We'll miss your big grin ...

By the time this post hits the blog, we hope to be well on our way back north. We'll be returning to the land where these toothy creatures are only seen in a zoo or on TV, not along the highway ! But we plan to come back and get reacquainted. from a distance, of course - familiarity might breed more than contempt !

Note: since we'll be on the road for a couple of days I won't be able to visit you. I will be coming around again, hopefully by Monday evening.

(70-200mm  f9.0  1/125 sec  ISO200)

click on photo to enlarge

Call of the wild

All is quiet on the domestic front late this evening - everyone to bed except yours truly. I'd better not make it too late either since we're forfeiting an hour's sleep tonight and the young 'uns aren't aware of that - I expect their 'wake up call' that much earlier.

Today's main event was a trip to a 90,000+ acre wilderness adventure park where we were taken for a tour on a 'buggy' (a well-past-its-best-before-date school bus with very large openings where windows used to be). We were not disappointed by the denizens of the wild - we saw many, and we even had the privilege of caressing the skin (hide ?) of an alligator ! Our granddaughters also participated in that, although with some initial trepidation. Oh, the alligator was only about 1m/3' long and seemed to be under control of the driver - who doubled as the tour guide.

Near the end of the tour we stopped on a bridge over a cypress swamp - here are photos made of both sides of the bridge. I'll share more shots in future posts.

(both photos made with a 70-200mm lens at f5.6, ISO200 and shutter speeds of 1/100 and 1/500 sec)

Look, but don't touch

No visit to southern Florida is complete without a visit to the Everglades. Today my son and I were faced with the monumental decision of whether to go shopping with the ladies or go on an airboat tour to see some wildlife. After agonizing over this for about a millisecond, the Everglades won out.

Surprisingly we didn't see any reptiles on the airboat tour, although we did see a lot of different birds. However, along a canal which ran beside one of the highways, we saw countless alligators. In places there were 4 or 5 grouped together, lounging in the sun, seemingly oblivious to their surroundings, but undoubtedly ready to lunge at anything that resembled a snack. In other places large, lone creatures had staked out their territory.

Alligator numbers have rebounded significantly over the past 25 years, and we saw ample evidence of that today.

(70-200mm  f20  1/40 sec  ISO200)

(18-55mm  f8.0  1/125 sec  ISO200)