FLORIDA WEEK 4 (PART 2) : BIG CYPRESS NATIONAL PRESERVE

We took a day trip to near by Big Cypress National Preserve. This National Preserve is in my National Park Passport were I got another stamp to add to the collection. While at the welcome center I was talking to a fellow NP stamp collector, and they had to add extra pages to their book. Instead of buying another book to add the stamp page, she went to Kinkos and had them print copies of just the stamp page for the region she needed. This idea I will use too and I need now for the National Capital page. The book only cam with 2 pages, that only 8 stamps. When I went to DC in 2011 we visited 9 sites. Our plan is when he hit DC again, get those 9 stamps and try to hit a couple more. I was looking on YouTube for National Park stamps and found out that there is a place that has all the National Park Stamps for DC in one place. All I have to do is visit the site and then go there to get all the stamps at one time instead of looking for the stamp or waiting in line to use it.  

... Back to Big Cypress National Preserve. We were driving on 41 and I remember what a friend told me to do. She said stop and look off the side of the road. We saw a picnic rest stop on 41 and pulled over and crossed the street. What did we see? Two gators just sitting in the water. Thank you Patti.

As we got further into Big Cypress were we saw more and larger gators along with birds and manatees. That's right, salt water animal in fresh waters. We saw the manatees behind the Welcome Center and I had to ask the park ranger how this could be. She replied that this is the farthest that salt water goes before meeting fresh water. That is why you can see both salt water (manatee) and fresh water (gators) in the same body of water. I tried to get pictures of the manatees, but only can get their snout coming out of the water. The gators is a different story we got a lot gator pictures... too many to post all of them.

We drove and stopped to look at gators and birds. We took a break and had a picnic. We watched each others back for gators to attack us.. luck for us none came. We continued to drive the loop looking for gators and birds. Be advised, that some of the road is unpaved. We have a HHR, and it was good enough for us. The down side by the end of the trip the car was covered in dirt. We thought only old people (no offense) are birds watchers, but somehow our bird picture collection is increasing. I think unconsciously we are become bird watchers, or we are getting older. Everglades National Park is near by and we will be going there in a few days. If you are in the area and have extra time I recommend that you stop by Big Cypress National Preserve and watch the video at Oasis Welcome Center to under stand how big of a roll Big Cypress plays in supporting Everglades National Park and check out the gators.

Eating lunch keeping my eyes open for gators

On our way out of Big Cypress we almost missed it a first, but we stopped and saw the smallest post office in the United State. Check out the hours of operations. Four hours a day, one and half hours on Saturday.