Adventuring in the Everglades

Sorry for the long pause between videos and post . . . things got a little busy around here!

When I looked at a map and saw that we'd be driving 45 minutes north for our fan boat adventure through Everglades National Park (and we needed to go north anyway to get to the airport), I made a last minute decision to cut out of Florida City a night early. I'm SOOOO glad I did! Okay, I'll get back to that. Chronology is less confusing :)

I didn't know exactly what to expect from the Everglades. My NGF called it the "Australia of America." That made me a little nervous, because I equate snakes and spiders with Australia--big ones. I was pleasantly surprised to find really big fan boats (they provided ear protection for *free* but we had to buy bug spray, which we should have bought earlier for the kayak trip :) Right, pleasantly surprised to find fan boats and what looked like prairie grass set on water. You couldn't actually see the water until you were drifting around corners in the big fan boat (that was SUPER fun!!). There were no low-hanging, jungle trees to drop miscellaneous awful things to drop on my head--it was great! We spotted a gator or two along the way, and that was fun (Buck said his vacation would not be complete with seeing an alligator, thankfully we took care of that with the double whammy of backyard gators at C and K's house on Easter). 

Later, we saw SO many alligators that it was crazy--plus alligator babies and alligators in irrigation ditches and fishing canals alongside the road as we drove trough Big Cypress National Preserve. We also saw wild boar and babies!! And peacocks?? No panthers despite the panther crossing signs on the freeways, but we couldn't expect to see EVERYTHING! :)

Above is more like how I pictured the Everglades, ha! It was a boardwalk to the wild animal show (a guy in a cage with sleepy live alligators that liked to eat raw chicken). Without fail, someone in our family would start humming the Jurassic Park theme song any time we were on a path like this. And we weren't the only ones who got this feeling, because there were Jurassic themed t-shirts in the gift shop :)

Below is at one of the northern visitor centers at the Everglades park. Graysen was working on a Junior Ranger badge and I think this helped him get the bingo on the bingo page! The water puddle behind the kids is an alligator nest. There is an alligator in the nest. Caelan was VERY nervous about taking this picture. She kind of looks like she's ready to push Graysen into Gabby into the pond if that thing moves, lol! (Probably not really though . . . ;) She asked Buck to keep an eye on the gator while I took the picture, just in case. Our fan boat guide said alligators are very shy and would rather hide than hurt people. They can move about 15 mph if inspired, and we were pretty sure we could run 15.5 mph if similarly inspired, ha! Gators need to sun heat their bodies to 65 degrees to digest food, so we figured if they were just laying around on the banks of the water, they were probably already full and weren't going to come chasing us. We also learned that only 30 people have died in gator attacks in the past 75 years, and you are four times more likely to finish life by getting gonked on the head by a falling coconut than you are nibbled by a gator. Helmets on beaches, people! It's the new fashion trend!

Next is your eye-spy challenge . . . can you spot the friendly gator (okay, probably not friendly :)?

Taa-daa! Zoom in of the last picture :)

Itty bitty baby gator! And Buck with two big gators!

Well, we missed the Everglades sign at the visitor center we visited, so I saw that along our path there was another visitor center perched on the gulf side of the 'glades just five minutes off our path to Naples, Florida (along the road which took us through Big Cypress, although we didn't stop at that visitor center either). It turned out to be a good stop, because although the gift shops were closed, they still had Junior Ranger badges available. The other ranger station was out and then we'd have had to send in Graysen's completed booklet and wait for them to mail it back, etc. etc. We arrived just as the rangers were closing up their outdoor shop, got the badge, popped into a gas station and got snacks, and were ready to finish our journey west.

Our hotel in Naples was SO much better than that dive in Florida City. We were welcomed with a provided supper--hot pizza (Digiorno :) and free drinks at the restaurant bar. There was a nice pool and a basketball court, although the putt putt only had one hole. Our room had two separate bedrooms, two bathrooms with two showers, and a full kitchen attached to the living room. It was like a small apartment, and it was awesome! The hotel also had four functioning washing machines and four functioning dryers--we were wearing the very last of what we'd packed. While the kids hung out outside by the pool, Buck and I got all that laundry rolling. You can see the result (we had to borrow clean trash bags because we didn't have any laundry baskets with us :) Insane amount of vacation laundry!

It had been a pretty full day, but we had one more Kristin-recommended stop on our to do list . . . Jeremiah's Ice. It's kind of a layered combo of ice cream in a ton of flavors with slushy in a ton of flavors. Very unique dessert experience, but when in Florida--go outside and eat slushy ice cream :)