Everglades!

[wispfox]

A smattering of photos from Colorado Springs, plane flight, and Florida.

Around noon, there was an Everglades Boat Tour of the 10,000 Islands area. Saw a couple of dolphins, one of which played with the wake of the boat, numerous water birds (snowy egret, great blue heron, brown pelican, terns), some very distant osprey and unused osprey nests (they nest in winter), lots of water and mangrove trees. Probably more, but I don't recall.

We found food, after determining that my mom couldn't handle a lack of AC for food purposes and therefore we could not go to get tasty tasty fresh local fish (and thus making me grumpy for at least a little while). Subway had AC. Not much is open in summer at the Everglades, being off-season.

Then, we went to find a place which did buggy rides and - as it turns out - had an animal sanctuary. The buggy ride was shorter than expected, due to downpour (it _was_ mid-afternoon, after all), but we did get to see a deer, a racoon, a red-tailed hawk (too briefly for a photo), turkey vultures, and some examples of earlier housing structures (I doubt they were original).

We proceeded to the animal sanctuary, which had numerous alligators and crocodiles, turtles, snakes, Florida panthers, a Bengal Tiger or two, some deer, a racoon, and I think it was a donkey (it was not precisely on the path, which confused me). My mom was definitely having trouble around this point, due to lack of sufficient water and to walking too much. (we will definitely not be doing a whole lot of hiking or similar this trip, as I expected) We did go in and hold a baby alligator who thinks the human he was with is his mom, due to having been the one to feed the baby from hatching. Very cute little thing!

At this point, we were all done, and went home to eat salad for dinner (I'm amused by how close my preferred foods are to my parents' - you'd think we were related or something!), as well as slices of key lime pie. My mom showered, and went to bed early. We do have to be up at 6am (icky!) to go to the boat to Key West tomorrow, though, so being tired enough to go to bed early was probably not a bad thing.

I'm going to finish my photos uploading (have a separate post for links, I think), probably check my auctions on WoW, and then go to bed myself. 6am is bad enough when I'm fully time-zone adjusted. I'm not, yet. (did get up at 9am this morning without huge trouble, which was an improvement!)

Also, the water at this timeshare is terrible. We have bottled water for this reason. So weird.

Postcards to stamp and mail, perhaps tomorrow on the island, but probably Weds instead.

Definitely want to come back to south florida and drive down the keys with stops for the night on the way down. And maybe do the weekend Middle Keys Discovery Paddle tour.

Also want to come back to the Everglades with people for whom the Florida Everglades Backwater Tour would be fun and do-able. Or maybe the weekend long Adventure into the Everglades.