Everglade City

We headed out early this morning with some friends (Paul and Phyllis) off of “Caper” to go pick up their rental car. Our destination was Everglade City on the other side of the coast and to the airboat ride that we had booked. It was a quick two hour trip and on the way we saw many alligators in the ditch on the side of the road, guess I know where I won’t be taking a bathroom break! We went into a gift  shop when we arrived in town as we were early and bought a few things. I have a bit of a “thing” for headlamps, the more powerful and better adjustability they are, the better. All this to say I found a really nice one so it was not a wasted trip into the store…..and of course you can’t have too many….

Attached is our airboat which seats six of us plus the driver. When you get in, you have to hang on, as there are no seatbelts or even higher sides to keep you in place. They start out slow, due to the noise while they are near the town limits but once they enter the everglades they open it up and go up to 35 MPH! The next hour was like being on an amusement park ride with the driver snaking us through narrow channels of mangroves and even over grassy areas. He also did some sliding 180 degree turns when we came up to dead ends. The alligators apparently were laying low in the mud today due to it being a colder day in order to stay warm (us still in shorts though) so we did not see any of them when we stopped part way in.  Apparently they used to park here and feed the alligators marshmallows? to get them near the airboat but some people complained and they can’t feed them any more :) I wouldn’t have thought that alligators would even look at a marshmallow let alone eat one! The ride was so much fun that not seeing any alligators was ok. By the time we arrived back to the boat it was dark. At this point Thursday still looks like the best time to cross over to the Bahamas, will find out more tomorrow.