Seeing Gators & Eating Gator at Everglades National Park! 🐊

When you last saw us we were drinking sodas from around the world and eating lots of food at Ponce City Market in Atlanta. We then headed back down to warm Florida and spent the week working in central Florida before driving down to the southern part of the state which is where today's adventure begins. We are having a very interesting start to our morning. We heard a bunch of things on our roof of our van so I looked out the window because we have our windows covered and there are like 20 massive birds surrounding our van and on the roof of our van and I don't know why. It's formed us but no other car in this parking lot. Oh my gosh I hate birds and these are huge. We're too afraid to leave the van now. We decided to move to a different spot to hopefully have them not follow us and so far I think we're good but they might swarm us again. We made it out of the car. We survived those huge birds. They were like this big. I don't think the camera fully showed how big they are but we can now officially start our day and start this vlog. So for those of you new around here we have a goal of visiting all of the U.S. National Parks. There are now 62 parks total. They added White Sands National Park back in December just days after we visited it so we're gonna count that one. And today we are visiting number 24 for us and that's Everglades National Park. So something that we did not know about Everglades National Park is that it's the third largest U.S. National Park in the lower 48 after Death Valley and Yellowstone and the park is split up into four main areas and we're in the Royal Palm area I believe right now which is closest to the city of Homestead. And we heard that one of the best things to do in this area is the Ahinga Trail. I think I'm saying that right but it is a short .8 mile walk so that's what we're gonna get started with. We just ran into another guy on the trail and he was telling us a little bit about those birds and apparently they're black-headed vultures and if that doesn't scare you enough apparently there's some tarps out there that you can throw over your car because if you leave your car out there too long they'll start like picking the rubber off the like seals of the windows. So we're gonna try to go really quick on this trail now to get back to the van because they were on the roof and now I can only imagine what they were actually doing up there. Besides the vultures there's a lot of other wildlife that lives here in the park. So there are manatees, there are panthers, which the thought of one of those is pretty terrifying. That would be really cool to see from the car. And then this is the only place in the world where American crocodiles and alligators coexist together and we've been to a lot of bear hot spots like Yellowstone, Grand Tetons, Banff and we've never seen a bear ever. So knowing our luck we'll probably not see a gator but we really want to see a gator. I want to see one so bad. Sorry to all the other park patrons here that we're scaring them away just by our presence. Or bad luck. But I also read about in a couple years ago on Wikipedia, so you know it's true, that there was an alligator and a python, like a big like black python apparently, had a fight on this trail for like 24 hours they said. And then the fight was finally broken up by another crocodile or alligator came and and the snake got away. But that'd be cool to see too. Lots of crazy things happen here. I think we also read this is like the first national park that was became a national park to preserve the wildlife. Yeah instead of like nature and the beauty of it. Yeah. So I don't know. Lots of interesting things about this park. About two minutes after he said we may not see a gator we just saw our first one. That was fast. That was really fast. So hopefully that means our luck is changing. Mission is accomplished. So I thought this was a big trash bin when we were walking by. I thought that's why all the birds were right here. But these are the tarps that you throw over your car to protect it while you're here. We're gonna go scout. I guess everyone else got the memo except us. All these you can see all the prints on the the condensation on the solar panels. Punks. Are the wires okay? Yeah I think so. I don't see anything. If you've watched us for a while you know that every national park we have to grab a patch and a couple postcards. So we're curious what do you guys collect when you travel? We used to collect ornaments before we lived in the van. Sometimes we get like coffee mugs stuff like that. So we're curious if you have something cool that you like to collect when you travel. Comment below and let us know. So there's more to do in the Royal Palm area but we are going to head about an hour, hour and a half up to the Shark Valley area. So let's go. We're making a quick pit stop. We came to this spot called Robert is Here. It's this awesome fruit stand on the side of the road. They have exotic fruits from all over the world. They have these jams you can buy. There's salsa. There's dressings. Tons of goodies. It's a really cool place just to walk around and it's on the main road going between the areas of the park so it's a very convenient stop. And while we were down here we wanted to drive down all the way down through the Keys to Key West but logistically it was just going to be too much and so we had to get something key lime flavored and that's what we got. This is a key lime shake. Yeah so this place is known for having really great shakes and smoothies and from what I read on their website their shakes are just fruit and milk. There's no ice cream or anything in it and I think some sweetener but it is so creamy. Yeah it looks so good. And we had we snuck a little bite or a little taste off the spoon a little bit ago and I had like a drop and man I can't wait to dig into this thing. So good. Oh man. It tastes like key lime pie minus the crust. Yeah you're just missing the crust but dude that's really good. So good. You're gonna have to share now. Oh my gosh I could eat this all day. They have a ton of other fruit options you can also mix and match I believe. Another popular flavor to get is I'm gonna say this one guanabana? Guabana. I think it's guabana. Oh dang it. Guabana. I can't I couldn't remember. I could be wrong. I don't know exactly what kind of fruit that is but apparently that's a popular shake to get and I wanted to get it for us because I wanted to try something different but we just had to get the key lime. Yeah it's too good to pass up. So good. Did it fall? Yeah. Sorry. He didn't tighten it all the way. We made it to the shark valley part of the park and originally we