Adventures in Florida

I couldn't have asked for a better trip. It's short, but full of just enough fun. Day number two was full of plenty adventure. We started out the day planning to go to the beach. It's about 20 minutes for Liz's condo and as we started over the causeway realized the clouds were not really conducive to laying on the beach. We instead decided to go on an adventure searching for Florida Wildlife. Our first goal were the manatees.

Luckily there was a park right near by with a manatee viewing area. Unfortunately, there were not manatees. Liz used every trick in her book to get them to appear out of the water, but they were just too shy.
Of course the moment we got back in the car Liz had to pull out her wet ones to sanitize her hands. I was really surprised she touched the water at all without a comment about it being "disgusting" (Liz suffers from a mild case of OCD...she's been that way her whole life and everyone close to her loves her for it.)
Our second stop was the neighborhood peacocks. Near the manatee viewing area is a subdivision home to dozens of peacocks. They walk around the yards like squirrels would in any other normal neighborhood.We also discovered they make a horrendous noise equivalent to a cat dying when they talk to each other.

For our final animal adventure we head down to the St. John's river for an air boat ride. The six or seven mile trip was wonderful! Right when we pulled up we knew we were in for some good animal action.

Luckily we are not small, nor do we have any small children so this was not a worry for us, but those alligators are pretty scary.

There was a group of four other women on the boat with us from Iowa, which made the trip that much more enjoyable. Our driver Dan did a great job of finding us some gators. It was pretty warm out so, as he said, no one likes to sit in the sun in black leather, but it's also mating season so there were plenty of alligator to see. Dan did a great job of getting us close and teaching us a lot of facts about the animals.

The one we got closest to was a 40 year old and about 15 feet. I guess they can live to be about 100. Who knew? They also did a good job of camouflaging themselves.
But we were all scared to be that close.
Once the ride was over Dan even explained how they hunt and kill alligators. It was pretty intense and extensive, but we still decided to buy some gator meat which we plan to BBQ for lunch today. Next to fish it has the lowest cholesterol of any meat.

After the air boat ride we had our fill of Florida's wildlife, but we weren't done with our adventures. After a two hour nap on the beach, Liz and I woke up just moments before the afternoon thunderstorms started and headed over to her rock climbing gym.

I haven't been rock climbing since I was in elementary school and my first attempt on the wall made the activity very unappealing. I only got up about five feet and didn't want to just jump off, but after you do it once, you're hooked as Liz would say. I think I made it to the top two or three more times.Liz has been climbing since February and is pretty good. I'm glad she found a unique hobby down here that she enjoys. It really does give you a cardio and strength training workout.Once we were tired of climbing we came home and got ready for dinner. We decided on Thai food, which was very good.

The night ended with a few drinks and the NBA playoff game. I think that was the best part of the evening. The Cavs, our hometown team is playing Orlando, the team of choice here. It was do or die for the Cavs and when the other bar patrons realized we were cheering for Cleveland they were none too happy, especially when the Cavs won.

I have one more afternoon left, then my flight leaves around 5 this afternoon. I'm a little worried about the thunderstorms, but hopefully I'll make all my connecting flights on time and get back to Kentucky safe and sound.

I still feel lucky to have enough time to travel down here and lucky to have friends who live in vacation cities. Liz and I have known each other since the seventh grade, 12 years. It's good to have a friend who reminds me of a much more simple time in life.