Florida Everglades Airboating

TripAdvisor is becoming more and more important when it comes time to plan a vacation. We use it ourselves to check out hotels and activities when we travel. We just wanted to take a moment to thank those of you who have posted feedback about Captain Doug’s Airboat Tours on TripAdvisor. We read all of your feedback and take it very seriously.

Almost all of our feedback is positive. We always love to hear that people had a great vacation in the Everglades. It puts a big smile on all our faces!

Some feedback lets us know what we can still improve. While we can’t control Mother Nature, we can control the service that we provide.

So, thank you for giving us your honest opinions! We’re already making improvements based on your suggestions.

See you on TripAdvisor!

This is the eleventh installment of 12 Things to Experience on an Everglades Airboat Tour which can also be downloaded as a free eBook.

This is the eighth installment of 12 Things to Experience on an Everglades Airboat Tour which can also be downloaded as a free eBook.

The Everglades is known throughout the world for its abundant bird life. The warm, shallow, and vast “river” has attracted many types of birds to this region for thousands of years.

In the 1800s an artist named John James Audubon, wrote during a visit to south Florida, “We observed great flocks of wading birds flying overhead toward their evening roosts …. They appeared in such numbers to actually block out the light from the sun for some time.”

The Everglades is home to several species of large wading birds such as…

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This is the seventh installment of 12 Things to Experience on an Everglades Airboat Tour which can also be downloaded as a free eBook.

Raccoons
Most people don’t think about raccoons when they picture the marshes of the Everglades. However, it is actually very common to see raccoon families on your airboat tour. Typically, raccoons are nocturnal creatures, meaning they are active at night. However, in the Everglades, it is the tide that greatly influences their schedule. So, it is not unusual to see them active in the middle of the day!

The raccoons also tend to be a bit smaller than the raccoons found in the North. This is possibly due in part to our warmer climate. You may also see a….

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This is the sixth installment of 12 Things to Experience on an Everglades Airboat Tour which can also be downloaded as a free eBook.

Manatees are truly amazing creatures, which you may have the opportunity to see on your Everglades airboat tour. The manatee is Florida’s state marine mammal, and is a large aquatic relative of the elephant. Florida Manatees are grayish brown in color and have thick, wrinkled skin. Because of their size and the way they “graze” around, feeding on vegetation in the water, manatees are also fondly referred to as Sea Cows.

The front flippers of manatees help them steer or sometimes crawl through shallow water. They also have powerful flat tails that help propel them through the water. Despite their small eyes and lack of outer ears, manatees are thought to see and hear quite well. Manatees are large aquatic mammals, which means they are warm blooded, breathe air, don’t lay eggs, and nurse their young with milk.

Manatees also have a type of “hair”. Because fur gets heavy and cold when it is wet, manatees don’t need it. Instead, they have whiskers on their skin, as well as thick layers of fat to keep them warm. Here are some interesting facts about manatees:

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This is the fifth installment of 12 Things to Experience on an Everglades Airboat Tour which can also be downloaded as a free eBook.

Mangroves are one of the true Florida natives. Florida has an estimated 469,000 acres of mangrove forests. These mangroves are huge factors contributing to the overall health of the state’s southern coastal zone. They provide an ecosystem which traps and cycles various organic materials, chemical elements, and important nutrients.

The roots of a mangrove act not only as physical traps, but also provide a surface for various marine organisms to attach themselves. Many of these attached organisms can also filter water through their bodies and, in turn, trap and cycle nutrients.

Mangroves actually thrive in salty environments because they are able to obtain fresh water from the saltwater. Some mangroves secrete excess salt through their leaves, others are able to block absorption of salt at their roots. In Florida, there are 3 species of Mangroves:

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This is the third installment of 12 Things to Experience on an Everglades Airboat Tour which can also be downloaded as a free eBook.

The Everglades and the 10,000 Islands are some of the last unexplored wilderness of Florida. The area considered the “Everglades” is defined as subtropical wetlands in the southern portion of Florida. It comprises the southern half of a large watershed.

The Everglades system begins near Orlando, where the Kissimmee River discharges into Lake Okeechobee. Water leaving the lake in the wet season forms a slow-moving river that is 60 miles wide and over 100 miles long. This river flows southward across a limestone shelf to Florida Bay at the southern end of the state.

The Everglades are shaped by water and fire, as this area experiences frequent flooding in the wet season and drought in the dry season. These sawgrass marshes are part of a complex system of interdependent ecosystems which include:

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This is the third installment of 12 Things to Experience on an Everglades Airboat Tour which can also be downloaded as a free eBook.

Not only is an airboat the most effective way of getting around in the Everglades, swamps or marshlands…sometimes it is the ONLY way. Reeds and grasses of swampland can easily tangle in the propellers of boats. This can prevent even shallowdraft rowboats from traveling in these paths. A flat-bottomed, air-propelled boat may be your only option. This is why the airboat was born!

The first airboat, called the Ugly Duckling, was built in 1905 in Nova Scotia, Canada by a team led by Dr. Alexander Graham Bell. It was used to test various engines and prop configurations. Glenn Curtiss, an associate of Dr. Bell, was reported to have registered the first airboat in Florida in 1920.

By the 1930s you could see homemade airboats traveling through the swamps and marshes of Florida and Louisiana as a means of getting around. There is at least one company in Florida that claims to have been providing airboat rides as entertainment since the mid 1930s. But how exactly does it work?

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This is the second installment of 12 Things to Experience on an Everglades Airboat Tour which can also be downloaded as a free eBook.

What’s the first thing that pops into most people’s minds when they think of the Florida Everglades?

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