Wednesday August 31
Gator Spotting
So today is another first time adventure. I went on an air boat ride through the Everglades when I was a kid, but I just remember vague snippets of it. It was a big boat, a lot of people, didn't see much I don't think. Pretty sure I was terrified. My brothers wanted to do it. Well now here we are, this was something I thought the boys would really enjoy although they are pretty much past watching Gator Boys and those shows they still love animals of any kind.
Our ride was scheduled for 10:30am and according to the GPS it was 25 minutes away in Kissimmee. It was a dreary morning though, raining at Disney World at least. We'd been watching the tropical storm coverage on the weather channel and they were now predicting landfall north of Tampa and that it would become a hurricane before or when it made landfall. Predicting it would be hitting Florida Friday. Awesome, Friday is the day we are supposed to fly out. Not gonna worry about it though, if we get stuck here, oh well. Worse places to be stuck. LOL
We had no idea what to expect though with the air boat ride and the rain so I called and was told they were monitoring the weather and so far they should be fine to run the morning tours, afternoon was looking iffy. So we went. Driving in Florida seems to always take longer than what you think it will. There was no traffic to speak of, but we kept hitting red lights and it ended up taking us 40 minutes to get there. Still made it 15 minutes early as we were told to do. As we pulled into the address given to us, we were pulling into a public park. There was a playground and a dock, bathrooms...and a house with the address we were given. But, the house also had a sign saying private residence. What??? Saw another sign by the path to the dock saying to check in for your air boat ride at the dock. It was a little confusing at first, I was expecting there to be some sort of little check in building with bathrooms, something. They use the house address to get your there and it worked. We checked in at the dock and then used the park bathrooms quickly while our Captain put the canopy up on the boat since it was sprinkling a bit.
We booked the 1 hour tour and took off with Captain Lynne down the canal leading to the lake. She gave us safety instructions and information about the lake on the way out. The boat has headsets that everyone wears and that way we can all hear what the Captain is saying and we could talk without having to press anything and she could hear us as well. The boat is very loud so you need to wear them while it's running. But what was great, it was just us. Four people guarantees a private ride, but the boat only seats 6 anyways so always a nice small group.
Once out there, we sped around the lake, through the grass, it was cool. This boat can go over anything, she said it could even drive on land if they had to. She also noted that the lake was mostly only 3-4 feet deep so if you fall in, just stand up. Haha! She took us to several spots where mother gators had nests with hatchlings. The babies are really hard to see, they are so tiny, only about 6 inches. We came across one spot where we could see a lot of babies, but the mother was nowhere to be seen. Captain Lynne said she hadn't see her in a few days and was afraid she had been caught and killed. It was hunting season. This just seems wrong to us, that they allow hunting of mothers leaving those babies to die without their mother. She didn't think they would last too long on their own. We saw lots of birds and our Captain pointed out what they were. She stopped for pictures a lot and was very informative and funny. It was over all too soon and we were stopping for our group picture before heading back into the canal to the dock.
We really enjoyed this experience. I wasn't sure if I would like it, I expected the boys to like it, but we all really enjoyed it and I would highly recommend this as a non-park excursions. I would do this again in a heartbeat. We bid farewell to our Captain and headed back to the car and back towards Disney. It was faster getting back and the GPS sent us a different way.
It was about noon by the time we were getting back to Disney area so we decided to stop at Disney Springs and check it out and have lunch. We parked in Lime Garage. Boys wanted Rainforest Cafe so we went there. No wait. We were entertained by a silly fish that was trying to swim up into the filter and kept getting pushed back by the water sprouting out. He did it the entire time we were eating. After a nice meal here, we wandered around a bit and went into World of Disney. We didn't stay too long and on our way out it was starting to rain again. Back to the hotel and to the pool. Checked in with SIL, but they were at Magic Kingdom, they had dinner at 1900 Park Fare that evening. It sprinkled on and off, but eventually it started raining hard so back to the villa we went.
Up next...what will we do for dinner, it's raining and we don't want to go anywhere!