Did you know drive it, hike it, helicopter it, abundance?
Wife and I drove to the park, got out and immediately realized that we did not dress correctly because it was 25 degrees cooler up there than at Hapuna Beach so we went to the gift shop for clothes. Couldn't drive the road around the rim due to high sulfur levels and portions of it being knocked out from an eruption a couple years prior, etc so we toured the perimeter area at the main Kilauea lookout, listened to it erupting for a bit, hiked a big portion of the park over lava fields, through lava tubes, steam vents, etc. At the end of the day we had dinner at the restaurant that sits near the rim there. They shut off the lights every 20 minutes so that you could watch the volcano glowing at night and you could hear it rumbling while eating. Took some pictures that looked like this (just pretend the lights are out inside the restaurant). Very cool to experience in person. That, and going up Mauna Kea at night to view the galaxy were incredible experiences. Definitely want to go back. Both places felt like an entirely different planet from anything I've visited before.
Been to Rayonier (obviously), Olympic, Grand Canyon, Glacier & Yellastone. And the Everglades.
If you want to see wildlife from the minute you get there until the minute you leave, Everglades is en fuego. It's great for that. And in its own weird way it can be beautiful.
Glacier was powerful and felt historic. Loved Lake McDonald and the Lodge. Would like to visit Many Glacier on the other side.
But something about ONP ... part of it is that I grew up around it, and the other part of it is the combo of amazing wilderness, yuge fucking trees, alpine, and coast all in one park. It's also isolated out there on the peninsula and, IDK, just a fucking beautiful place.
Yellastone was cool too. Some unique shit there.
I agree with the PBS tag line: America's best idea.
I'm going to Everglades (and Biscayne and Dry Tortugas) with my dad and oldest kiddos in June. Really pumped for this . Wifey and I did like a thirty minute airboat excursion in the glades when we got off our honeymoon cruise out of Miami but didn't get into the park at all. Will see much more this tim around. Any recommendations in the Everglades area?
Alright so it's been almost three months, time for me to recap this (at times) grand event.
I apologize in advance to all of you who DNGAF. Stop reading, now.
You've been warned.
So my oldest two joined me and we drove to NC to pick up my Dad (who turned 77 shortly after the trip). We left NC for a one week driving trip mostly through Florida the first week of June. We hit four NPs in total plus a brief stop at a National Monument.
First up was Congaree National Park near Columbia, SC. This is one of the newer parks (promoted from National Monument in 2003), and one of the least visited parks in the nation (10th least according to this, ahead of only 3 NPs in the Continental 48). My family has lived only a couple hours from Congaree for two and a half decades and never even considered taking a trip trip there.
Needless to say, expectations were low.
But I have a goal of seeing them all that means even the ones that NOGAF about have to be checked off the list. And it was only about 25 minutes out of the way on our trek south so it felt like the best time to check it out.
It's essentially a hardwood forest in a floodplain preserved for it's ecosystem rather than it's scenic beauty, and in true @BearsWiin fashion I can confidently say it's nothing special. It's basically a big bog, covered in thick mud and underbrush. Obviously taking a five year old, six year old and 76 year old limits the backcountry options significantly, so we settled on the 2.6 mile wooden platform loop just outside the Visitors Center that takes you around the swamp with a self guided tour. We set out on the trek but about the time we had made it 3/4 of a mile Pops' back started acting up so we had to turn around and return. Which was fine with my son who was already complaining of boredom.
Great start to the proceedings, but thankfully my expectations were low to begin with so I wasn't too disappointed.
It did give Pops and I a brief Dad laugh thanks to this meter at the VC.
So southward we rolled. We made it to St Augustine, FL for our first night out of Dad's house, with no other real sightseeing on day one except a brief drive around Old Town Savannah.
Cool fucking city.
Day two we hit up Castillo De San Marcos National Monument in St Augustine, the oldest masonry fort in the US. Not a must see by any means but if you're ever in the area and need to kill some tim it's definitely worth a stop.
