One of our days in southern Florida, we packed a lunch and drove down to The Everglades.
Our first activity of the day was to go on the park’s Nike Missile Walk. It wasn’t much of a walk at all (distance-wise), and instead of just the guys doing it like we had originally intended, we were all able to do it. Sometimes the littles and I don’t go on ranger hikes if we think that it will hold the rest of the group up (even tho the little girls are fantastic little hikers!), but in this case, it was a short walk.
We started at the Daniel Beard Center (where we ran into Ranger Brian again – he was visiting the Everglades!); where Ranger Andrew gave us a short introduction into the cold war, and explained what a Nike Missile Site was.
We then drove a short ways down the road, where we came to the missile barn sites. The ranger explained each building’s purpose as we walked the grounds. When we came to the first hangar, he showed us where the launch pads had been.
And then he unlocked the doors and he and Ranger Brian opened them up to reveal a Nike Missile…
This particular missile had come from Alabama, and was restored by a local aviation high school. 
The building had quite a few displays, including their state of the art communications system. There was an old rotary phone outside, and another in the building. If a soldier needed inside, he would have to call to be let in – if he didn’t, an alarm would go off as soon as the door began opening. I would imagine that he was met by the business end of a M-16 also 😉 
After our tour, we drove to the southern-most tip of the Everglades, and went to the Flamingo Visitor’s Center… (they really have a thing with this pink paint down here! Even the Daniel Beard V.C. was painted it. Flamingo Pink???) 
The kids turned in their Jr. Ranger work here, their 3rd and last park. The ranger that checked their work was wonderful! She filled them in on some unique things about the park, and told them where they could find crocodiles if we would like to check them out! 
The foliage is a little different down here than back home! LOL! Love it!!! 
And we saw 3 crocodiles!!!
The park has more than it’s fair share of seagulls – in fact there are signs throughout the parking lot that warn visitor’s to cover their cars with tarps to protect them from the birds!
We drove through the campground, and decided that we would really like to spend some time down in the Flamingo Campground (but that will have to wait for another year!).
Back home, everyone has pivots and hand-lines to irrigate. We saw tons of ‘mobile irrigation’ down here -these trucks would go out into a field and the huge sprinklers on the back would water the field. Some farms had one or two working their land while some fields would have a bunch of trucks out there watering at once…. There was a lot of strawberry and tomato picking going on down here too.
Fishing seemed to be our nightly activity – every night that we got back to the campground before dark anyway! The kids were never quite sure what they would catch – and some of the fish we still haven’t found out what they were! LOL!
We really love southern Florida, and don’t have nearly the time to explore it as much as we would like to!!!
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