Afternoon: Hotel Check in from 3pm to 5:30pm at Hotel Lobby.

Dinner: Dinner and Orientation at the Seafood Depot. Next door to the hotel.

Evening: Bike Fitting

Lodging: Captain's Lodge and Villas

Meals Included: Dinner

Note: Water shoes, water resistant long pants or fast drying pants and a change of clothes will be needed for the Swamp Walk.

Breakfast: At leisure in the Seafood Depot

Morning: Start this morning’s ride biking through Marco Island, the remote luxury enclave of the 10,000 Islands. Continue east the outpost fishing village of Goodland. This remote village is known for its fishing, airboat excursions and its seafood. The latter will be served for lunch. After lunch as you wind through County Rd. 92 you will notice the marsh land and see the pristine waters that make up the 10,000 Islands.

Lunch: Lunch at a local restaurant

Afternoon: Depart for Big Cypress National Preserve Welcome Center. Take part in a ranger-led Swamp Walk win the walk. After the walk listen to a lecture from one of the Rangers.

Dinner: At Local Restaurant

Lodging: Captain's Lodge and Villas

Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Breakfast: At leisure in the Seafood Depot

Morning: Board a bus to Jane's Scenic Drive. Drive.We will ride this on Jane’s Scenic Drive, an unpaved road into the heart of the Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve. With its dense, enveloping tropical foliage, the Fakahatchee more closely resembles Jurassic Park than a South Florida ecosystem. This beautiful, remote road offers an excellent opportunity for viewing Florida’s flora and fauna in its wildest display.

Lunch: Lunch at the Island Cafe

Afternoon: Enjoy a lecture on the History of Everglades City and aera. After ride through the towns of the Everglades (Everglades City, Chokoloskee). Take a settlement at the end of the world, add a legendary gentlemen’s fishing and hunting lodge, bring in a daring financier with the determination to build a road across the Everglades, lay out an imposing city with a grid of wide boulevards and a town circle, then let it all stew for one hundred years of hurricanes, financial ruin, smugglers, intrigue and isolation and you get…Everglades City.

Dinner: At Restaurant

Lodging: Captain's Lodge and Villas

Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Breakfast: At leisure in the Seafood Depot

Morning: Biking Shark Valley Loop. They called it Shark Valley because in the days of old when the flow of the Everglades was stronger and the water from Florida Bay would reverse, sharks would be found well up into this slough - “literally sharks in the middle of the Everglades!” Get a close-up view of wild gators, turtles, Roseate Spoonbills and abounding varieties of wading birds and aquatic species.This tour will reward us midway with a wildlife viewing tower that extends the vistas into a seemingly infinite horizon.

Lunch: Lunch at Miccosukee Restaurant

Afternoon: Following lunch enjoy a thrilling airboat ride through the Everglades to with Miccosukee Heritage Indians. Skip across the shallow waters and sawgrass prairie to a distant Miccosukee island as your Native American guide prepares you for a day of natural wonders and cultural discovery! Watch in wonder as Great Blue Herons, Egrets, Woodstorks and Ibis take to flight as we travel into the true heart of the Florida Everglades. Later in the afternoon take a bus tour through the “Urban Threshold” were civilization meets wilderness In the southernmost reaches of the Florida peninsula, just before the coral rock islands of the Florida Keys make their break for open multi-hued seas, lies a unique locale. At once tropical and rural, it is the growing region of Homestead, Redland and Florida City. The people who settled this region were pioneers in the subtropics. Enter the southern entrance of Everglades National Park to explore the wildlife rich Anhinga Trail with your Naturalist Group Leader providing interpretation.

Dinner: Dinner at the Captain's Restaurant

Lodging: Best Western "Gateway to the Keys"

Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Breakfast: At the Hotel

Morning: Our first stop will be the Ernest F. Coe Visitor’s Center at the Main Entrance of Everglades National Park. The center has a giant diorama with life-size replicated, denizens of the Everglades on the prowl. A comfortable theater offers an informative film on the Everglades. Other exhibits located around the facility are thoroughly researched and very though-provoking. Opened in 1922 as the first motorway to the recreational town of Flamingo, the Old Ingraham Highway saw many inteprid motorists and tourists make their way this city. Once the area was dedicated as a National Park in 1947 and more visitors came there was a new and wider road opened in the 60’s. Now the Old Highway offers remote and advantageous intrusion into the wilderness of the Everglades. We will ride down this road and explore the Long Pine Key Area of the park.

Lunch: Picnic Lunch at Long Pine Key

Afternoon: Visit to Missile Site (Lecture - History and the role of South Florida during the Cold War.) Decades ago, our next field trip would have been classified top secret but the Cold War is over. Few people realize that Everglades National Park houses one of the best preserved relics of the Cold War in Florida. An historic Nike Hercules Missile Base, dubbed HM-69, remains virtually the same as it was when official use of the site was terminated in 1979. This missile base was built by the United States Army Corps of Engineers, completed in 1964 at the height of the Cold War, immediately following the Cuban Missile Crisis of October, 1962. At a time when national security against Soviet attack was America's main priority, the United States Army chose this strategic site within Everglades National Park, located 160 miles from the Cuban coast, to build an anti-aircraft missile site. This afternoon you will visit and learn about this site with interpretation from a local historian.

Dinner: Dinner at Captain’s Restaurant

Lodging: Best Western "Gateway to the Keys"

Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Breakfast: At the Hotel

Morning: End of Program

Meals Included: Breakfast