Then it was off down the east coast of Florida headed for Key West. We spent a bit too much time at CDSMNM and missed out on daylight for the last quarter of the drive through the keys or so. Honestly wasn't as spectacular of a drive as I expected but was still very cool.
Next morning it was down to the ferry dock for the 2 1/2 ride to Dry Tortugas National Park. Dry Tortugas gets about 1/3 of the visitors that Congaree does (ranking 7th least visited) but for vastly different reasons. It's in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico so you can only get there via boat or floatplane. The payoff here was far better than Congaree.
Dry Tortugas is a collection of keys on a reef in the middle of nowhere with the largest key the host to Fort Jefferson, the third largest fort we ever built and at one point in time the most heavily armed. Gorgeous water, good swimming, lots of fish, hot as balls. Not cheap to get there and it takes a full day at minimum, but extremely cool place.
Will give the minor Biscayne NP and major Everglades NP reports later on.
Obviously all national parks are best seen outside of your car, but most of the western parks are at least worthwhile to visit even if you're just passing through. These South Florida parks are completely different, they aren't really drivable (you physically can't drive to Dry Tortugas, can barely enter Biscayne by car and while there are plenty of roads through the Everglades you really don't see anything worthwhile).
Also unlike the western parks they aren't especially hikable. Everglades is the only one where it's really an option and I wasn't especially keen on taking three people I'd be responsible for keeping alive out into a gator and python infested river.
So unlike basically every other experience I've ever had with my Dad in an NP, we invested heavily in some professional tours. I already mentioned the ferry to Dry Tortugas. We also had a boat tour scheduled to some islands in Biscayne Bay. Unfortunately my daughter had a cough and they were extra COVID cautious so we didn't get to do that one. That left us essentially walking out on a jetty into Biscayne Bay from the VC. We saw a ton of iguanas (non native species) and plenty of fish. Encountered a number of dudes who could have passed for the darkness brothers and looked like they would have played for the U 20 years ago. @creepycoug. Wasn't a single @dflea or @YellowSnow cracka fishing out there, all brothas.
So Biscayne was kind of a bust as we only scratched the surface on it. Definitely a place I'd like to explore more.
Did get a shot of Pops and the kids I can actually share there.
Now to the easily the best part of the trip. Everglades National Park is huge, iconic, unique and yet not entirely what I expected. I've always associated the Everglades with gators and airboats, and there are plenty of both. But there's a ton more to it than that.
Everglades was actually the first NP set aside for environmental/ecosystem reasons rather than scenic ones. And most of it is not what I would call especially beautiful. It is absolutely full of animal life though, and a lot of animals you're not going to see anywhere else in the NP system. Certainly not anywhere out west.
As the third largest park in the lower 48, Everglades actually preserves 7 unique ecosystems, rather than just the obvious swamp I've always associated with it. We got to check out a number of them:
Tram tour through the poorly named Shark Valley (this is what most would think of when thinking of the Everglades). Saw a number of gators here, a black snake of some sort (much smaller than a python), a few turtles and a crapload of wading birds. Most exciting experience was at the one stop the tram makes there was a nest of baby gators we were able to view from a distance. I took the kids over there, we looked, and then we heard a low growling sound. I was curious as hell but smart enough to gtfo there. Told the tour guide about it and he said "yeah that was Mama letting you know you were too close to her babies."
My son swears the guide is wrong and it was a Florida Panther who was babysitting for the Mama Gator.
CSB We also did the classic airboat tour. Lots more wading birds and gators, and saw a bunch of turtles on this as well (softshell and hardshell). I had done an airboat tour in November years ago and the wildlife was much more plentiful so it was a bit of a disappointment for me. Apparently the water levels are lower November to April and so you see a lot more critters then. Summer is the wet season and they have a lot more water to hide in. But the other three had never been on an airboat and were very impressed with what we saw.
