National Park Guide: Florida's Everglades

— -- Chris Bond of Chicago sensed he was in for adventure shortly after he pulled up to a pay station at Everglades National Park and commented on the "nice alligator statue."

Wife Adrienne replied: "It's no statue. He just blinked at me."

Bond, who's 30 and a medical researcher at Northwestern University, has visited several national parks, and he says of Everglades: "There is probably more wildlife there than at any other park I've been to." He made his first trip five years ago and his second in early April.

Park spokeswoman Linda Friar calls the park's biodiversity "phenomenal." Walk the Anhinga Trail in November through March, "and it's like National Geographic popping out at you. You can see as many as 35 different species in less than a quarter of a mile."

The park is refuge to more than 20 rare, endangered or threatened animal species, including the Florida panther, snail kite, alligator, crocodile and manatee. It's home to more than 400 species of birds, including roseate spoonbills and great blue herons.

Everglades "might not be as pretty and sexy as some of the parks out West," Bond says, "but it has a beauty all its own."

***

About the park

Size: 1.5 million acres

Annual visitors: 934,351 in 2011

Became a national park: 1947

A bit of the park's history: The Calusa populated the grassy wetlands until European settler-borne diseases wiped out the tribe by the 1700s. Developers started draining the wetlands in the late 1800s. Landscape architect Ernest Coe and journalist Marjory Stoneman Douglas, author of The Everglades: River of Grass, pushed for the park's creation and the ecosystem's preservation.

When visiting: Ernest Coe Visitor Center, 40001 State Road 9336, in Homestead; Shark Valley Visitor Center, 36000 SW 8th St., in Miami; Gulf Coast Visitor Center, 815 Oyster Bar Lane, in Everglades City; Flamingo Center, 38 miles south of the Coe center; Royal Palm Center, about 4 miles southwest of the Coe cnter, on State Road 9336. Visitor info: 305-242-7700

Fun fact: Only place in the world where alligators and crocodiles co-exist naturally.

Ruane also reports for The News-Press in Fort Myers, Fla.