Airboat ride

Like a lot of retired RV'ers who roam the country, Millie and I have a bucket list of things we would like to do and places we would like to visit. We don't (or haven't yet) hit the road on a dedicated bucket list tour, we just check off items when ever we can.

One of the things neither of us has done was ride on an air boat. Air boats are flat bottomed aluminum boats fitted with an aircraft engine and propeller. They are specifically made to skim across very shallow water. 

Boat like the one we were on

If there's one thing Florida has, it's wide expanses of shallow water. Here in South Florida it's all part of the Everglades. All the water that drains though the state in underground aquifers bubbles up here and drains to the sea through the wide shallow grasslands.

baby alligator

igator

Most of the 2400 acre Everglades National Park is off limits to air boats for conservation, but they are permitted in an area of the park near Miami. There are several tour operators on the tamiami Trail (Hwy 41) We chose “Air boat in Everglades” for our air boat experience.

Millie and I on the airboat

Riders marshall at the Pilot Travel Center on the edge of the Everglades and then drive about a mile into the park on Hwy 41 where the air boats wait at a river landing. 

the Everglades

Our boat was one of the smaller ones and it was very fast. It carries eight passengers and the Captain/tour guide. We only has six passengers on our visit so it accelerated very quickly. Willy, our Captain took us to several hammocks so we could view wildlife. We saw alligators ranging from very young ones (12 inches long) to a 7-8 foot male. The only other animals we saw were lots of different birds. There are also turtles and snakes in the Everglades but we didn't see any. 

pond apple trees

Between stops to view the flora and fauna we sometimes reached speeds I'd estimate were around 40-45 mph. The last feature we toured was a grove of pond apple trees. They grow in the water with trunks that resemble cypress trees.

large male aligator

Both of us agreed the air boat ride was very cool. This was also our first experience in the Everglades where we weren't standing the solid ground, it too was a very cool experience!