Birthday Trip Day 2

Here are some pictures from Day2. It may seem like a lot, but believe me, there are a whole lot more.

I took a lot of pictures from bridges. The Gulf of Mexico is absolutely beautiful off the coast of Florida! This was on our way to Sarasota FL.

Sarasota FL. I think I want to retire here. In this exact house. I'll have a house here, a cabin in the mountains and yearly trips to Disney World with my grandkids.  :)

When we went through Naples, FL, we saw a bunch of these Panther crossing signs. Yikes!! Rest assure none decided to cross our path.

While riding through the Everglades, we saw signs for airboat rides and decided to take one. Very cool experience. I want to do the one they have here in Mobile.

Look honey a hawk!

I have a funny story to tell about this little guy (the biggest in the cage). I'll wait for the pictures though because they make it funnier.

While waiting for our airboat, this alligator decided to grace us with his presence.

I spotted the first alligator (we only saw two) of the actual airboat tour. Yay me!

This mama alligator was actually back in a hole with her babies. The captain had an empty capri sun that he would rattle to get the alligators to approach the boat. According to the captain, people would feed the alligators marshmellows, so the alligators are approaching the boat thinking we are about to feed them.  Sorry Ms. Alligator, no food for you today. At least not from us.

She got pretty dang close.

The Everglades are down by at least 2 feet of water. That root is normally covered up. I forget what type of plant that is, but it survives off of salt water.

Now we get to this cute little baby alligator. Notice that his mouth is not taped shut like most are when humans are holding them.

Well, I really don't think I need to tell you that I really had no desire to hold this alligator. I mean he might be small, but I'm sure his teeth still hurt. This is not a look of "oh, I'm so happy to be holding this baby alligator." But one of "I'm holding this alligator like you wanted me too, now please take my freaking picture so I can give him back to the captain."  But the captain would not take him back from me. In fact, the dumb ole captain thought it would be funny to thump poor baby alligator on the head causing the alligator to

almost BITE ME!!! So what would any normal person do? Yes, that's right I threw the poor baby alligator at the captain. But that mean captain did not catch him, and he landed on the floor with at BANG. I hope he's ok. :(  I'm just glad no mama alligator was around.

Well, it was late in the evening by the time we got out of the Everglades, and night time by the time we made it to the Keys.

We ate the Bayside Grille in Key Largo for dinner. Very good food. I had the drunken Mahi Mahi, which is mahi mahi (duh right) flambayed in rum and then covered with mandarin oranges and cranberries.  Delicious!

I loved this painting in the lobby of our hotel. We didn't go all the way down to Key West (and believe me it was a long way down) that night. We stayed in Islamorada (which means purple islands).