People often wonder what we do while we are here. There are
many organized activities if you choose to participate, but sometimes things
just seem like a good idea at the time.
The day before the Super bowl, several people were hanging
around talking (and having toddy or two) and started a bear can regatta on our
lake – the boats were built with beer cans and duct tape and set free. Unfortunately when the wind caught the sails,
they were promptly swept away. This
resulted in people from both side of our “lake” having to send them back to the
starting point, to Captain Johnny.
We had several people watching as well as a few of the lake
citizens.
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| Captains |
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| A helping hand |
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| Neck to neck |
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| Intereference by in water citizen |
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| The winner ?????? |
While this was going on, some people had been playing
washers and a tournament was organized for the next day, so we had a pre Super
bowl tournament and pot luck dinner, basically very impromptu by people on our
street.
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| They started |
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| Spectators relaxing |
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| Ken & Eileen ready to start |
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| Ken shooting |
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| The winners |
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| Not winners |
Discussion was also
on about possibly having a Mardi Gras parade the next week and it became so,
along with music and drinks by the pool, put on by the park. Amazing what people can do!!!!
One of the things we had always wanted to do was an airboat
ride in the everglades so we went along with friends of ours, Jon and Eileen,
for the day to Everglades City. If was
really interesting and quite a bit of fun.
It started out rather slowly so I was unsure what was happening, but
once they passed through the slow zone (manatee area), our driver just let it
all our and we were speeding through the mangroves and in and out of the maze
of trees.
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| Airboat |
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| On the move |
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| Hitchhiker |
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| Between the mangroves |
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| Mangroves |
We did not see alligators in
this area, as they were further inland but we saw a colony of raccoons in a
bush.
I counted over a dozen of them as they came right out to
boat when the driver slowed down. They
were very cute and quite a bit smaller than ours back home when fully
grown.
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| Look closely and count |
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| This one is just hanging around |
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| Another bunch |
This particular company could
take you through where the grasses were as well, which is what I thought the
Everglades ride would be through, but this is now a protected area and very few
can go into in now.
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Through the grasses |
From there we headed south and stopped for lunch and then to
Great Cypress Park to see the alligators, the welcome center has a boardwalk
that you can stroll along and see different birds and quite a few alligators
nesting. The anhinga is a swamp bird common to Florida and we saw a nest of them when we were visiting friends up in Venice - they are huge birds.
Standing on the boardwalk, you can see dozens of alligators lying around, some moving, some just relaxing in the sun. They move around in the area when they need food or something changes in their habitat.
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| Just lying around |
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| Note the fish feeding off 'gators back - they don't go near his mouth though! |
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| Fish jumping - these guys will jump right out of the water and on land and back - from the catfish family |
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| Thinking about dinner |
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| Really thinking |
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| Great, there's dinner.. |
This is a very large area and a National Park
that would take you most of the day to go through and on back roads. This could be a trip for another day.
