SLSIL and I decided at the late hour of 5:30pm last night as we ate a pizza from Uno's pizzeria that we should go on an airboat ride today and see a real live gator. I immediately jumped at the chance. SLSIL isn't a huge fan of gators, in fact she hates them, so I figured we'd never have a chance. She had a glass of wine in her so she was having a weak moment. I jumped at the chance and called Big Toho Airboat rides and made a reservation. Then I called them back to see how much they were. Reasonable and we were "gARANteed an aLLeeGator" sighting. (You need to read that with a thick Louisiana accent to get the full experience of "Jerry" who answered the phone and took our reservations.).
The deal was done. We had our appt to got gator watching. I only hoped they weren't watching us and licking their lips as they were checking out which one of us would make the best meal.
We were up at the crack of dawn today, right...the crack of dawn...that's funny. We were up at 8am, which for the loud obnoxious people who came home late last night and woke us up, it was early (and the little devil in me was tempted to slam our door and make as much noise as possible - but I chose to be nice, for a change.) We made our stop at Bucky's and we were off. Being the navi"gator" I had my directions in hand and we headed south to Lake Toho-something-or-other. We had just a small glitch in finding the place, but we prevailed and had t
ime to wonder around the dock area for 30 minutes as I melted in the freakin heat. Turn the oven off already. Sheesh.
ime to wonder around the dock area for 30 minutes as I melted in the freakin heat. Turn the oven off already. Sheesh. Then like a byplane landing came our airboat. 600HP of pure goodness. As Cap'n Jack put it, "This sucker is Baaad!" We hopped onboard, did our very little safety speech and we were off. Oh. My. God. This airboat kicked some serious ass. That's me, by the way, with Cap'n Jack in the middle of the swamp where he totally could have robbed us or fed us to the gators that weren't out.
What a beautiful area - in a very different way. I mean, being from the pine tree capital of the world, it was bizarre to see green stuff growing on top of the water. Wild birds everywhere. Oh and before I forget, I need to make a correction to my blog yesterday when I said it was a crane eating the lizards, I was mistaking. It's an Egret.
We only saw one alligator, and you can't even tell it's an alligator from my photo, but if you look real close to the big brown blob to the left of the photo, that's an alligator, who, upon snapping this shot, disappeared into the green murky water.
Cap'n Jack took us all over looking for gators, but it was way too warm for them to be toward the top of the water. Being odd cold blooded little creatures and all, they prefer cool areas.
The reality was, even though we didn't see as many gators as I would have preferred, the boat ride was an absolute blast.
Tomorrow vacation comes to an end and I have to think about actually logging onto the computer to *gasp* read work email. Ugh. I can honestly say, for the first time in my life, I didn't bother checking email once. Well, okay I checked it, but didn't really do any work.
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