Florida Airboat Rides located minutes from Tampa,
Orlando, and Kissimmee also offers sightseeing tours through the historic and
beautiful headwaters of the Florida everglades. Included in
this tour is MacKinnon Island and Shingle Creek on Lake Tohopekaliga in Central Florida.
Take a trip to the island and return when you are ready by
airboat.Come take an Airboat Ride and sightseeing
tour in natures own amusement park. Bring a picnic and spend
the day at your own pace enjoying the wildlife in natural
settings.
The Everglades is the southern half of a large
watershed arising in the vicinity of
Orlando known as the
Kissimmee River system. The Kissimmee flows from Taylor
Creek, Nubbin Slough, and Fish eating Creek, and discharges
into
Lake Okeechobee, a very large (730 mi˛ or 1,890 km˛),
shallow (10 ft or 3 m) fresh water lake. Water leaving Lake
Okeechobee in the wet season forms the Everglades, a
shallow, slow-moving flood at one time 40 miles (60 km) wide
and over 100 miles (160 km) long moving southward across a
nearly flat
limestone shelf to
Florida Bay at the southern end of the state. The
Everglades extends from Lake Okeechobee on the north to
Florida Bay on the south and was once bordered by
Big Cypress Swamp on the west and the Atlantic Coastal
Ridge on the east. It has been called a "River of Grass" by
Marjory Stone man Douglas[1]
because of the slow flow of water from Okeechobee southward
and the predominance of a
sedge known as
saw grass. Slightly elevated points in this extremely
flat area are covered with trees, usually
cypress and red mangrove.
