Our first canceled excursion of our week in the Florida Keys was our scheduled Private Boat Tour: up to 6 people in the Everglades. Two of the six persons in our party were not scheduled to arrive in Miami until several hours after the first four of us had arrived in Miami, so we had hoped to take advantage of this waiting time to make a quick trip to Everglades National Park and this excursion seemed perfect for getting an overview of the Everglades.
After picking up our rental vehicle at Miami International Airport, we drove around Miami a bit to see some of its beaches and downtown area. Unfortunately, the roads leading to Miami Beach were traffic jammed, so we decided to head for the Everglades. The drive from Miami to Goodland is just under two hours on US 41.
We stopped at a visitors center along the way. Although the visitors center itself was closed due to COVID-19, the restrooms were open. This photograph shows an area one can walk around behind the visitors center.
We arrived in Goodland with some time to spare and wanted to get something for lunch. There's not much in way of food at the Goodland Boating Park, but a guy working there recommended a couple local restaurants. We ended up choosing to eat lunch at the Crabby Lady restaurant.
We enjoyed the food at the Crabby Lady. We enjoyed shrimp baskets, the firecracker shrimp basket, and the grouper fish finger appetizer.
We loved the waterside deck seating.
We thought we were going to have to rush through lunch, but I received a call just as we were seating in which it was explained to me that our excusion was going to be canceled due to potentially bad weather. The good news was that we received this call just as we were sitting down and so could relax alongside the water and enjoy our lunch at a leisurly pace.
We still wanted to experience the area more and had a small amount of time before needing to head back to Miami to pick up the rest of our party. We thought about going back to Miami the way we came and possibly participating in one of the airboat rides along the way, but decided instead to see some areas we had not seen by taking a different route back.
The most interesting thing we saw on our way back was in our visit to Fred W. Coyle Freedom Park.
The website for Fred W. Coyle Freedom Park summarizes the main attraction: "Fred W. Coyle Freedom Park is approximately 50 acres and sits at the Northeast corner of Goodlette-Frank Road and Golden Gate Parkway. There is a 5-acre lake with approximately 3500 feet of boardwalk constructed throughout the park."
No admission is charged and the walking surface is level, smooth, and should accomodate nearly anyone. We didn't see any gators while there.
The lake is the centerpiece of this park and it's very nice with a wide, flat bridge across it.
Conclusion
We only had several hours to experience the Everglades and our best-laid plans for seeing them efficiently were foiled by weather. However, we still enjoyed driving among them, eating at Crabby Lady's in the midst of the Everglades, and visiting Floyd W. Coyle Freedom Park. If we ever get the opportunity to be in the area again, I'd like to try another Everglades private boat charter and would likey look into one of the numerous available airboat tours as well. We chose not to do any of the airboat tours (which we saw were operating as we passed them) because we didn't know if the timing would work and we had done an airboat tour outside of New Orleans last year.
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