Swamp Buggy / Air Boat

Wednesday, it must be tourist day!  The day started with a Swamp Buggy tour.  Now a swamp buggy is a swamp buggy, not one of those pretentious vehicles that suits everyone or every purpose.  There are no cup holders, no windows, but it does have a reliable motor, leakproof roof, suitable suspension and a decent muffler.  It seats about 25, goes in three or four foot deep water, and manages to give everyone a decent experience.  They had about half a dozen of these big machines and you see two of them above.

On the one hour trip we saw many animals that grandkids would have loved so I'll share some pictures with them now.  You adults can peek too!

Not all the animals we saw were native to the area; many were imported to amuse the tourist! Honest, that's what the guide said!  Among the exotics were the Ostrich, like the family below.  Who can count how many babies there are?  They're only one day old! 

Whaaat?

Then we saw this little Egret [above].  They are in Spring plumage which means that they seem to have loose feathers that catch the wind, almost looks like they're having a bad hair day.

The next bunch includes a buffalo, some cows and pigs.  The wild pigs here are called Javelina [I think] and they have become a real problem.  They're quite vicious, have razor sharp horns and will attack people.  They have little ones four times a year!  Can you see the big and small babies in the middle of the picture below?

Florida has lots of alligators and they're pretty quiet at this time of year since they find it cold now.  They spend much of the day sunning themselves, like this guy.

The next picture was taken while we were on the air boat tour [notice how we're on the water side of the action?].  The boat operator threw some dog food pellets in the water and the pigs rushed in for a quick meal.  So did the birds and the alligators that were nearby.  The alligators are looking for baby pigs for their lunch...

The other tour we took was the air boat tour.  At first, I thought it was just noisy and wouldn't show us anything special.  Wrong!  We ended up seeing more wildlife from the air boat including huge turtles, many alligators, most of the land animals we saw on the other trip, and many birds.  All in all, a fun day!  Here's a picture of one of the other air boats, moving down one of the canals.

For supper, there was a special seafood meal at the recreation hall for the first 50 or so who bought tickets.  The four of us went and were pretty hypped-up about the five course meal we were about to receive.  It was prepared by a couple staying at the park; she's a professional cook apparently.  The first course was fabulous: shrimp cut in half, beautifully grilled with well prepared spicy rice.  Our expectation rose...  The next course was shrimp and small scallops: done properly but nothing really special.  The third consisted of more shrimp and scallops on fettucine; by now we were shrimped-out even though the shrimp was very good.  Desert ended up being a relief from shrimp...  All in all, we could have done better at many restaurants but still had a good time with Dave and Dale.  We then watched a movie on their TV ["I do, I don't", a fairly simple story about a wedding organizer].  We then watched two of the "Yes Minister" series on our computer, back at the cabin, and called it a night.  Today, Joan and Dale are off shopping...