ALLIGATORS!!!!!

Yesterday we went to the Everglades and went on an airboat ride. The whole point was to see an alligator finally in his natural habitat. As we drive down the street and pass canals and lakes, we look and look and never see any! So, since my friend Brittany is in town visiting, we decided to take matters into our own hands.

Here is us on the boat:

And this is the tour guide:

Everglades scenery:

And finally.... drumroll please: we found one alligator. It was difficult, because we apparently went during the wrong time of day, so they were all sleeping at the bottom of the water, but we woke this one up, and he was trying to hide so he could sleep in peace. So, we took our pictures and moved on. :)

Here is me and Brittany

So, these trees that look dead... they are dead. Apparently some guy a long long time ago thought it would be a good idea to bring these trees in from Australia to drink up all the water in the everglades so that they could use it for farmland. BUT he was not aware that the water in the everglades would be where Floridians would get their drinking water... Whoops! So, now they have to poison these trees so they don't drink the drinking water! (apparently they are quite effective at that)

Another thing we learned that I did not know, is that the everglades are not considered swamp. The state of Florida is on a tilt and so the water from Lake Okeechobee runs into the everglades which runs into the Gulf. Therefore, the Everglades are considered a very large, very slow-moving river. It travels at about 1 mile per day. This is what our tourguide told us.

And, here is us holding baby gators:

I wasn't going to do it... but they finally convinced me to. Usually I don't touch reptiles or bugs or anything like that, but this guy was kinda cute.

There were lots of other animals at the park that we got to see too, and so here are a few pictures:

This is a black leopard, and it's hard to see his spots in the picture, but they were pretty cool looking. This guys is supposedly very aggressive, which you would never be able to tell by the way he stares at whatever he's staring at... Yikes!

This chicken jumped right up like Brittany was supposed to feed it. To it's shagrin, she did not have any food, and this is her telling him he's out of luck.

Awesome day!! :)