Florida

Fort Myers

Lovers' Key is quite a nice beach.

Naples

• The Floridita Cafe and Cuban Bakery in Golden Gate. Good strip mall ethnic food, $7.99 a big portion of beef stew and plantains and rice with black beans.

Ten Thousand Islands Area

Marco Island

• Cocomo's Grill menu, Marco Island.

• Tigertail Beach, Marco Island. We went there.

• Salty Dawg kayak and fishing gear rentals.

Everglade City

• Everglade City

• Ted Smallwood's Store

• store stories.

• Triad restaurant . Not open for supper.

• Gulf CoastCos Visitor Center for Everglades National Park, which tells about kayak rentals too.

• Crabs R Us family stone crab fishing and retail store] and Everglades Old Time Charter, Daniels Family business.

• Maybe rent kayaks at Glades Haven General Store & Marina in Everglade City.

Inland Everglades

• Fakahatchee Strand State Park and

map and TripAdvisor reviews--lots of them. This was the highlight for us, with an giant owl, dead fish, alligators, and a water moccasin.

• Collier-Seminole State Park

• Island Hopper Boat Rental

• Ten Thousand Islands National Wildlife Refuge - Marsh Trail

Alligators

• The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) occasionally gets reports of unsettling encounters between a paddler and an alligator. The majority of these appear to be situations in which the boat bumps into an alligator. This could be because the alligator was in shallow water and could not submerge to avoid contact, or the alligator was on a bank and the boat startled the alligator, causing the alligator to escape toward deeper water in an attempt to flee. In a few incidents, alligators have actually bitten canoes and kayaks, resulting in minor injuries to people and damage to their boats."What Are The Risks To Canoeists And Kayakers From Alligators?" FLORIDA WILDLIFE COMMISSION (November 20, 2020).

There are about five unprovoked bites per year in Florida..the IUCN also says that only 6% of American alligator attacks are fatal. That is a low risk of death, particularly when compared to 63% for the ferocious Nile crocodile and 25-50% for the saltwater crocodile... alligator attacks are rare because they target prey animals that are smaller than adult humans. Their normal prey includes fish, birds, other reptiles and small mammals. Unfortunately, children are about the same size as these animals, so they can become targets. "Alligators are dangerous predators and they do sometimes attack humans, but deaths are uncommon," BBC.