Everglades National Park as a day trip from the Orlando area

This was my fourth trip to Florida, each time I have solely been focus on family activities around the theme parks of Orlando, in 2019 I finally found time to have a solo day trip from Kissimmee down to the Everglades WHS.

Start off with a bonus point, by travelling down from the tourist hotspot around Disney World you are actually travelling the length of the whole Everglades Ecosystem, the waters around Kissimmee eventually feed down into the Everglades proper. As you drive down you will notice the landscape is very flat, and it is the very minor changes in altitude that give this whole ecosystem its unique character. By doing the long drive down you get to experience all of that in a day trip.

From Orlando the quickest access will be via the Gulf Coast visitor centre in Everglades City which means the main focus will be on the Ten Thousand Islands. This is an important part of the National Park, however it is different to the traditional “Rivers of Grass” that people associate with the Everglades. 

The easiest way to enter the national park proper, is to drive onto Chokoloskee island (there isn’t an entrance fee charged to enter the park here). From the rather charming historic Smallwood Store I was able to go on a boat tour, which enabled me to see plenty of birds, a pod of dolphins and several of the islands up close which were of great interest, many being shell middens created by thousands of years of human activity, disposing of oyster shells. 

However, I don’t think I would recommend the boat tour the store offered. Its young captain mostly just blasted around the islands, only stopping briefly for some rather loose descriptions of the environment and some stories of dubious and thus far unverified atrocities carried out by the national park service when the park was created, though I will say his personal story of family members caught up in the drug trade certainly made it a different type of trip. Chokoloskee and Everglades City were once purported to be one of the main routes for cocaine into the USA, something I wasn’t expecting to be part of my visit to a natural WHS.

There are official boat tours offered from the very useful visitor centre, they weren’t running when I visited, but have restarted now. I think these would be the better option. There were also details of the multi day kayaking route from Everglades City to Flamingo. In another stage of my life this would’ve seemed like the perfect opportunity to get away from things and really explore the National Park, alas, a day trip away from my family in Orlando didn’t really give me scope to fit it in.

The very friendly ranger suggested making some stops in the adjacent Big Cyprus Natural Preserve which were a great complement to the National Park proper and rounded out my sense of the larger ecosystem, beyond the strict confines of World Heritage Site.

The first stop I made was at H.P. Williams Roadside Park which pretty much guaranteed seeing wild alligators, there were a fair few of various sizes and easy to spot, and whilst they were wild it had something of the feeling of seeing them in a zoo.

After this I headed to Kirby Storter Roadside Park, which if I’m being honest didn’t sound too promising, however this probably turned out to be the highlight of my whole trip. Here there is a half mile long elevated boardwalk that leads through the swampy mangroves. I was the only person on the walk when I visited, and there was a real sense of being alone as calls echoed around from birds getting more and more intense as I moved forward. Then I saw a slight movement in the water, after a minute or so of searching I finally was able to pick out the eye of an alligator and it sent a shiver down my spine. When it clocked that I had seen it it slowly swam off and the howls from the trees ratcheted up to cacophonous levels. This was probably the single highlight of my trip.

I didn't get a chance to visit these but also recommended to me were the big alligators found at Oasis Visitor Centre and the jungle like habitat around Big Cyprus Bend.

Driving logistics

The drive down is very straight forward, just drive route 29, until it turns into route 27, then follow that until it stops at the sea and you will find yourself inside the WHS at the Smallwood Store. Southern Florida is exceptionally flat so the main concern of driving is probably boredom, one well placed stop to alleviate that is the rather beautiful Sebring diner.
Depending on your location in the Orlando area the drive is about 3.5- 4.5 hours each way. I left around 7a.m. and was back around 9p.m., the hot tub in the villa came as a very welcome ending to a long day.

Site 7: Experience 6