Everglades 2015 | Andokides' Porch

After a year of planning, the time finally came; it was time to go to the Everglades. At one point, immediately after it was announced, we had 23 men signed up for this trip, which would have been unmanageable. In the end, we were only 12, a great size.

We arrived on Saturday, March 14, by a variety of routes and means. Saturday was mostly spent setting up camp and settling in. Our campsite was at Flamingo Bay, at the end of the Main Park Road. We adopted an area under a tree near the shore as our living room, and spent a fair amount of time hanging out there.

The mosquitoes were merely at the "unpleasant" level, according to a chart posted in the ranger station, not as bad as they might have been, but still bad enough to encourage relatively early retreats to the tents in the evening.

On Monday, part of the group decided to rent canoes and paddle into the 'glades for an overnight on one of the chickies, platforms something like free-standing piers. The rest of us stayed behind at the base camp and explored the seven eco-systems along the 40-mile Main Park Road. We took advantage of many ranger-led tours and activities, including a bike-hike into the rockland pine forest; the "Wet Walk" or "Slough Trough," through the sawgrass prairie and into a cypress dome; and a paddling tour through some mangrove swamp where the legendary 17-foot American crocodile "Croczilla" lives. We did not see Croczilla, but we saw plenty of wildlife, including lots of 'gators and one American crocodile. We also hiked the Anhinga Trail and did some other exploration on our own.

On Wednesday, we broke camp and began our journeys home.

Click here for the full photo album from the Everglades trip. For a slide show, double click the first photo, then use navigation arrows at the top of the page to cycle through the photos.