With winter trade winds wrestling the humidity from our muggy swamp, now is the best time to see South Florida’s miles of enchanting wilderness.
From the towering mangrove canopies surrounding Whitewater Bay to the flats of Biscayne Bay, nature is on parade. And two of the best places to visit are our own beloved national parks, past miles of sawgrass at the tip of Florida and just beyond the skyline of bustling Miami.
Flamingo Lodge, The Everglades
At Flamingo, the southernmost point at Everglades National Park, a snazzy new lodge and restaurant now welcome visitors at the end of the road.
It's one of the best ways to see the park at dawn and at dusk, when the wildlife comes out to play and the Milky Way, far from Miami's glare, twinkles across the night sky.
“National parks are really set aside with a dual mission, right? We're here to preserve and protect, but we're also for the enjoyment of the people,” said ranger Allyson Gantt. “So this lodge really kind of embodies both of those.”
The park's old lodge and restaurant were shuttered 20 years ago after Hurricanes Katrina and Wilma delivered a double whammy that left much of the lodge in ruins.
While Spartan in detail, the old accommodations were beloved. The concrete two-story lodge and its loud, cranky air conditioners have been replaced with an array of terraced rooms atop concrete pilings that overlook the bay. Constructed from shipping containers, they're a first for the National Park Service.
READ MORE: Visiting the Everglades? New hotel offers AC, bug protection and elevation from storms
Next door to the lodge is the new restaurant where cooks will fillet and cook whatever you catch, carrying on a tradition from the old restaurant.
The storied, old restaurant with its sweeping views of Florida Bay is now home to a new visitor center. Opened in the 1960s, the pink concrete building was a bold example of the park's new Mission 66-style, intended to usher in a new car culture and replace the park service's stodgy, rustic vibe. The wall of windows remains intact, although jalousies have been replaced with impact glass.
What remains unchanged is the breezeway, high above the mosquitoes, with an unbroken view of Florida Bay.
In the marina just steps away, visitors can spot crocodiles and manatees.
Even with the new accommodations, there's still that magical end of the road feel here, past Hell's Bay and Snake Bight, and the miles of watery sawgrass that separate Flamingo from the rest of Florida.
“We talk about the water as the heartbeat of the Everglades. It really is that pulse and that ebb and flow that drives everything that happens here,” said Gantt.
MV Lloyd Miller, Biscayne National Park
Last month, a new catamaran was added to the fleet of boats that tour Biscayne National Park, named in honor of one of the park's founding architects, Lloyd Miller.
Friends and family who gathered for a christening voyage last month hope this new boat will reintroduce visitors to Miller and the scrappy band of conservationists who fought enormous odds to have the park created.
“If he had got an idea that something should be done, he worked on it until he got it done,” said Miller's widow, Dottie, now 99.
Back in the 1960s, powerful developers wanted to blast a channel across the shallow waters in Biscayne Bay to make way for an oil refinery. They also wanted to create another Miami beach called Islandia. A causeway would have connected the beach to a chain of islands that included Elliott Key.
Miller was part of a group of avid fishermen and conservationists who vowed to stop it.
“It's really a David and Goliath story,” said Don Finefrock, a former Miami Herald reporter, who met Miller when he was executive director of the South Florida National Parks Trust.
READ MORE: Lloyd Miller, Who Helped Found Biscayne National Park, Dies At 100
“He had late night phone calls threatening his life. He had his car vandalized, he had his dog poisoned,” said Gary Bremen, a retired ranger who now leads boat tours at the park. “Nobody had heard of a national park that was mostly covered by water. That's not what a national park was. A national park is Yosemite and Grand Canyon and places like that.”
Campaigning tirelessly, the group created widespread grassroots support, finding partners in local and state government and winning a powerful ally in vacuum cleaner scion Herbert W. Hoover, Jr.
When visitors head out aboard the M. V. Lloyd Miller to see the remnants of Spite Highway or the seagrass meadows that draw wading birds and sport fish, Finefrock and the others hope they'll also ask about the man who helped create Biscayne National Park.
Copyright 2024 WLRN Public Media
