Miami, Your-ami: Everglades

We just got back from a trip to Miami today.  We had fun basking in the sun.  Andrew was so funny, the whole time, we’d say, “We are in Miami.”  And he would say “Yup, we’re in your-ami”.  I don’t think he ever got it right, but it sure was cute.

Tuesday evening, we had an uneventful flight (boys slept through our flights to and from Miami – we never even needed our DVD player), but it was late, so we didn’t get to our rental car place until like 10 pm!  We were all exhausted and it seemed to take forever.  We had never rented a car before (that is a new experience) and was pretty confusing.  When we finally found where our car was supposed to be, we were a little confused because, instead of like an Impala or a Corolla, we had a ….

yup, a bright blue Mustang convertible.  It was super fancy.  At first, we were concerned, but YES, it does fit two car seats (just for future reference).  Around the Miami airport was a mess, but we finally found our way to our hotel about 30 minutes away next to the Everglades.  We still hadn’t eaten dinner, so we grabbed some McDonalds and went right to sleep.

Wednesday morning, we ate a delicious breakfast at our hotel (which actually was pretty nice for a Travelodge, too bad it was just one night).  Then, we drove to Walmart and stocked up on bug spray, sunscreen, and lots and lots of food for the rest of our trips.  Then, we’re off to the Everglades.

We really enjoyed the Everglades.  It was definitely worth renting a car for.  The entire time Andrew wanted to know where the alligators and crocodiles were.  It was like he thought it was the zoo.  We went to the visitor center and then went to the first little hike.  This was definitely the highlight.  About 10 feet onto the trail, we found this just a couple feet away:

yup, a mama alligator.  And here are the babies:

We saw some more baby alligators:

And spent some time with our babies on the trail, trying to keep them from running too close to the alligators.  Andrew REALLY wanted to see an alligator eat a bird like in the movie we watched, but alas, they just sat in the water the whole time.

By this point, the boys were hungry, but we wanted to see all the landscape (we had watched a movie and read books about the Everglades and we thought it was really interesting).  So, we drove to Flamingo (the other end of the park).  We drove through all the environments: the saw grass, the pine and hard wood forests, and cypress mangroves and the ocean.  Flamingo was a little bit of a disappointment – mostly there to take boat tours, but we didn’t think the boys would have the patience for that.  We ate some sandwiches and looked for crocodiles and manatees, to no avail.  Then, we drove back, both boys fell asleep, Katsu explored another trail a bit while we waited in the car, and we finally left our fun adventure in the Everglades.