Beaches & Adventure Insider

This little fellow would be right at home at the Swamp Buggy Races! Credit: Lauren Tjaden, VISIT FLORIDA Beaches and Adventure Insider

I’ll bet my beach towel that you’ve never seen a parade like this!

Forget fancy floats and prancing ponies! Forget giant balloons and marching bands! The 62nd Annual Swamp Buggy Parade features wacky, wonderful and soon-to-be-filthy vehicles gearing up for the Swamp Buggy Races. The buggies come in vast varieties, from standard Jeeps with snorkels to giant monsters with NASCAR racing engines. 

The parade kicks off the fall swamp buggy competition at the Florida Sports Park (8250 Collier Blvd, Naples), offering you the perfect opportunity to pick your favorite buggies and drivers, soak up some fun and sun – and get ready for the buggies to soak up some mud!

The historic parade, held for the first time in 1949, rolls into Naples’ Tamiami Trail (U.S. 41 from Fleischmann Blvd. to 3rd. Ave. South) on Oct. 29, 2011, from 10 a.m. - noon.

And this will float your flip-flops! Parade admission is free.

Wait! Did I catch you wondering what a snorkel is doing on a jeep? If so, you’ve obviously never seen a swamp buggy race before.

The races, billed as the world's muddiest, are trademark Florida. The buggies race over the famous Mile O' Mud track – and to say it’s sloppy is a vast understatement. The figure eight track is flooded with water, around 18 inches deep in most areas, but much deeper in the dreaded sippi holes, so as you can imagine it gets really messy.

The buggies splash, splatter, slide and sometimes almost entirely disappear in the quagmire. (The part where they almost disappear is where the snorkel comes in.) Yeah, it’s fun.

Race dates are Oct. 29 and 30, 2011; Jan. 28 and 29, 2012; and March 3 and 4, 2012. Let’s roll!

Fun Fact: The bizarre Mile-O'-Mud course mimics the terrain that Swamp Buggies were originally invented for, namely, Florida's Everglades. Before airboats, people used swamp buggies to travel across the vast swampland.