenty of birds.
This is Everglades 101. It doesn't take the energy or time of a canoe ride out of Flamingo or a bike ride through Shark Valley. We've done that, too, but it's been years. In fact, Erika doesn't even remember Shark Valley (we took the very-informative tram ride and saw TONS of alligators), so we really have to put that back on our list of things to do.
PHOTO: Sun Sentinel/Michael Laughlin
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