Everglades National Park, Florida, 2026.

I highly, highly, highly recommend taking a solo vacation.

Not a long weekend, not staying in your own cabin on a family cruise. Like a real, fly-somewhere-you’ve-never-been, drive-across-time-zones, no-meeting-up-with-people, all-by-yourself, multi-day trip.

First of all, you can do whatever you want. Want to skip the museum and lay by the pool? Do it. Too hung over to get up early and watch the sunrise? Cool — take some Tylenol and sleep in. Ate too many fried clams at lunch? No worries — have some gas station spicy dill almonds for dinner and call it a day. You are the master of your own destiny on a solo trip. If you want to change up the itinerary and spend more time here and less time there, the only person you have to convince is you.

Plus, you can starfish out on that nice comfy hotel bed all you want.

Second, if you take a wrong turn or happen to end up on what appears to have once been a road but is now an overgrown, pothole-riddled danger alley with standing water deep enough to make you worry you’re not going to get that deposit back on the rental car, no one ever has to know about it and the adrenaline rush of relief when you find the real road again will keep you awake for most of the night… but not bothering anyone else while you toss and turn and ruminate over how lucky you are you didn’t get stuck and eaten alive by mosquitos (or worse).

Third, there is something very special in driving alone for miles and miles through an untouched wilderness without seeing another human that is both terrifying and exhilarating. Taking in the enormity of the solitude while you navigate mysterious roads completely immersed in wild landscapes and your own wild thoughts.

This is the best part.

On this particular journey, you’re driving through the Everglades on a road that dead ends literally at the sea; only one way in and one way out. You have to have appropriate music for this drive — maybe some ambient slow-groove house like The Orb’s “Little Fluffy Clouds,” FC Kahuna’s “Hayling” and Crosses’ “Death Bell.”

What you will see is not what you expect.

This part of the world is subtropical wilderness — the largest in North America — but it’s not just a big, hot swamp populated by deadly creatures great (crocs, gators and panthers) and small (bugs, bugs, bugs). This long and lonely drive will take you through rivers of sawgrass and stately slash-pine forests.

You’ll see mangrove stands with stilt-like roots gripping creek sides like long, slim fingers plunging into the water. Dreamy cypress swamps covered in blankets of Spanish moss that make you feel like you’re in Kermit’s home at the beginning of The Muppet Movie. Ghost forests of skeletal mangroves decimated by saltwater that look like an apocalyptic wasteland.

And on that long, lonely road you might just happen upon a vibrant orange- and black-striped snake that is as big around as your arm and as long as the Corolla you’re driving sunning in the middle of the road. When it zooms off into the brush before you can snap a photo, you may think your eyes were playing tricks on you. They weren’t — and Emily at the Skunk Ape Research Headquarters in Ochopee will tell you that if you’re sure it wasn’t a python, then you probably saw either a kingsnake or a coral snake “that just ate if it was that big.” (It’s entirely possible I’m exaggerating the memory, but I swear to god I’ve never seen a danger noodle that big in the wild and if the Corolla had decided to crap out right at that moment, I would have definitely been toast.)

Those shifting green-and-gold landscapes paired with heat and humidity that you can slice with a knife makes for the perfect environment to both immerse yourself in your own thoughts and get out of your own head, something you can really only do if you’re alone. It’s a world of dangerous beauty — where deadly dinosaur-era dragons and centipedes the size of tongue depressors thrive next to some of the rarest and most stunning flora (orchids) and fauna (panthers) in the world. Where your breath can be taken away by the untouched wildness of it all while any number of things can quite literally kill you at any moment.

It’s a type of immersion that can make your brain feel wrung out like a sponge.

Like I said, I very highly recommend it.

State Highway 9336 between the Ernest F. Coe Visitor Center and the Guy Bradley Center at Flamingo. BRING LOTS OF WATER, a full tank of gas, bug spray with DEET, a fully charged camera and phone and a great playlist. You will see some shit (but not a lot of humans).