The Chihuahuan Desert Nature Trail is a half-mile loop starting at the Carlsbad Caverns Visitors Center. It’s an interpretive trail that provides a great introduction to the desert flora and how native cultures used these plants in everyday life.
After spending the morning in the dark walking through the vast Carlsbad Caverns, we enjoyed a nice lunch aboveground in the bright sun.
Most visitors to Carlsbad Caverns National Park head for the caves underground while completely ignoring the 800,000+ acres on the surface.
Rattlesnake Canyon is one of the most popular and scenic surface trails in Carlsbad Caverns. Yet most hikers will have this trail all to themselves, as we did on this warm November morning.
Everglades National Park in south Florida is more than 1.5 million acres of the largest subtropical wilderness in the United States. It boasts more than 700 plant and 300 bird species including the endangered crocodile, manatee and Florida panther. The Everglades has been designated a World Heritage Site, International Biosphere Reserve, and Wetland of International Importance.
The Everglades is a large watershed that begins near Lake Okeechobee and flows south in a slow-moving river 60 miles wide and over 100 miles long. The Everglades is shaped by water and fire, with floods in the wet season and drought in the dry season. (wiki)
We visited the Everglades over two days in February 2010.
The Shark Valley Trail is a 15.4-mile paved loop in the center of a vast sawgrass marsh prairie. This prairie stretches over 100 miles through the Everglades from Lake Okeechobee to the Gulf of Mexico and contains a shallow, slow-moving river that forms the Everglades.
“Maybe he won’t notice me.”
At the 7-mile mark on the Shark Valley Loop Trail stands the 65-foot tall Shark Valley Observation Tower, which is open to the public.
You can see the tower for at least 3 miles on a clear day.
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