Big Cypress Swamp Welcome Center - Big Cypress National Preserve

The final preserve facility heading west on the Tamiami Trail is the Big Cypress Swamp Welcome Center.  This new building is just west of the preserve headquarters.  The center is actually three buildings with a common roof.  The eastern building is a theater, the center building contains the bookstore, some excellent exhibits, a visitor information counter and staff offices.  The western building houses restrooms with running water.  The welcome center is an interagency facility for all public lands within the Big Cypress Swamp.  The movie is the same one that is shown at the Oasis Visitor Center.  It provides an excellent orientation to the preserve.  There is no entrance fee to the preserve.

Welcome Center

Behind the building is a boardwalk adjacent to one of a series of canals.  This is usually one of the best places in the preserve to see manatees, but the rain obscured any motion below the water surface.  Red mangroves line the edges of the canals.

Red mangroves in the rain

Red mangroves line the canal

Boardwalk with benches

The preserve website is http://www.nps.gov/bicy/index.htm.

Kirby Storter Park - Big Cypress National Preserve

Our third stop along the Tamiami Trail was the Kirby S. Storter Roadside Park.  This park was established by the state of Florida before Big Cypress National Preserve was created.  The park has a ½ mile elevated boardwalk into a cypress strand.  The boardwalk is accessible for wheelchairs and strollers and includes a shelter along the way.  The boardwalk ends in an area of standing water.  There is no entrance fee for the Big Cypress National Preserve.

Cypress trees and saw grass

The boardwalk is well maintained

Thatch roofed shelter

Leaving the open prairie and heading into the cypress strand

Cypress trees with their characteristic buttressed trunks

Blooming Cardinal Airplant (Bromeliad)

  

The end of the boardwalk

Spanish moss is also a bromeliad

Reflections in calm water

The park website is http://www.nps.gov/bicy/index.htm.

Oasis Visitor Center - Big Cypress National Preserve

Continuing west along the Tamiami Trail from Shark Valley in the Everglades, the road enters the Big Cypress National Preserve.  We stopped at the Oasis Visitor Center during our mid-February 2013 trip.  Inside the visitor center, we found a theater, bookstore, small exhibit area and very helpful rangers and volunteers.  A building closer to the parking area contains restrooms with running water.  In front of the visitor center is an elevated boardwalk above the borrow pit for the highway.  The resulting canal attracts a variety of wildlife although we mostly saw alligators and an anhinga.  Alligators are very efficient swimmers as can be seen in the video below.  The road and wind noise was so loud at times that I muted the sound.

Oasis Visitor Center

Alligators sunning beside the canal

More alligators in or near the canal

I had to fill out a backcountry permit to hike a 3-mile loop around the visitor center and landing strip.  The hike is a portion of the "Tamiami Triathlon", a promotional effort aimed at getting people off the couch and moving in the great outdoors.  The 15-mile Shark Valley bike ride and a canoe trip from Everglades City round out the activities.  In selecting a hike for the challenge, the organizers favored a drier route over a more scenic route to promote hiking throughout the year.  The route includes an easily accessible portion of the Florida National Scenic Trail (FNST).  Unfortunately, the initial 2000 feet or so of the FNST portion is beside the chain-link fence surrounding the airstrip at Oasis.  The route then follows the FNST for another 3000 feet before cutting over to the gravel Oasis Off-Road Vehicle Trail and returning to the visitor center.  

Florida National Scenic Trail alongside the airstrip fence

A palm tree stump

The trail narrow to a footpath

Even in the dry season, the trail crosses wet areas

The trail climbs out of the saw grass and into an
area of saw palmetto and sable palm

As the trail continues to climb, pine trees start to appear

The pines get thicker as the elevation rises

The cut through was well marked

The hike returns via the Oasis Off Road Vehicle Trail

A single cypress tree near the gravel road

Saw grass prairie

Cypress hammock

One of the many unusual plants in the Big Cypress Preserve is the Cardinal Airplant.  This is an epiphytic bromeliad.  An epiphyte is a plant that grows on another plant, such as a cypress tree.  A bromeliad is a plant that grows in the air instead of in soil.  Airplants are not parasitic, but only attach themselves to the host plant for support.

Cardinal airplant

The park website is http://www.nps.gov/bicy/index.htm.