Thursday: I've been looking forward to seeing a bunch of alligators again in the wild and photographing them for the thrill of it. Why is this a "thrill" you might ask? I don't know ... it just feels like an adventure to kind of be where an alligator could eat you if you weren't very careful. Know what I mean?
Well ... it turns out that it was even TOO COLD for the alligators!
David and I arrived at the State Park early--I think it wasn't quite 9am. It was super windy and super cold. Not like in Michigan or anything -- but this is FLORIDA, where people expect it to be toasty warm. Let me say right now, though. I do NOT come to Florida every year for the weather (although it is a nice bonus). I come to spend time with my brother and his family. I love them so much.
Myakka River State Park is 37,000 acres of wetlands, prairies, pineland's, palm trees, alligators, birds, trails, etc. It's a really unusual looking place (to a Michigander). The trees are SO different than up north. When you are deep in one of the trails, it feels like you are in a jungle--except jungles are NOT cold.
We did the "Canopy Walkway" which is basically a trail that the trees meet together overhead and it resembles a canopy. But there is also this "tower", which I mistakenly thought was over one of the alligator-filled ponds so that I could get a nice overhead shot ... but the tower and walkway are NOT over the river. Still--it was cool to climb and to walk across this wobbly bridge.
We climbed 115 steps to the TOP of the tower and this was our view!
Looking down, down, DOWN through the stairwell ...
I love heights ...
After our hike, we drove to a place where we saw some alligators a year ago. I don't remember all of the vultures a year ago, but there were even signs warning that "vultures can damage vehicles". How on earth?
Here is our CAUTION sign about the boasted alligators ... which by the way, could NOT be found ... not anywhere! Not on a trail, not in the river, not in the wetlands ... ZERO alligators! WHAT?!?!?
We walked everywhere searching for alligators. What a bunch of chickens. Just because it was windy and cold, they were nowhere to be found!
Aren't these the oddest trees ever? I was so tempted to climb one because it would have been so much fun--but then I remembered that I am 72.5 years old and talked myself out of it.
After eating our lunch at one of the park outposts, and stalling until about noon when we figured it would be warm enough for the alligators to come out, we backtracked and actually SAW a few alligators. The water is higher in the river this year than last, though, making it difficult for the gators to find any warm, dry "bank" upon which to sun themselves.
This is the first alligator we actually SAW and it was not close. This was the best I could do with zooming in.
Last year, I was able to walk UNDER this bridge where a nice big alligator was almost out of the water. I got some good photos of him--but this year, there was no way a person could walk under the bridge because ... you would have to swim.
We got a few more photos of these two alligators ...
And we found these TWO gators sunning themselves nearby where we got our lunch. They were quite large, but too far away to get a really good photo (I don't have any fancy lenses).
We finally had to give it up! I was thankful to at least get these few shots of the critters--look at how long their tails are!