But the highlight for all four of us was not these more classic Everglades experiences, it was what did on the Everglades coast. The glades includes large chunks of the south Florida coastline were the river of grass meets the sea. This brackish environment is absolute gold for wildlife. We did two tour boats out here - first on the southwest side through 10,000 islands and secondly at the far south edge at Flamingo. Both were extremely worthwhile.
The 10,000 Islands trip was easily the best though. We went out amongst the mangrove island (basically a floating tree that builds a root down below the water line and creates it's own island) in this extremely shallow brackish water and honestly my big hope was to see a manatee. We did see one although we didn't get a very good look. On that end it was a bust.
But we found a pod of bottlenose dolphins who decided to ride in our wake for a good 5-10 minutes and it was probably the most fun my kids have ever had. Hell up there with the most fun me and pops have had too. Pics don't do it justice but this site doesn't have a good mechanism for uploading video so it's the best you'll get.
Also saw tons of seabirds: Ospreys and kites and plenty of others.
My son had one big goal for the trip that hadn't been accomplished - he wanted to see a crocodile. So we added an extra trip and went to the aforementioned Flamingo for another boat tour with the express purpose of seeing some crocs. We did see four or five (none especially close). We also had a much closer encounter with a couple manatees this time around including a baby one.
Both kids completed some assignments and became Everglades Junior Park Rangers which they were very proud of. My son was most excited to have seen the crocodiles, my daughter fell in love with the manatees. The dolphins were far and away the highlight for me.
All told I think we spent about 2 1/2 days exploring the Everglades.
Worth all the tim and every pemmy.
If you ever get the chance to visit it's easily my favorite one to visit of any that I've seen east of the Rockies.
Tier 1 - Wood go out of my way to go back anytime I had the opportunity Yellowstone Mount Rainier Arches Olympic Grand Teton Glacier
Tier 2 - Wood gladly visit again Grand Canyon (was mildly disappointing) Crater Lake Rocky Mountain North Cascades Great Smoky Mountain Badlands Wind Cave Mammoth Cave
Tier 3 - Glad I visited, wouldn't go out of my way to go back Gateway Arch Hot Springs Shenandoah
Incomplete - just barely been inside, not enough to have a real opinion Petrified Forest (really liked the little bit of the Painted Desert I saw) Mesa Verde Theodore Roosevelt
Updated tier rankings
Tier 1 - Wood go out of my way to go back anytime I had the opportunity Yellowstone Mount Rainier Arches Olympic Grand Teton Glacier Everglades
Tier 2 - Wood gladly visit again Grand Canyon (was mildly disappointing) Crater Lake Rocky Mountain North Cascades Dry Tortugas Great Smoky Mountain Badlands Wind Cave Mammoth Cave
Tier 3 - Glad I visited, wouldn't go out of my way to go back Gateway Arch Hot Springs Shenandoah Congaree
Incomplete - just barely been inside, not enough to have a real opinion Petrified Forest (really liked the little bit of the Painted Desert I saw) Mesa Verde Theodore Roosevelt Biscayne
My kids as liked this small little place the best of everything: Columbia Falls about 10 miles outside of Hot Springs, SD.
You are a must follow on Twitter my fren.
Wait @alumni94 did you go to Glacier also? If not you're not the person I thought you were. There's another UW fan who just did almost this exact same trip (including Custer State Park) but hit Glacier one direction.
My kids as liked this small little place the best of everything: Columbia Falls about 10 miles outside of Hot Springs, SD.
You are a must follow on Twitter my fren.
Wait @alumni94 did you go to Glacier also? If not you're not the person I thought you were. There's another UW fan who just did almost this exact same trip (including Custer State Park) but hit Glacier one direction.
We did not. This was more of a rental car issue. We flew into Bozeman and the rental car companies were jacking up the prices if you didn't return to the same place. Trust me, my wife and I both said at the end of the trip that we should have added in Glacier, but it gives us a reason to go back.
I would like to go back to the Grand Tetons in the spring, as it was a little smoky and that took away for the overall beauty of the place.
