Into the Everglades

   For those few friends and friends who are actually reading this blog...we say thank you for hanging with us as we learn the art... and nuts and bolts of blogging. We will not  deceive you and so we must say that it is our #1 intention to increase our  company's visibility on the web and to drive more folks to our website http://www.chesapeakebaychristmas.com/ ! Shawnette and I are both technologically challenged ( I much more that she...I do not even have my own facebook page yet...for fear  of knowing too much about my kids lives!)...so once  again thank you again for  bearing with us.
        Ok that does it!! back to our story...Into the Everglades

       It was now Thursday of our week long trip to Sanibel Island...and we were now ready to venture off the island for a side trip to Everglades City (about 60 miles SE of Sanibel and known to be  the gateway to the everglades).  We were on a mission....to take an air boat ride into the everglades...with our clipped coupon to Speedy's Air boat Adventures!! Wow what  adventure seekers we are ...the Golden Girls meet...the wild Florida swamplands full of Alligators, snakes, Skunk Apes( oh yeah!), and best of all Captain Austin!!!...our 20 something  air boat driver at  Speedy's! He was a blue eyed cutie about the same age as the statistical average of all of our own sons ( and we have 10 between us!) and we could tell he was elated to be the lucky purveyor of  our menopausal group into the the "Glades".
    We all stepped on board, trying to act air boat savvy, our hats and sunscreen in place, my arm linked through my mom's (76) who was such a trooper! Captain Austin told us we could not wear hats because it was going to be a wild and woolly ride like a roller coaster....Yes!!! so hats came off, ear protection went on and we were off!!!  Well almost...we puttered across the canal to be shown a large alligator parked conveniently on the bank, he looked ferocious...or did he?? We would later wonder!
    And we were off...again...this time through he mangrove tunnels, where Captain Austin navigated with amazing precision...as he could have easily decapitated any one of us at will with a minor steering adjustment! We needed to stay on his good side for sure!  We were looking , looking , looking for the illusive Skunk Ape (Big Foot of the Everglades) and most of all for Gators!  We looked and looked some more only to see a few birds ( that we could now identify due to our Tram tour of the Ding Darling Nature Preserve on Sanibel...we were such good students!) flushed from their peaceful perches by our extremely noisy air boat! I really do think someone should invent a silent air boat so we could actually have a chance of seeing a gator or a  Skunk Ape!!! But nevertheless we did get a great ride full of back sliding turns out of the mangroves and across the grasslands...enough to quench our mid life quest for adventure! After all we did have Captain Austin to talk about for the rest of the day... and whether or not the one alligator we saw was real or a plant!!?
      We drove back to Sanibel that afternoon only to find that all of the Everglade Gators were parked on the banks of the canal that ran right along the shoulder of HWY 41 The Tamiami Trail. I think they were car watching  along the HWY,a gator's version of Nascar, which must have been much more exciting for them than hanging out in the actual Everglades Swamp...go figure! We must have counted at least 100 on our trip back to Sanibel...lounging ever so  contentedly along the banks of a man made highway ditch!!! We checked Gators off of our list and that only left the Skunk Ape to titillate our imaginations of  unknown and unseen Swampy Things!
    Join us for the next installment  "Stalking Doc Ford... Again"
Thanks for reading and once again check us out on http://www.chesapeakebaychristmas.com/!