Everglades National Park, Florida

From Naples I headed southeast through the Everglades towards Homestead.  I wish I had more time to spend here exploring the 1.5 million acre wetlands preserve, however, I made the most of the limited time available.  I couldn’t go through the Everglades without taking an airboat tour, which was a fun time through the thick mangroves searching for alligators and other wildlife.  Unfortunately, there were no gators to be seen but we did run into a small pod of dolphins and several raccoons who made their home in the swamp.  I was still on the hunt for some alligator so I stopped at several waterways in search and ended up finding quite a few.  For sunset, I found a nice secluded pond to use as a foreground and got some radiant red and orange skies but the lack of clouds caused it to become dark fast.  The next morning, I scouted another pond to shoot sunrise and did manage to get some good vibrant pics.  For the remainder of the day I was scouting for birds and other wildlife and came upon Mrazek Pond at just the right time as it was full of Egret and Heron.  After watching them hunt for fish and play around for a while I headed on stopping at most of the areas on the way to Flamingo, the southern most point of the Everglades, and shot general landscape photos.