Saturday, February 9, 2013-Everglades City Again!

Today we drove to Everglades City, the place we already visited with our friend, Melli, when she was here with us. 

We had phoned Jungle Erv’s a couple of days ago to find out which days Shane would be leading the airboat tours. He was our guide on our trip with Melli and we really liked his tour. This company does not take reservations.

We left beautiful, sunny Bonita Springs and 1 ½ hours later, the sky was cloudy, the air was chilly and we were lamenting that we didn’t bring enough jackets. 

However, the sky cleared, the sun came out and things warmed up considerably.

 

When we arrived we were disappointed to discover that Shane was leading tours on the gulf and not in the mangrove wilderness where we were going.

Our group was led by Bryan.

 We might have made a mistake when we told him that Shane claimed to be the fastest airboat driver on the island! Not only did Bryan accept the challenge, but he took us much faster than Shane ever did. He spun us completely around at times and often took us sideways around the turns. He even ran up and across the low banks. Janelle loved it!!!

We saw the raccoons again. Bryan explained that the mother coon has lived way past her life expectancy and she has cataracts on her eyes. He feels sorry for her and so he continues to feed her. He even gave her some tea with honey that she drank right out of the bottle. She continues to have off spring every year and three of her current litter was with her today.

 A pelican landed on our boat and rode a good while with us. I’m sure he was looking for food and one time, it seemed that he was about to peck Janelle’s hand!

We ate at Camellia Street Grill again even though there was a Seafood Festival on the island today. Lots and lots of traffic coming onto the island and we wanted to stay out of it as much as possible. Besides, we like this grill very much. We ate our lunch outside where we were able to watch the various air boats come by. Cordell was the only one in our group to eat alligator.

 After lunch, we went back to the boardwalk that meanders through the mangrove trees. We had hoped that Chris was going to be there today, but it was his day off. Kent was the alligator handler today and we were totally surprised when he let us hold Roscoe without a band around the little alligator’s mouth!

We all had different reactions to holding this alligator with his mouth unrestrained. Kent told us that Roscoe doesn’t bite, but all I know is I had seen a lot of teeth in that gator’s mouth when Chris handled him!

 

We made a quick stop on our way back “home” so that Janelle could look for a geocache. By finding it, she has earned a virtual souvenir on the geocaching web site.  

All of us had a fun and exciting day, but it sure was nice to get back to our condo and kick back!