...a married Japanese couple legit put their toddler on a wild elk who was just chillen on some grass in one of the tourist areas for a photo op. Kid didn’t get hurt but it still blows my mind.
On an epic road trip taking the fam to 23 American NPs in 41 days (plus Banff). Been to four so far. Quick fupdate: Grand Teton and Glacier moving way up my list.
On an epic road trip taking the fam to 23 American NPs in 41 days (plus Banff). Been to four so far. Quick fupdate: Grand Teton and Glacier moving way up my list.
On an epic road trip taking the fam to 23 American NPs in 41 days (plus Banff). Been to four so far. Quick fupdate: Grand Teton and Glacier moving way up my list.
Crater Lake or GTFO
Wifey wants to drive the Oregon coast so Crater Lake 'tis not on the itinerary.
Parks we've hit so far on the trip (bold = park I've never been to before this trip) Rocky Mountain Had to 86 this one because the pass was closed due to heavy snowfall the night before so we whiffed on our first target. Grand Teton Yellowstone Glacier Banff (Yoho, Glacier and Mt Revelstoke on the TransCanada highway but we didn't do anything but drive through so they don't really count) North Cascades
Still to come (bold = park I've never been to before this trip) Mt Rainier Olympic Redwood Lassen Volcanic Yosemite Sequoia Kings Canyon Pinnacles Channel Islands Joshua Tree Death Valley Zion Grand Canyon (north rim) Bryce Capitol Reef Canyonlands Arches Mesa Verde Black Canyon of the Gunnison Great Sand Dunes
First up was Congaree National Park near Columbia, SC. This is one of the newer parks (promoted from National Monument in 2003), and one of the least visited parks in the nation (10th least according to
So southward we rolled. We made it to St Augustine, FL for our first night out of Dad's house, with no other real sightseeing on day one except a brief drive around Old Town Savannah.
Cool fucking city.
I almost got arrested in Columbia for streaking through a hotel lobby and into the bar to order a drink. Bartender wouldn’t serve me.
Comments
I know it’s smaller compared to the bigger parks and I don’t claim it to be “the best”... but damn it is just breathtaking on a clear day.
I apologize in advance to all of you who DNGAF. Stop reading, now.
You've been warned.
So my oldest two joined me and we drove to NC to pick up my Dad (who turned 77 shortly after the trip). We left NC for a one week driving trip mostly through Florida the first week of June. We hit four NPs in total plus a brief stop at a National Monument.
First up was Congaree National Park near Columbia, SC. This is one of the newer parks (promoted from National Monument in 2003), and one of the least visited parks in the nation (10th least according to this, ahead of only 3 NPs in the Continental 48). My family has lived only a couple hours from Congaree for two and a half decades and never even considered taking a trip trip there.
Needless to say, expectations were low.
But I have a goal of seeing them all that means even the ones that NOGAF about have to be checked off the list. And it was only about 25 minutes out of the way on our trek south so it felt like the best time to check it out.
It's essentially a hardwood forest in a floodplain preserved for it's ecosystem rather than it's scenic beauty, and in true @BearsWiin fashion I can confidently say it's nothing special. It's basically a big bog, covered in thick mud and underbrush. Obviously taking a five year old, six year old and 76 year old limits the backcountry options significantly, so we settled on the 2.6 mile wooden platform loop just outside the Visitors Center that takes you around the swamp with a self guided tour. We set out on the trek but about the time we had made it 3/4 of a mile Pops' back started acting up so we had to turn around and return. Which was fine with my son who was already complaining of boredom.
Great start to the proceedings, but thankfully my expectations were low to begin with so I wasn't too disappointed.
It did give Pops and I a brief Dad laugh thanks to this meter at the VC.
So southward we rolled. We made it to St Augustine, FL for our first night out of Dad's house, with no other real sightseeing on day one except a brief drive around Old Town Savannah.
Cool fucking city.
