2/25/2018. Bicycling in the Everglades with Alligators

Today Sandy and I drove down to Shark Valley in Everglades National Park to rent bikes and ride a 15 mile paved path off of Alligator Alley.  

As many of you probably know Sandy and I for years have ridden numerous miles together on a Tandem bicycle.  This is the first time in many, many years that we have ridden separate bikes.  We decided to rent instead of haul our tandem due to the drive time and precarious way we haul the tandem on our bike rack.

First, we had a great time after a little stutter start getting Sandy back up on a bike of her own.  We saw 30 Alligators 5’ or longer, and a group of 18 baby alligators laying in the sun and enjoying the water.  See pictures below.

In addition, we saw some very pretty birds.  Also in the picture below.

What I will say is beware of the wind at your back, as it may come to bite you when you turn around to return to base.  We rode out 7 miles along a canal.  The ride seemed easy, slightly down hill, with a slight breeze at our back.  Well when we started to head back along the loop trail, we headed straight into the wind along a winding trail which was now in an open prairie type swamp with the wind coming straight toward us.  Now it was not gale force type wind, but enough to almost stop us in our tracks.  We fought our way the last 8 miles back, slightly uphill into the wind.  What we expected to take 2 hours, took us 3 1/2 hours to complete.  We later found the wind speed we faced was 10 mph. 

In the end, the trip was well worth the challenge.  The gator and bird sightings were unlike we have ever seen.  Yes, we would do it again!  Maybe next time we will get an earlier start, take more water and snacks, bigger brim hats, and apply sunscreen more often. 

PS.  Thanks to Allen and Carla Brecht for the recommendation

The following is Sandy’s input:

In addition to Shark Valley in Everglades National Park, which allowed us to check off another national park from our to do list, we drove through Everglades City, which had about 2 restaurants, most homes were on stilts, several smaller RV parks of the resort variety (but not much entertainment  in the local area but the National Park and Florida Panther Preserve), and several airboat ride companies. 

Bill was definitely fearless in Shark Valley. All the signage said stay a minimum of 15 feet from the alligators. Riding along the trail, we’d find ourselves biking past alligators hiding in the grass as close as 4 feet from the trail. So what do we do, stop and take a photo of course!  Sandy took hers from the tail end of the closest ones, but Bill went to the snout end to get a face view. Maybe hoping for an action shot!  Yikes!