We survived our first day in Florida!!

Today was the day! We were leaving bright and early to come to wet and rainy Florida. First arrivals to Atlantic City airport would be our TA, Matt and I, closely followed by Nicole and Sam. Everyone’s things ended up getting searched by airport security. When the time came to finally board the plane and take off, everything was smooth sailing. Half of the class were taking cat naps, while the other half were playing Uno. Later, going into the descent into Fort Lauderdale airport, the path of the air plane came a across a clump of turbulence. We finally land in gloomy Florida were thunder storms have been raging on throughout the area. 

We claim out luggage and finally find a very excited Dr. Z! We pile into the clown van and we were off to the hotel where we dropped our bags off, went to lunch and then we were off on an adventure in the Everglades. We arrive at the welcome center of the Everglades National Park, where we watched a small background documentary about the Everglades, then we wondered around the small building until it was time to go to Anhinga Trail. First entering the trail, we were taking educated guesses on the flowering plants and trees that were lining the banks on the water, where, an alligator appears in the water! We ran into many alligators during our hike, one was on the trail with us and we were even able to see one catch a fish! It was the coolest thing that we saw today.

There was a variety of different plants and trees that call the waters long the Anhinga trail home. The most dominate plants that we identified were the sawgrass and the pond apple. Other plants that were found pickerel weed, button bush, coastal plain willow, morning glory, pidgin plum and gumbo lumbo. If you were feeling a bit homesick so soon, there were stalks of wild corn growing almost everywhere to remind us of the farms back home in New Jersey. Among these plants, the red winged black bird calls these branches home and the Florida garr, snapping turtles and Florida red-bellies turtles call the roots of these trees home.

The final stop on our adventure was to the Pa -Hay – Okee Trail. This trail had significantly less water than Anhinga Trail, and many more trees growing throughout the grass plain. We have discovered that this area of the Everglade is filled with a giant army of mosquitos, who were ready to attack at any second (and our parents thought they had to worry about us being eaten by crocodiles).  The many pants that were discovered here are the; pidgin plum, corn, coastal plain willow, spring ladies tresses, start rush white top, just to name a few. After our narrow escape from the army of mosquitos, we head off back to the hotel to freshen up to go to dinner.

I guess it's safe to say that we all survived our first day in the wilds of Southern Florida.

https://www.nps.gov/ever/planyourvisit/visitorcenters.htm

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/reptiles/a/american-alligator/