To continue your driving tour of the Everglades, you can follow the road through the Park towards Flamingo from Royal Palm. There are several places to stop and look at different aspects of the Park. The first spot of note is the Long Pine Key picnic site and campground. Several trails start out of here including the Old Ingraham Highway. None of them are particularly buggy friendly and they can be very muddy. The Old Ingraham Highway is your best bet for dry year round walking. We have walked part of this and several other trails and whilst interesting, it was not interesting enough for us to make up for the biting insects…..

My personal favourite spot along this road is the Pa-hay-okee Overlook. It can be a very peaceful place to just stand and watch and to get an appreciation for the size of the Park and the acres of sawgrass.

The road runs out at Flamingo and in my view it does have something of an ‘end of the road’ feel about it. I am not a huge fan but it does have a number of walking trails, ranging from the half mile buggy friendly Eco Pond loop to the 15 mile return Coastal Prairie trail (not buggy friendly)which gives a very different view of the Park. The mosquitoes are particularly problematic in this part of the Park and trousers and long sleeves are  highly recommended! Bikes are allowed on some trails and you can loop a couple together to get a longer ride but they are mainly 4-5 miles round trip.