We had already booked an airboat tour in Everglades City. It was around a 90 minute to 2 hour drive.
The tour was interesting. Mangrove trees everywhere and the boats went in the natural tunnels. 
Since there were 9 of us, we were on 2 boats. Our driver was...colorful. We got to learn about how his family had used the airboats to bring marijuana across the border in past generations and about his own violent past before finding God and becoming a tour guide. Hopefully Norah isn't telling her teachers the stories from the airboat! 😳
When we got back, the "gator guy" let us hold the gator and told us about gator farms and alligators in the wild. 
I was feeling brave but the kids refused to even touch his tail. This was the biggest one we saw this trip. Not like in 2013 when we saw lots of huge ones in the wild.
We had lunch at a diner and then went to a visitor center. We went on a much bigger and quieter boat then, in hopes of seeing Dolphins and manatees.
We saw lots of Dolphins but no luck on the manatees... Unless you count a dead one on the shore :(
When we got back it was beach time and we ordered pizza again from Ray's Puzza because it was super good and No one was willing to even think about driving again.
Norah slept most of this boat ride. Wesley gasped loudly every time he saw a dolphin, which was hysterical!
We decided to take the long way back to Estero Island through Naples because there's a bridge where you're supposed to be able too manatees.
We stopped on the boardwalk.
There was a pretty scenic location at the end, but we were disappointed to see no wildlife until we got back to the pond by the cars. Then we saw two tiny gators. They couldn't have been much over a foot long.
Not two weeks later, someone was on the same boardwalk and had this close encounter with the endangered Florida panther. I gotta saw, I'm glad we didn't run into one of those with Norah walking on her own. Wes was passed out in the car with Nick. A little scary to think about... Here's the YouTube video. Swear warning.
We never did find the manatee viewing, unfortunately. It was also an even longer drive because traffic was brutal that time of the day. We passed the time by snap chatting manatees back and forth between cars.
Allyssa captured this beautiful picture of the kids that is now a triptych canvas on my wall.
Great day ending with a beautiful sunset.
No comments:
Post a Comment