National Parks Visited

On this trip through Southern Florida and the Miami area, we visited the following National Parks:

• Biscayne National Park
• Big Cypress Preserve
• Everglades National Park
• Key Deer National Wildlife Refuge
• Crocodile Lake National Wildlife Refuge

Groundhog's Day

We didn't leave the Florida City Travelodge until nearly 9 am this morning for no other reason than we were being lazy.  The day was warm and breezy with abundant sunshine.  Even when we left the motel, it was in the mid 60s and beautiful.  The nice weather we are enjoying makes us feel a little bad for family and friends back home facing several inches of snow and wind chill temperatures well below zero.

We took the short drive to Biscayne National Park on the coast.  Most of this park is underwater since it is on the world's third largest coral reef.  Turns out that the area was threatened with major development in the 1960s but when the property was made a National Park in 1980, it was protected from development.  There is a nice visitor's center and a short but interesting boarkwalk.  There were TONS of bicyclists on the road to the park since it roads are flat and don't receive a lot of automobile traffic.  

It didn't appear that this park gets the volume of visitors that come to many other parks.  However, many local people come here to fish for grouper and mullet along the banks in the park. There are a lot of picnic tables and places to relax in the park too.  The temperature warmed to the mid 70s while we were there but the breeze kept walking comfortable.

After leaving Biscayne National Park, we drove to Zoo Miami to spend most of the day.  The zoo is very large but the layout is logical and well organized.  The main path of the zoo is in a "figure 8" and the majority of animals are organized by continent.  We were amazed at how few visitors at the zoo were speaking English.  In fact, on the few English speaking groups that we saw there were tourists from England!

The animals at Zoo Miamo seem to have a lot of room and there is a nice assortment.  We watched a couple of red river hogs chasing each other around and enjoying the day.  They had excellent enclosures for the Asian and African elephants.  They had a large collection of tortoises and an area to feed giraffes.  There was a lot of walking at the zoo but we enjoyed our day.
After leaving the zoo, we were in the mood for a snack so we went back to Robert is Here.  It was even more of a zoo!  We could not believe the number of people packed into that little farm stand.  They make milkshakes from fresh fruits and other ingredients. Mary had a fresh coconut and I had a key lime milkshake.  They were both excellent and filling.  Mary bought some key lime chocolates for the guys at work and I bought some guacamole that they make there at the deli.  The guacamole had big chunks of avocado and other goodies.  We enjoyed munching on it on tortilla chips. 
We crashed in the room for a bit to shower and change before dinner.  There are many great choices for dinner here but we figure we can get good Mexican, Chinese or seafood back home.  However, we can't get Cuban food any place close to home so we went back to Mario's Latin Cuisine for dinner.  We had the same friendly and helpful waitress as Thursday night.  Mary had passionfruit juice again and I had mango this time.  For her main course, Mary had the Cuban sandwich which had generous portions of ham, pork and cheese on grilled Cuban bread.  I had the tamal appetizer as my meal.  The Cuban style tamale was a block of seasoned pollenta with slices of pork, ham, cheese and pickles.  Everything was very good.
We retired to the room and watched "Groundhog Day" on AMC which just never gets old.



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