Fourteen months ago, Flamingo sent us home soaked. It was Veterans Day weekend 2024, it rained all night, and our old Coleman tent leaked through the seams until the kids' sleeping bags were heavy with water. That tent went to a coach friend for backyard use, and our green-and-tan dome tent joined the family because of that night.
So going back to Flamingo for MLK weekend felt like a rematch. It was also, we're fairly sure, our last tent trip for a while.
To the bottom of the Everglades
Flamingo is about as far south as you can drive on the Florida mainland. From our house in Kendall it's a little over 70 miles, and the last 38 are the park road from the main entrance, a long flat drive through sawgrass, pinelands and cypress domes with nothing that feels like Miami.
Before any of that comes the Robert Is Here stop in Homestead, which is not up for debate. Four milkshakes and a bag of fruit came to $30. Nico had strawberry and wore a fair amount of it.
At the entrance station I renewed our America the Beautiful pass for another year, $80, which goes in the gear-and-passes column, not this trip. We made one stop on the drive down at a boardwalk, and yes, we gave the boardwalk talk in the car first. Nico now finishes my sentences.
Shade, bugs, bathroom: the Flamingo tent sites are open grass with almost no shade, fine in January and brutal in July. The bathhouse was a short walk and clean. Bugs were the big question.
Where were the mosquitoes?
Flamingo has a reputation, and it earned it. In summer the mosquitoes are a wall. In January, after a string of dry fronts, the ranger at the visitor center told us the bugs had been light all week, and she was right. At sunset there was a short burst of no-see-ums that sent Maya into the tent with her book, and we ran the Thermacell at dinner out of habit. That was it. We ate outside, sat out after dark and only sprayed the kids once.
The weather helped. Highs around 77, a low of 54 the first night and a dry breeze off Florida Bay that kept the tent walls ticking all night. No rain at all. I checked the tent corners at 2 a.m. anyway, out of old habit.
Crocodiles, ospreys and a lot of stars
The marina is the best free show in the park. On Saturday afternoon two American crocodiles were lying near the boat ramp, gray-green and narrow-snouted, completely still. A ranger told the kids that South Florida is the only place in the country where alligators and crocodiles live side by side. Maya drew both snouts in her journal, the gator's wide U and the crocodile's pointed V, and labeled them like a field guide. Nico wanted to know if crocodiles follow the same boardwalk rules as alligators. As far as we're concerned, they do. A school bus away.
Ospreys worked the water off the marina while we ate lunch on the seawall, and Dana counted seven pelicans on a single piling and declared it the best seat in the park.
The stars were the reason we stayed up. Flamingo is a long way from city light, and on Saturday night the sky was thick with them. Orion stood high in the south, the kids found the Pleiades with a little help, and Maya fell asleep with her star chart on her chest and her headlamp still on.
What it cost, and why it's our last tent trip for a while
- Campsite, two nights at $25: $50
- Gas: $30
- Groceries: $51
- Robert Is Here: $30
- Ice: $8
- Cat sitter: $30
That's $199 for a long weekend at the bottom of the Everglades. Cheap, beautiful and dry.
It's probably also the last trip in the tent for a while. After Jekyll Island, Dana announced we're buying a camper, and we've already looked at four used pop-ups around Miami-Dade, with two more on the calendar. Nothing's decided, but the list in the back of the trip log is getting long.
On Monday morning the sun came up over the bay and burned the dew off the rain fly before breakfast, so for once I packed a completely dry tent. After the mildew we found last summer, that felt like the right way to end a tent era. I rolled it tight, Nico sat on it to squeeze the air out, and we drove home.