Day two we hit up Castillo De San Marcos National Monument in St Augustine, the oldest masonry fort in the US. Not a must see by any means but if you're ever in the area and need to kill some tim it's definitely worth a stop.
Then it was off down the east coast of Florida headed for Key West. We spent a bit too much time at CDSMNM and missed out on daylight for the last quarter of the drive through the keys or so. Honestly wasn't as spectacular of a drive as I expected but was still very cool.
Next morning it was down to the ferry dock for the 2 1/2 ride to Dry Tortugas National Park. Dry Tortugas gets about 1/3 of the visitors that Congaree does (ranking 7th least visited) but for vastly different reasons. It's in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico so you can only get there via boat or floatplane. The payoff here was far better than Congaree.
Dry Tortugas is a collection of keys on a reef in the middle of nowhere with the largest key the host to Fort Jefferson, the third largest fort we ever built and at one point in time the most heavily armed. Gorgeous water, good swimming, lots of fish, hot as balls. Not cheap to get there and it takes a full day at minimum, but extremely cool place.
Will give the minor Biscayne NP and major Everglades NP reports later on.
Went to:
Little Big Horn
Devil's Tower
Mount Rushmore
Crazy Horse
Custer State Park (Needles Highway)
Badlands
Grand Tetons
Yellowstone.
I think as a family we were most impressed with Custer State Park and the Needles Highway.
https://www.google.com/search?q=needles+highway+south+dakota&rlz=1C1GCEB_enUS910US910&sxsrf=AOaemvJ924yFwlnp1RkQ0fCX31pUG2iu-g:1630356056992&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjU_YjNzdnyAhU-STABHZz8CH4Q_AUoAXoECAEQAw&biw=2400&bih=1171#imgrc=BbLkCZPf-WWKAM
My kids as liked this small little place the best of everything:
Columbia Falls about 10 miles outside of Hot Springs, SD.
Also unlike the western parks they aren't especially hikable. Everglades is the only one where it's really an option and I wasn't especially keen on taking three people I'd be responsible for keeping alive out into a gator and python infested river.
So unlike basically every other experience I've ever had with my Dad in an NP, we invested heavily in some professional tours. I already mentioned the ferry to Dry Tortugas. We also had a boat tour scheduled to some islands in Biscayne Bay. Unfortunately my daughter had a cough and they were extra COVID cautious so we didn't get to do that one. That left us essentially walking out on a jetty into Biscayne Bay from the VC. We saw a ton of iguanas (non native species) and plenty of fish. Encountered a number of dudes who could have passed for the darkness brothers and looked like they would have played for the U 20 years ago. @creepycoug. Wasn't a single @dflea or @YellowSnow cracka fishing out there, all brothas.
So Biscayne was kind of a bust as we only scratched the surface on it. Definitely a place I'd like to explore more.
Did get a shot of Pops and the kids I can actually share there.
Now to the easily the best part of the trip. Everglades National Park is huge, iconic, unique and yet not entirely what I expected. I've always associated the Everglades with gators and airboats, and there are plenty of both. But there's a ton more to it than that.
Everglades was actually the first NP set aside for environmental/ecosystem reasons rather than scenic ones. And most of it is not what I would call especially beautiful. It is absolutely full of animal life though, and a lot of animals you're not going to see anywhere else in the NP system. Certainly not anywhere out west.
As the third largest park in the lower 48, Everglades actually preserves 7 unique ecosystems, rather than just the obvious swamp I've always associated with it. We got to check out a number of them:
Tram tour through the poorly named Shark Valley (this is what most would think of when thinking of the Everglades). Saw a number of gators here, a black snake of some sort (much smaller than a python), a few turtles and a crapload of wading birds. Most exciting experience was at the one stop the tram makes there was a nest of baby gators we were able to view from a distance. I took the kids over there, we looked, and then we heard a low growling sound. I was curious as hell but smart enough to gtfo there. Told the tour guide about it and he said "yeah that was Mama letting you know you were too close to her babies."
