The Everglades National Park

These notes aim to provide guidance for handicapped, disabled or wheelchair users who travel to the Everglades National Park, Florida. These informal notes are from a trip I took there with my wife.

Getting There
The Everglades National Park is located in southern Florida. There are two entrances – east and west. The East entrance is about an hour’s drive from Miami (at Homestead/Florida City), the West entrance is accessible from Tampa (via Everglades City). Note that there are no roads through the park from one gate to the other. You choose whichever one you want.

Getting Around
The Everglades is a very big park, and only a small fraction is accessible to humans – and an even smaller fraction to wheeling humans. Nevertheless, we found it an immensely satisfying experience and a great place to get away from it all.

The National Park Service provide good information on all aspects of the park, including accessibility, try www.nps.gov/ever.

We stayed on the east side of the park. There is one good paved road and few roads that might be okay for 4WD. The best way to get around is by car – drive to one of the accessible walks and get out and experience the park.

Things to do
By far the most satisfying trail is the Anhinga trail at the Royal Palm Visitor Centre. This is just a mile or two from the East gate entrance, so you can make it a day trip from Miami if you want.

The trail itself is a combination of boardwalk and pavement with no significant slopes. Although you could wheel it in 30 minutes, there is so much wildlife to see that I took several hours to complete the circuit.

The visitor center has an excellent accessible toilet and a small and pokey shop.

Other accessible trails are listed on the NPS web-site, The ones I tried were less exciting in terms of wildlife but a pleasant way to get into nature. The Gumbo-Limbo trail is rougher than the Anhinga, but gives you the feeling of being deep in the woods – a nice feeling for those of us who are normally confined to pavements and “civilization”. The Payahokee Overlook trail gives views over the sawgrass plains. It is important to enter it from the opening at the end of the car-park (with the big wheelchair sign – so that you go around the trail clockwise) as the viewing platform is not accessible from the other direction.

Heat and mosquitoes prevented me from trying the others. Speaking of which, winter is the best time to visit. We visited in May and the mosquitoes were pretty bad – although the guides told us that they hadn’t really got up for the summer yet!

The boat rides from Flamingo Lodge are accessible and well-worth it. The boats are large flat, barge-like designs. Wheeling on was no problem with just a step of an inch or so between the dock and the boat. Once on board you don’t have to move – just enjoy the wildlife! The toilets (or heads) are not accessible.

The shop and toilets at Flamingo visitor centre are accessible.

Places to Stay
Some campsites are accessible, details are provided on the National Park Services website. However, we stayed in a cottage at Flamingo. The cottages and lodge are managed by Xanterra (www.beautiful-places-on-earth.com). They have two accessible cottages and advance reservation is strongly recommended.

Our cottage had a large living room (with a sofa-bed) and a bedroom with a queen sized bed. There was a small step (1” – 25mm) into the living room from outside. Everywhere else had level access. The bathroom was roomy, but it had a very strange shower with a molded plastic seat in one corner and a 4” lip that was difficult to get a wheelchair over. Due to the awkward positioning of the grab rails, it is not possible to sit on the seat comfortably if you have balance problems. Nor is it possible to reach the controls for the shower from the seat once you are there. The shower head is fixed. Between grabbing onto the handrails that are trying to push you out of the seat, and trying to balance, only a dexterous octopus could succeed in showering himself without aid. Luckily my wife stepped in to ensure that I smelled presentable for the duration of our stay.

It should be noted that this is the Everglades, and there is a profusion of wildlife attempting to occupy the same place as the cottages. Our cottage had an infestation of carpenter ants when we arrived. These were dealt with quickly by the staff once we mentioned it to them. However, you should be prepared to share your living space with various creatures. Apart from the carpenter ants, we had a lizard that lived under the bed, and an enormous spider that lived over the bed. (I chose not to point out the latter to my wife – she had enough to deal with between the ants and the lizard!). On the plus side you get the same profusion of wildlife outside, and rabbits, egrets and ospreys were common sights through the window over breakfast.

Places to eat
There is a restaurant at the Flamingo centre. Although I believe it is accessible, we did not eat there, preferring to cook our own food in the cottage.