One interesting thing about Shark Valley area of this park is the fact that we are surrounded by small villages of Miccosukee Indians. It seems that the tribe owns a small strip of land for some distance along the highway known as the Tamiami Trail and as such the small villages are our nearest neighbors. As people who have long admired the native peoples we have known and been in contact with across the western part of the USA, we looked forward to learning about this little known band of America's first citizens. For us this has been a very disappointing experience.

Both the Seminole and the Miccosukee are remnants of bands of Creek Indians who fled south into the Everglades to avoid the moving of their people to the Oklahoma Territory, in the period of Indian relocation. Their cultures are quite similar, but they speak different languages and are very different people. Both are a very private people and we respect that, but while the Seminole operate a museum to welcome and educate the visitors, the Miccosukee are very unfriendly. They operate shops and tourist attractions along the highway that are little more than junk shops and the staff are very unhelpful and rude. Most of the items sold in the shops are made in China, with the few things which are native made are of poor quality &  incredibly expensive. While most native Americans honor and respect all wildlife, the Miccosukee operate shows where they claim to wrestle alligators, which are kept in filthy pools, fed improper diets to keep them obese and sluggish and they think nothing of abusing them. They operate air boat rides where they go into areas with the noisy boats and feed the wildlife to keep them near for tourists to see, action bad for wildlife and not legal for US citizens.  I could write far more, but since blogs are normally short, suffice it to say that what they show to the visitor who looks beneath the surface glitter is not a thing to admire and is very unlike what we have come to respect and admire in most of our native peoples. They go to great lengths to get our money with as little contact or honest business as possible and they seem to take great pride in being bad neighbors to the national park and it's employees.  Most of the workers who have contact with the typical visitor are minimum wage employees from the community of recent immigrants to the country and almost none are tribal members.This is some of the worst of the tourist trap industry to be found in our area.

Current weather here, lows in the 50's and highs are running near 80 degrees. Most days are sunny to mostly sunny.