Miami's road trip west starts where the city's grid gives out and US-41 turns into the Tamiami Trail, two lanes laid straight across the river of grass with the mile markers ticking past. First comes Shark Valley, where an observation tower stands over the sawgrass slough and the flat country opens out in every direction from the top. Farther west, inside Big Cypress National Preserve, the rig sleeps beside a small lake at Midway, the sites set in a ring around the water under a wide sky.
That's two parks on one road, Everglades National Park at Shark Valley and the preserve around Midway, and a motorhome can stay plugged in at one lakeside site all week while the days run out and back along the Trail. It's the slow, parked version of the Everglades, with dinner on the grill at the picnic table and everyone back inside under the air when the afternoon heat builds.
Shark Valley's loop and the lake at Midway
Shark Valley is 30 miles west of Miami off US-41, and you see it on foot, by bike, or from the narrated tram on a 15-mile loop road. The 70-foot tower stands at the halfway point, and it's where everyone climbs out for the long look across the slough. The tram is the easy call with younger kids, and bikes let older ones set their own pace.
Midway is farther out the Trail at about mile marker 52, and its RV sites have electric hookups, the only ones in the preserve. They circle the lake out in the open with little to no shade, which on a Florida afternoon is the whole case for the hookup. A good rhythm is Shark Valley one morning, a slow day at the lake the next, and the rig cool and ready whenever you come back.
Book the Midway site before the rig. Dry season, November through April, is the window for Shark Valley and Big Cypress and the peak for pads, and advance reservations are highly recommended. Summer is wet, hot and buggy, with hurricane season running through November, so a warm-month week leans hard on that electric site.
If the rig comes out early and the pad is already held, Midway can be the first night. Miami Beach makes a better day at either end of the week, the pastel Art Deco fronts along Ocean Drive with the Atlantic right across the street. A couple traveling light who'd rather start at Larry and Penny Thompson Park beside Zoo Miami and head south along Biscayne Bay will find that trip on the Miami campervan page.
Miami to Orlando, the long way up the peninsula
Flying into Miami and home from Orlando turns the week into a run from the bottom of Florida to the middle, and the south end deserves the most nights. The Keys, strung island to island along the Overseas Highway over open water, have their own Florida Keys RV page. Flamingo, where the road through Everglades National Park ends at Florida Bay, is the week on the Homestead RV page.
Midway makes a good last night in the south before the drive north on Florida's Turnpike, and the Orlando RV page has the trips that start where this one ends. El Monte RV keeps branches in both Miami and Orlando, and its one-way rentals are built around picking up in one city and dropping off in another, so the rig goes back at the Orlando branch.
