Naples, FL
Upscale Naples dining. The Everglades begin just east of the field — dramatic transition from manicured golf courses to wild swamp.
Naples consistently ranks as one of the wealthiest small cities in America. The airport is one of the busiest single-runway fields in the state. Swamp buggies were invented here. The transition from Naples' manicured coast to the raw Everglades is one of the most dramatic landscape changes visible from any airport in the US.
Fly into Fort Myers (KFMY) and Sanibel is the barrier island just offshore; the Ding Darling refuge is the eastern two-thirds of it, 6,400 acres of mangrove that read clearly from the air. Jay "Ding" Darling was a Pulitzer-winning political cartoonist who drew the first federal Duck Stamp and founded the National Wildlife Federation, and he talked Truman into protecting this land in 1945 when developers wanted to drain it. The four-mile Wildlife Drive runs through the mangrove flats; over 245 bird species have been logged here, including the roseate spoonbill, the pink one with the spatula bill. Hurricane Ian hit Sanibel head-on in 2022 and tore up the causeway and much of the refuge; recovery construction runs through 2027, so check current status before you go.
Adjacent winter homes of Thomas Edison (built 1885, "Seminole Lodge") and Henry Ford (purchased 1916, "The Mangoes"). The Edison Botanical Research Laboratory — where Edison researched alternative rubber sources for the war effort — still stands. 20+ acres of historic gardens; the Edison museum holds prototypes and inventions. Two miles from Page Field (KFMY); pilots can lunch in Fort Myers, tour both estates, and be back at the airport for a 4 PM departure.
Marjory Stoneman Douglas called it 'a river of grass' — the Everglades is actually a 60-mile-wide, inches-deep river flowing imperceptibly south from Lake Okeechobee to Florida Bay. From the air, the sawgrass prairie stretches to every horizon, punctuated by tree islands (hammocks) and alligator holes. The contrast between the developed east coast and the wild Everglades is one of the most dramatic human/nature boundaries visible from any aircraft.
At 730 square miles, Lake Okeechobee is the largest freshwater lake in the southeastern US — so large that from low altitudes over its center, you cannot see the far shore. Remarkably shallow at an average of 9 feet deep, it is completely encircled by the 143-mile Herbert Hoover Dike, built after the catastrophic 1928 Okeechobee Hurricane that killed over 2,500 people. From the air, the dike appears as an unnatural straight line separating the lake from surrounding sugar cane fields. The lake is the liquid heart of the Everglades ecosystem.