Everglades: Part II

We made our way back out to the Everglades National Park this weekend. The park has several different entrances, each one a little different from the other. This time we headed to the entrance at Everglades city, located on the gulf side of the park. At this location you can rent a canoe and float through the park. For day trips, they recommend two different routes. One route takes you out to the "10,000 islands" while another more safer route has you going up a little stream. We opted for that route.

Go cougars. On the back of the shirt it says something like "I cheer for BYU and anyone playing against UTAH." We got ice cream after and one of the locals came up to me in the parlor and said, "Oh the runnin' utes ain't that bad. I was hoping they'd play Florida 'cause that would've been a helluva game."

Jackie took on the roll of being the front canoeist and boy did she do a great job

We started out on a bay but then made our way to the river

The video is of Jackie giving the tour through the mangroves

I spy a little turlte, do you?

It was actually very beautiful canoeing through the river, especially when we got to the "mangrove tunnel" section

At a couple of points, it got a little tricky. We ran into the trees and I thought it would be a great time to get a picture, so you guys could see how thick it truly is. Well, Jackie is smiling in this picture but about 4 seconds later is a different story. As I was putting the camera down, she started yelling to back up. I looked up and she just looked me dead in the eyes and kept yelling "BACK UP!" At first I imagined that we had run into an aligator nest, or something like that. As scared as she was, I knew an aligator couldn't do that. Nope. It had to be a spider. When she had turned around, she saw the biggest, scariest spider in her life. The spider varied in sizes the rest of the day but at one point it was as big as her fist and at another time she compared it in size to our nephew Jack's face (2 year old Jack can be seen skiing here).

Florida is home to the best lawn decorations in the world

The fish were biting

This stork flew over our boat not with a baby, but a fish in its mouth. You could see the fish still jumping around in his mouth. When we paddled downstream, we ran into him again. He was still working on the fish. If you click on the picture you should be able to see the tail of the fish sticking out of his mouth.

One way to tell the birds are big around here without actually seeing one