weren't planning on coming to this area because we did kind of have to go a little bit out of the way to get here. It wasn't the most convenient but we saw a photo of the shark valley observation tower and that looked really cool and we knew we had to come here. But it's a 15 mile trek like out and back so like seven and a half out seven and a half back and there's three ways to get there. You can walk it. It's just a level path so it wouldn't be that bad. You can pay to ride the tram that takes you out there and I think a ranger goes along with you and tells you a little bit of facts or you can do what we did. Rent bikes. Rent some bikes. So these are you can rent them for nine bucks an hour per bike and you just truck it out there and you pay when you get back. Yeah we haven't rode bikes in forever and to be honest I'm not the most comfortable on a bike. I'm usually more comfortable if there are no cars nearby so I think we'll be okay. It should be really fun. We rode it for two seconds to get to this spot. Oh I'm so excited. It's been a blast already. Funny story. Last time we were riding bikes a couple years ago when we lived in Seattle we were just taking what a day trip or weekend trip in Vancouver. Thought it'd be fun like this to rent a couple bikes and I guess I stopped abruptly so she says. Well Katherine decides to cram into me. Ram into me in the back. Oops. Come on now. I've changed. I'm better now. We'll see. It is crazy how close you can get to the wildlife on this pathway. When we first got on this trail or path we saw a gator almost right away and it was right by us. Yeah I mean you could reach out and touch it if you really wanted to. But don't do that. I wouldn't recommend it. But it's just crazy how close you can get to the gators here. And there are also tons of beautiful birds on this pathway and I know earlier I said I hated birds but I hate mostly the crows and the pigeons and the vultures and these are all really beautiful. I don't know what kind they are though. Yeah I mean I don't like all the birds that like you poop on you and they seem like they're just digging into trash all the time you know. That's just the ones you see in the city but I guess once you get out and like this is on the Florida birding trail I keep seeing signs for so you're actually seeing like the cool pretty beautiful like birds like birds you want to see. And the stuff people travel for. We've seen a lot of people that are that are here just to see the birds. We stumbled upon a good old-fashioned family gathering. We just found 13 gators at once. There's a mommy gator and then there's 12 little baby gators. They're so cute. Wow. This takes the cake. I wanted to see the big ones. I think the babies are even better than the big ones. We made it the seven miles to the base of the observation tower. And now we just have to walk about half a mile I think to the actual top of it. It has this cool little spirally thing. So you can't go all the way to the tippy top of the tower. They have it blocked off but you can go up pretty high and see the awesome view of basically 360 all around you. It's still worth the look. I mean the bike ride out here was fun and then also when you look over the edge you can spot some gators like straight down below. Really cool. Let's ride back. We are going against the wind now so it's quite a bit harder. My quads are burning. It's mouth open. There's one on the pathway. Pretty good way to end this ride. About a mile left to go. Yeah I was hoping one would cross the road and he's not crossing it but I guess it's part of the way. At one point he probably was crossing it. We did it! Yes! And she didn't crash into me this time. Double yes! And I would say we saw at least 50 gators. Here the most appropriate way to end our gator filled day was to actually try some gators. So we're at this place called the Gator Grill and it's really close to the Everglades and I'm sure this is a very touristy thing to come do but it just sounded like so much fun. Check this guy out. So we got what's called a gator kebab and there's all kinds. There's pineapple. There's onion. There's pieces of chunks of gator. There's like those yellow peppers look good. Smells really good and then they have some kind of sauce on there. I don't really know what it is but it just smells so good all together. And it comes with fried plantains. This is like a coleslaw. Some sauces. More coleslaw. And then of course basket of fries. So yeah I've actually had gator before when I went to the Renaissance Festival. The Texas Renaissance Festival. It's a huge thing. If you're ever in Texas in the fall it's cool. You should definitely check that out. So I've had gator before but it was fried. I am very excited to try this. I'm not really an adventurous eater but this actually looks really good. It kind of just looks like chicken to me. Oh gotta get rid of that onion. I'm not an onion fan. And I know this is probably... I'm eating with my hands that's not very ladylike but gotta do what you gotta do. That's actually really good and I know it's cliche to say but it kind of does taste like chicken. It has a very similar taste and even kind of a similar texture with kind of the little... I don't know how you describe that but it just it looks kind of similar to chicken too. It's really delicious and the sauce that's on there is awesome. Oh it's kind of stiff. Let's see here. A lot too. The seasoning they have on there and the sauces are really good but the texture of it it's definitely like it does have a chicken texture but it is definitely chewier and stiffer. Like tougher than chicken yeah but it's really good and I don't know if you didn't tell someone. I don't know if they know that it's not chicken but it's really good though. While it is really good I will say I think I like chicken a bit better. It's just a little bit softer to eat but it's still pretty dang tasty and like Adam said if you didn't tell me that this was gator I probably would not know. So to be honest we were not that excited to visit Everglades National Park today. We kind of were just going just to check it off the list but I have to say we were very surprised. We had way more fun than we thought we would. And there are actually two more national parks in Florida that we need to check out. Dry Tortugas and Biscayne but they kind of cost a bit more to get the full experience so we're going to save them for later when we come back to the area to do Virgin Islands National Park. Oh man I'm very excited for that national park. That might be the best one out there. But we're still hanging out in Florida for a few more weeks. We have a few more Florida adventures to share with you. We're excited to bring you guys along.