As mentioned yesterday, we got an early start today to get to our 9:30 AM airboat tour of the Everglades! We all slathered ourselves in aloe, had a quick breakfast (my omelette required a knife to cut through) and then filed out like God's strongest soldiers ready to stand in the sun while violently sunburnt.
The ride was only an hour, and Hadestown was still playing from yesterday. That actually made an interesting entry to the car because as we entered Chant began playing. If you don't know, the beginning of that song sounds incredibly threatening. My first thought was if Mom thinks the Arctic Monkeys sound disturbing I have no idea what this song is
. Anyway, I was very entertained and the ride went quickly.
We were quite early to our tour, but we had planned to be because we all still needed to sunscreen. In fact, I made Dad sunscreen under my shirt so my burns and blisters on my back didn't get any worse. It's important for the sake of this story that you understand we store a lot of our sunscreen for the trip in the back of the trunk. That way when we need it, we open the trunk and it's right there for us to grab. Key being grab. As in remove from the trunk. So the trunk can close. That is not what happened today. This morning, we grabbed it and started spraying while the trunk was still open and Mom was sitting in the car to hide from the sun. As the boys started spraying themselves with suntan, mosquitos started swarming me. Like all over. Or maybe they were vampires, considering one bit my neck. Panicked, I ran around the parking lot trying to out run the flying bugs. I'm not the brightest bulb. At this point, I was handed the suntan lotion. Surely, my spraying aerosol would solve this infestation. Nope. I got my body sprayed as quickly as possible and doused myself in bug spray. At this point, I was hanging around, relishing my relief, when Mom started complaining about mosquitoes in the van. Oh, we probably should have closed the trunk once we realized mosquitoes would be a problem.
She got out to suntan and bug spray herself and we closed all the van's doors, hoping maybe the mosquitoes would die in the heat in the meantime. At that point, a man pulled in to give gas to the airboat and in his passenger seat was the cutest dog of all time. Adorable. Truly. We said hi and headed to check out the sign for the tour company. The most notable thing about it was two quite large grasshoppers mating right on its underside. How romantic!
We decided to head inside and at least catch some precious shade before our tour started. Inside the shady hut right by the canal, a guide pointed out one of the gators that likes to hang out near there. His name was Tony and he was a lovely and kind gentleman.
He also showed us a soft shelled turtle nearby. I don't remember the whole name he had for him, but it ended in the pancake
which I thought was very cute. He is one of the largest turtles of his breed that they have seen!
With that, our guide came over and told us there was one more thing to see and then we would leave the dock. Then he led us to another little hut on the side and pulled out a baby gator. I was pretty certain at this point that this company was an illegal poaching front. But it turns out that baby alligators actually have a very hard time surviving in the wild as they have way more predators, including their own parents. So the natives will help them survive to a mature age and release them! Dad and Gideon held it, too!
And with that, we were off. The airboat ride was very nice, and we were moving fast enough that the wind really cooled us off and prevented more mosquito disasters. Really, it was very pleasant and we saw all kinds of wildlife. Birds, gators, bugs, turtles… all kinds of wonderful things! The environment was also beautiful as well, Everglades National Park and all, but the thing that really stood out to me was the wildlife. Oh, and the driving. Apparently airboats are famous for being able to skid around and make crazy turns. We sure saw it! My thighs hold the evidence of where Mom held on for dear life. I think the only thing about the tour I disliked was that we paid for a private tour and they booked another passenger with us anyway. But he was cute, so we allowed it. He hung on for dear life the whole time! We are glad he made it.
Reentering the car was the moment of truth. Were the mosquitoes dead, or just waiting to stage a deadly ambush? Laying in wait for sure. We looked like we were trying to start a rhythm band the way we were all clapping the thin air around us. Gideon killed one on the ceiling and it left a blood stain! He thought it was cool, but Mom made him clean it up.
After a long and draining (physically and mentally) hour long car ride, we made it to the visitor center and official sign of Everglades National Park. We couldn't miss our sign photo! And neither could Patrick!
After our photo it was time for the visitor's center! Obviously, we had to hit the museum portion first. Of course, while we were minding our business and watching a nice calming movie, Welcome to Virginia rain began. Fine, because it is actually kind of relaxing. Until suddenly I began hearing a trickling from the door leading outside on my left. Hey, as long as my feet aren't wet I am fine. But the carpet was a little wet.
Mom decided this was the time we should go observe a vista of the Everglades from the visitor's center on a covered porch. That's fine, I wasn't wet. But then it started thundering. Oh man, was I scared. For those of you unfamiliar with Florida thunderstorms, they are a different breed. There are lighting strikes coming from so many areas that sometimes the rolls of thunder combine and last upwards of 10 seconds. The good news about them, however, is that they are normally very short-lived and easy to avoid via procrastination. We had plenty of procrastination fuel because we still had not even started looking at the gift shop.
We got our collectibles, Mom's walking stick pin and coaster as well as Gideon's token, and some other little goodies. The storm was not letting up. So we made the only decision someone in our position can make, and ran for our car. Luckily, we all made it safely, and our merchandise was dry. Me and Gideon enjoyed some Dippin' Dots from the visitor center as a little reward.
Next we had to decide what was for lunch, and we decided it was time Gideon gets something he loves: KFC/Taco Bell. We rushed our food into the hotel so it wasn't soggy and enjoyed a nice warm and dry meal while writing blogs and watching friends. We also tried flaming hot cheetos mac and cheese… it is a punishment brought upon Earth for our wrongdoings. I am still in pain from it whenever you are reading this. Anyway, after much hard work, Mom had caught up on all her blogs and photo downloads! We got her back up and running on html and uploading and she even got a practice blog out before dinner!
Then it was time for one of our local chain preferences down south. Miller's Alehouse. They serve boneless wing bites called zingers
in about 100 different ways, but I had to go with the only way I know… mac and cheese. It wasn't bad, but the whole serving was legitmately more than a full day's worth of calories. And it was tiny. I truly thought I was going to have to bite the bullet and injest that much, but it turns out it was hella rich. Problem solved. Pretty good, too.
The main topic around the dinner table was a fun new medical problem Gideon has and refuses to seek help for: every time he stands up, and I repeat every time, he gets blurry spots in his vision. And he didn't deign tell us (he says this is been an issue for 2 years) until now. Right. So now we have worried parents emailing doctor's offices and a million theories of things that could happen to Gideon. As his last meal
Mom said we could get Dairy Queen for Gideon. But as we were beginning to leave the parking lot, we saw a Checkers, which has great shakes. We tried to get shakes from there instead, and even got through ordering with the AI steward, but the lady at the window told us the AI was stupid and wasteful confused and their machine was broken. Oh, well. But that made the whole family want shakes, which we all got from Dairy Queen.
We certainly entertained ourselves on the way home. Let's just say I was frequently laughing so hard I was almost spitting out my shake (and actually had to once).
As it turns out, you can't keep Mom and Dad away from the blog grind, so once we got back to the hotel it was more writing, organizing and uploading for all. Except Gideon, who usually plays games on the home computer, which is currently being used for Dad to do maintenace on the main site. He actually had to sit there and stare at his much smaller phone screen. Poor thing, he might need glasses by the end of this ordeal!
Nice deed for the day: We let our friend, the grasshopper, hitchhike on our tour! Joking, but I don't think we've done one today, either.
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