Everglades

Last weekend I took a day trip down to the Everglades National Park. We wanted to see some alligators into hire natural habitat, since they seem to be making news lately for eating people in the peoples habitat. It was an amazing day and mercifully mosquito free. It has been very dry here for the past few weeks, unseasonably so. That meant that the mosquitoes hadn't come out yet. It also meant that the alligators were confined to the deep water holes. We took a walk over on of them and saw some huge gators!

Everglades national park is huge. We stopped at the Royal Palm center to take a walk over the big water hole there. This is gator central! There is a boardwalk the goes over the water hole. All along it there were alligators laying out on the shore sunning themselves. Later we saw some swimming around. One particularly large male was pushing around a smaller female, but she wanted no part of him. It is alligator mating season now so the Ranger told us that they were more aggressive than normal.


Pretty much wall to wall alligators!


These two were playing tag in the mud hole. The big one must have been 12 feet long!


Yet more alligators. By the time we finished with the water hole, we were not impressed with them anymore. There were just so many!


This guy climbed out of the water and up the steep bank to pose with me for the picture. He's a Florida soft shell turtle. He was looking for handouts and got pissed when we had nothing for him. He stomped off in a huff!


This is Laura and myself on the boardwalk at the water hole. That's an alligator swimming behind her.