The eyes would be easy to miss, rising an inch or two above the brackish water like burls on a half-sunken log. And we would have, if our Floridian companions hadn’t pointed them out, because we’d been focused on a pink flamingo lawn ornament tucked in the nearby foliage. Besides the two vertical pupils, the rest of the alligator’s scaled, 6-foot-long body is hidden under a mat of vibrant green algae. It blinks and disappears beneath the surface without a ripple.

A submerged dinosaur is strange enough. But this is Florida, where 12-foot alligators wander golf courses and 9-foot snakes and finger-​chomping, 200-pound turtles hide among the swampy forests. Earlier, I came across an armadillo, the only animal (besides humans) known to carry leprosy. In such a menagerie of scaly horrors, one gator is hardly noteworthy.

The strip of dirt under our tires, however, very much is: a steep, purpose-built mountain bike trail in the center of the flattest and lowest state in the Union.