Day 4 - ALLIGATORS!!!

My dear sweet husband Steve took pity on me today and let me rest while he and Noah went to the water park. They had GREAT fun and I had a wonderful nap! :) He didn't take any pictures but that's okay. I got some after dinner tonight.
We live near the Everglades. We can drive about 1/2 hour and be at the edge of the sea of grass where the alligators live. We knew Noah would enjoy it so we grabbed the dog (who HATES car rides) and off we went. There were several people around including a Hispanic couple with a little girl who were throwing food to a gator who was hanging out on an airboat ramp. This is HIGHLY dangerous and illegal but people do it anyway. Whatever she gave him was bright orange and he didn't eat it right away. I was taking pictures (from about 20 feet away with the zoom) when he came up out of the water and got whatever it was she'd thrown! Unfortunately I didn't have my good camera, just the Kodak Easy Share. Otherwise, this would have been a GREAT picture! Still it's very powerful! And this is a SMALL gator!!!

After it came closer to us Baxter finally noticed the thing. (Of course we kept Noah and Baxter far enough away that they were safe!) But all of a sudden Bax starts to growl! And then he started barking! The gator turned and looked at him as if to say "You're barking at ME?!?! I'd EAT you if I could!" We quickly made Bax quiet down and left the immediate vicinity! Hehe!
There were several other gators nearby that were bigger. These two seemed to be vying for territory and kept swimming at each other. No gator fights tho. Just a standoff :(

Again, I wish I'd had my better camera because the sunset was AMAZING!! And there was a small heron feeding at the edge of a marshy area. And I got a pic of Bax exploring the area while Steve and Noah looked at all the animal info and rules and regulations for the area.



Afterwards we took Bax with us to Dairy Queen. OH how he loves ice cream! Hehe! Only a couple of small bites tho... We'd never taken him anywhere public like that before and he did pretty well for an obsessive compulsive dog! But I was too busy controlling him and enjoying my hot fudge sundae to take any pics. :)
Tomorrow is Lion Country Safari. I LOVE that place! So there will be LOTS of pics! Both camera batteries are charging and both digi cards are empty! Plus I have an extra one for each camera! Hehe! I'm a crazy scrapper!
Thanks for looking and leave me some LOVE this time! haha! Blessings!