National Parks: A Celebration of Beauty Pt. 3

By Jasmine Cummings on October 24, 2016

Part three of my National Parks series.

For the final installment in this series, I wanted to share a few National Parks that are relatively close to FSU — you don’t have to pack up and travel for weeks at a time in order to enjoy the beauty of nature. So, here are National Parks you can visit within a week or less.

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nationalgeographic.com/

The Everglades – Everglades is certainly the most famous National Park in Florida. As the largest subtropical wilderness in the United States, the Everglades has much to offer, and functions as a home for a good number of rare or endangered species, including the Florida panther, manatees, and the American crocodile.

I have personal experience with the alligators of the Everglades; I was very young when I visited, but during my first and only visit, the rangers passed around baby alligators to hold. Unfortunately, ours was rather lively, thrashing around in my dad’s grip. It just barely missed smacking me across the face with its tail — it certainly managed to frighten me as I jumped back, screaming. I expect dad would have done the same if he could, but he couldn’t just drop the poor thing.

You can still get the chance to hold a gator to this day, and while not everyone wants to get up close and personal with an animal that has so many teeth, do keep in mind that these are small, only two feet or less. Along with the huge amount of wildlife there is to see, those who are more athletically inclined or enjoy kayaking can take the eight day trip along the 99 mile Wilderness Waterway, from Everglades City down to the Flamingo marina. The warmer winter months are preferable for this trip, as summer comes with storms, rough waters, and swarms of mosquitoes.

nps.gov

Dry Tortugas – Dry Tortugas is the other National Park in Florida. What makes this one memorable is that you can’t get to it by car. The park is off the coast of Key West, miles out into the ocean. You can only get there by boat or seaplane, which adds a whole other dimension to a trip like this. Only 1 percent of the park is on dry land, but that 1 percent includes the historic Fort Jefferson, where ships could resupply and flee from storms and the Fort’s canons protected the traffic-heavy shipping lanes of the Tortugas.

Garden Key, the island that holds Fort Jefferson, also offers camping areas for those who want to stay overnight. Be sure to pack your swimsuit, because you’ll be doing plenty of swimming. One of the most popular activities to do while visiting the Dry Tortugas is snorkeling in the clear, beautiful ocean waters filled with marine life. For the more adventurous, you can go diving at one of the hundreds of shipwrecks within the park, a testament to the history of the area. You can even enjoy a self-guided tour with the help of laminated underwater maps. If that isn’t enough, you can also visit the lighthouse at Loggerhead Key.

Photo taken by my parents, who visited the park just for me.

Congaree – If you’re up to traveling out of Florida, you can visit Congaree National Park in South Carolina. While parts of the park are currently closed off due to hurricane damage from fallen trees, there’s plenty to see and learn. Congaree is bursting with life; if you want to experience the park by water, taking a canoe down the Congaree River, you’ll see a number of animals, including the adorable river otter. Hiking through the park in the evening, you can hear owls in the trees, along with a host of other birds.

Fallen trees in the wake of Hurricane Matthew.

Congaree National Park is known for its incredibly tall trees. These champion trees can reach a record-breaking 150 feet or more, and when one topples, a not uncommon occurrence due to shallow root systems, it can leave a half-acre hole in the canopy that new life will crowd into in order to drink up the sunlight. This, along with yearly flooding, means the park is ever changing. The floodplain even has its own filtering system in the Dorovan muck, an eight feet layer of mud that filters water for pollution and can even turn pollutants harmless, helping to keep the Congaree River clean. Best of all, Congaree has no entrance fee, making it one of the few free National Parks.

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This concludes my National Park series. I hope you’ve found this helpful, and that you’ll one day set out to experience these incredible places for yourself.

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