Melanie Jansen, Orbridge Staff
How I learned to stop worrying and love the Everglades
I'll be honest with you – Nature has always frightened me. I was born and raised in the city, and have lived here my entire life. My wildlife experience has been mostly limited to spotting cardinals in the trees when I hear them call, and knowing which dogs not to pet in my neighborhood. So, when the time came to go to the Everglades, I thought to myself – well, it's a chance to get out of this rotten Chicago winter weather for a bit, and I can certainly pretend to be interested in "creepy-crawly" things for the sake of research.
A few hours after leaving Chicago in the middle of a snowstorm, we headed out of Ft. Myers en route to Sanibel Island. Dazzled by the warm sun and the blue waters, we stopped along the shore near the causeway to take off our shoes and look at birds, but the first animals I saw were dolphins. Dolphins!
Destination Highlights:
- Take an exhilarating airboat ride into a seldom-visited area of Everglades National Park
- Enjoy a special welcome cruise on Tarpon Bay, where you may see dolphins surfacing as the boat cruises by sandbars filled with hundreds of roosting pelicans, cormorants, and anhingas
- Watch the march of the herons - and ibises - and roseate spoonbills - across the shallows at Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge on Sanibel Island
- Hike into a dark-water swamp with the park biologist from the Fakahatchee Strand Preserve, and assist in the collection of important conservation data for an ongoing research project
- Document the iconic beauty of the moss-draped cypress trees at Corkscrew Swamp, where you may also see endangered wood storks on nest
- Kayak through leafy green mangrove tunnels into the secluded backwaters of Rookery Bay
- Marvel at the extraordinary amount of wildlife to be seen from the boardwalk of the world-famous Anhinga Trail in Everglades National Park
- Join a local archaeologist for a close-up look at the famous shell mounds left by Calusa Indians hundreds of years ago
- Learn about the importance of fire in the Everglades ecology from a local environmentalist, who set and managed many controlled burns during his career as a forest ranger
