After spending some time housekeeping, we eventually headed out to the Florida Everglades for a couple of days. We arrived in the Everglades around five o’clock and went to our camping area…out of hundreds of sites, it looked like A5 was going to be the only site occupied that night. That’s because it was 150 degrees at night with one million mosquitoes per square foot. So we set up our tent and canopy as quickly as possible and lit our Off candle to try and protect us from Malaria and West Nile. Night time was rapidly approaching us, so we decided to go on a few hikes; Mahogany Hammock Trail and Pahayokee Overlook. Mahogany was like a dense jungle with unique vegetation in the middle of the “River of Grass”; in Layman’s terms, tree island. Mahogany Hammock was cool, but we wanted a more spectacular view of the river at sunset. We got to Pahayokee Overlook and realized we were in the right place. We climbed on the roof of the overlook and watched the sun descend into the abyss. After getting back to the campsite, we managed to make it through dinner with the raccoons, which we thought were gators and attempted to sleep the rest of the night without getting eaten alive. Day one bug bite count: Lieu-23, Ashley-12, Carson 10.

We wanted to get an overview of the Everglades because it’s ginormous, so we took a boat cruise around to see more of what the Everglades had to offer. It was a nice cruise and we learned a lot from a hippie, but the best part was seeing the crocs near the marina. After our croc sighting, we decided we needed to see a gator because there are 900 American Crocodiles and over a million gators. So we went to Anhinga Trail to meet the infamous gators ourselves. As we were walking over the boardwalk we heard a splash in the background and turned around to see our first gator. He was a cute little guy, about 4’7’’ with a nice set of teeth. Carson decided to pet him on the head with a branch, but to our surprise the gator did not appreciate Carson’s affection and bit the branch with authority. The next gator encounter was even better; no fences or obstructions between him and us. Our adrenalin was pumping because the gator came out of the water, opened his mouth, and hissed at us from a mere five feet away. Eventually he backed down, eBUS live 1, gator 0.

Our next destination was to ride a fan boat through the Everglades “River of Grass”. To our delight we also got a great gator show including holding baby gators. Check the pics. The fan boat driver was the man. We mobbed through the “River of Grass” with all sorts of donuts and 360’s. It was a blast. We headed back to the bus to prepare for our next adventure, the Florida Keys. Day two bug bite count: Lieu-37, Carson-21, Ashley-16.