Hiking Overview: Everglades National Park

Everglades National Park, Florida

• Journey through multiple ecosystems of pine woods, tropical hardwood hammocks, coastal prairie, and wildlife-rich environments—most Everglades trails spur off Main Park Road.
• The Long Pine Key Nature Trail is the 7.5-mile backbone of interconnecting trails through the Pinelands. Hardwood hammocks and sawgrass prairie enhance the scenery.
• Spy alligators along the Anhinga Trail in Royal Palm Hammock. The Gumbo Limbo Trail is an interpretive loop through rich, tropical woodland.
• Keep binoculars handy for up-close observation of birdlife on the popular Snake Bight Trail, a 1.8-mile path to an observation deck and Florida Bay. Note the saltwater-tolerant red and black mangroves and button wood along the route, a straight, wide path of limestone spoil from an adjacent canal.
• Loop through dense woodland along the Pa-hay-okee Trail, a boardwalk leading to an observation point that overlooks the River of Grass. Nearby Mahogany Hammock Trail also has a boardwalk to explore big tropical trees—watch and listen closely for colorful finches and warblers flitting through the tangled undergrowth.
• Trace remnants of an old paved road and view the open coastal prairie as you approach tropical forest framed by mahogany, gumbo-limbo, cabbage palm, and bromeliads (air plants), which cling to silent buttonwoods. The 2.8-mile one-way Rowdy Bend Trail showcases the coastal prairie.