My son swears the guide is wrong and it was a Florida Panther who was babysitting for the Mama Gator.
CSB
We also did the classic airboat tour. Lots more wading birds and gators, and saw a bunch of turtles on this as well (softshell and hardshell). I had done an airboat tour in November years ago and the wildlife was much more plentiful so it was a bit of a disappointment for me. Apparently the water levels are lower November to April and so you see a lot more critters then. Summer is the wet season and they have a lot more water to hide in. But the other three had never been on an airboat and were very impressed with what we saw.
But the highlight for all four of us was not these more classic Everglades experiences, it was what did on the Everglades coast. The glades includes large chunks of the south Florida coastline were the river of grass meets the sea. This brackish environment is absolute gold for wildlife. We did two tour boats out here - first on the southwest side through 10,000 islands and secondly at the far south edge at Flamingo. Both were extremely worthwhile.
The 10,000 Islands trip was easily the best though. We went out amongst the mangrove island (basically a floating tree that builds a root down below the water line and creates it's own island) in this extremely shallow brackish water and honestly my big hope was to see a manatee. We did see one although we didn't get a very good look. On that end it was a bust.
But we found a pod of bottlenose dolphins who decided to ride in our wake for a good 5-10 minutes and it was probably the most fun my kids have ever had. Hell up there with the most fun me and pops have had too. Pics don't do it justice but this site doesn't have a good mechanism for uploading video so it's the best you'll get.
Also saw tons of seabirds: Ospreys and kites and plenty of others.
My son had one big goal for the trip that hadn't been accomplished - he wanted to see a crocodile. So we added an extra trip and went to the aforementioned Flamingo for another boat tour with the express purpose of seeing some crocs. We did see four or five (none especially close). We also had a much closer encounter with a couple manatees this time around including a baby one.
Both kids completed some assignments and became Everglades Junior Park Rangers which they were very proud of. My son was most excited to have seen the crocodiles, my daughter fell in love with the manatees. The dolphins were far and away the highlight for me.
All told I think we spent about 2 1/2 days exploring the Everglades.
Worth all the tim and every pemmy.
If you ever get the chance to visit it's easily my favorite one to visit of any that I've seen east of the Rockies.
Tier 1 - Wood go out of my way to go back anytime I had the opportunity
Yellowstone
Mount Rainier
Arches
Olympic
Grand Teton
Glacier
Everglades
Tier 2 - Wood gladly visit again
Grand Canyon (was mildly disappointing)
Crater Lake
Rocky Mountain
North Cascades
Dry Tortugas
Great Smoky Mountain
Badlands
Wind Cave
Mammoth Cave
Tier 3 - Glad I visited, wouldn't go out of my way to go back
Gateway Arch
Hot Springs
Shenandoah
Congaree
Incomplete - just barely been inside, not enough to have a real opinion
Petrified Forest (really liked the little bit of the Painted Desert I saw)
Mesa Verde
Theodore Roosevelt
Biscayne
I would like to go back to the Grand Tetons in the spring, as it was a little smoky and that took away for the overall beauty of the place.
Parks we've hit so far on the trip (bold = park I've never been to before this trip)
Rocky MountainHad to 86 this one because the pass was closed due to heavy snowfall the night before so we whiffed on our first target.Grand Teton
Yellowstone
Glacier
Banff
(Yoho, Glacier and Mt Revelstoke on the TransCanada highway but we didn't do anything but drive through so they don't really count)
North Cascades
Still to come (bold = park I've never been to before this trip)
Mt Rainier
Olympic
Redwood
Lassen Volcanic
Yosemite
Sequoia
Kings Canyon
Pinnacles
Channel Islands
Joshua Tree
Death Valley
Zion
Grand Canyon (north rim)
Bryce
Capitol Reef
Canyonlands
Arches
Mesa Verde
Black Canyon of the Gunnison
Great Sand Dunes
Savannah is a great fucking party town.
SAV is a great town. NOLA without a major fear of getting killed.