8/8/2014 - Early morning bike rides here are great, beats the heat and there are bike lanes on most of the roads.  They really planned well here with the roadways, three lanes everywhere and and multiple turn lanes at each intersection.  The only complaint so far is that the humidity is always more then the temperature, but we are adjusting ( I know boo hoo hoo).  No gator sightings on Chippy's dog walks this morning.  We are finally drying out after the deluge of rain on Monday, thankfully we are on a slab and the drainage is good on our site.  Naples had several areas with severe flooding.

8/9/2014 - Today we enjoyed the Everglades up close and personal.  Started out at Collier-Seminole State Park where we saw our first alligator took a hike through a forest of tropical trees in this vast mangrove swamp.  The park is the site of a National Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark, the last existing Bay City Walking Dredge. Built in 1924, it was used to build the Tamiami Trail Highway (U.S. 41) through the Everglades and Big Cypress Swamp, linking Tampa and Miami and opening southwest Florida to travelers. This may be a future camping destination as there are several easy access sites for the Contessa.  Then is was off to Everglades National Park Shark Valley entrance.  We are now lifetime NPS senior members which gives us free access to all National Parks for life.  We took a two hour tram tour and learned all about alligators and the natural vegetation of  the Everglades.  The only bad part was we were doused with a thunderstorm halfway through which soaked us, the up side was it really cooled things down.  We saw lots of gators from 1 foot to 7 foot during the tour, as well as a plethora of Egrets and Blue Herons.  We also saw an unusual site on the tour, as a single engine plane crashed earlier this morning.