May 2– The Fullest Day Yet

Today (though since I’m writing this late it was actually yesterday) was eventful to say the least. I awoke at 6:00 am to turn off that stupid thing insistent upon waking me up. I did so and was just about to fall back asleep when Isaac’s alarm started going off, a very loud and annoying alarm. I immediately walked over to where he was standing because I didn’t want the alarm to wake up David unnecessarily. Eventually I had woken him up enough to get him to hand me his phone and I quickly turned it off. After this I decided I was too awake to go back to sleep and so just woke Isaac and up. We got ready quickly, given our deadline, and before 6:30 we were in the car ready to leave.

After a very short drive we arrived at the beach and walked the small distance to the ocean we we walked until the sun arose; It was a beautiful sight seeing the sun emerge from the depths below the ocean, to silhouette the clouds before it and leave a line of glimmering ocean below. Just look at the picture.

After the sun was thoroughly risen, we got back into the car and began our 4 1/2 hour drive to Miami. Nothing of particular glamour happened on the drive, just a couple hundred miles of road and the occasional road kill (some of which were possums). Eventually we got the big city of Miami and navigated our way through the mass of construction to ultimately decide that there was nothing terribly interesting to see and no where to park even if there were (I can’t imagine what the famous spring break in Miami must be like). Acknowledging this we drove a much shorter distance to the everglades.

Earlier in our stay in Florida I had found an interesting and cheap looking park named the Everglades Safari Park. I navigated us there (Isaac was driving) and almost immediately after leaving my car we were escorted to an air boat for the low price of $20 a person. The boat ride was about 35 minutes during which we saw a ton of alligators, along with quite a few birds. It was pretty cool in between areas where our guide was either pointing out an animal or explaining something about the river (apparently the everglades is actually a river, who knew), in between these points the airboat would pick up speed and you could just feel the wind blowing across your face and see the boat lift off the water as it almost hovered across.

Apparently there’s a drought in Florida, or at least the area where the everglades are, because the water level was down a lot. Because of this we couldn’t go as far in the boat, but on the up side we got to see a lot more alligators because they didn’t have anywhere to go except where we were. Long story short we got a lot of pictures.

After the boat tour we were directed to a back area with word of an “alligator show”. We got to the stadium shaped area where 4 or 5 alligators were lounging in a fenced off area. One of the guides went into the alligators play place and started describing some characteristics of alligators and stating some interesting facts. One of the more notable of these facts is that alligators have little sensory dots, I want to call them, on the inside of their mouths that whenever they feel something their mouths automatically close. At this point the guide stuck his hand in the nearest alligators mouth and pulled it out quickly as the ‘gators mouth shut and a girl in the audience screamed. He did this repeatedly and every time he did the girl screamed, it made me laugh.

He then offered to let us take pictures holding a  younger alligator (3 years old) for three dollars. Isaac wanted to do this so we waited for everyone else and then took a couple pictures of the youngster named Snappy.

We walked around the back area, which housed several more alligators and I think one crocodile. Next we decided (with a slight influence by Nathan Otten) to go see the Florida Keys.  I drove the hundred and a little miles to Key west. It was quite the sight, driving between the Islands on a small, one-lane road, expanding miles over the pure ocean. Looking right and left and seeing miles of dark blue until it met with the lighter blue  of the sky. We didn’t do much on the islands themselves, I wish we had but Isaac was in a hurry. We made it to Key west just in time to see the sunset. We watched the sun, we had seen rise earlier, sink back into the watery depths, for a moment conjoining with the earth before it finally went under (by conjoining I mean that you could see the sun reflect off of the water).

After a watching the darkening horizon for a little we walked back a little ways into the city and witnessed (though did not participate much) some of the nightlife. A short while later we made it back to the car, which luckily didn’t have a ticket on it and started driving off the islands.

As we drove back a thunder storm erupted in the sky. We would drive through small spots with heavy rain and then suddenly it would stop completely, repeating as we drove on. This was cool but the amazing part was that in the clear spots I would look up at the clouds and the occasional lightning strike (not down to earth, just within a cloud) would light up the entire panorama, everything visible. I can’t describe the scene well enough to give it justice but it was beautiful, incredible, unbelievable. Of course I wanted to get pictures but it’s relatively difficult to get a picture of lighting, just ask the people trying to study it.

Eventually we got back onto the mainland of Florida (it was about midnight) and I, after having driven most of the day, gave the keys over to Isaac to drive until he felt tired enough to pull over. Almost immediately after we got back on the interstate I fell asleep so if anything interesting did happen I wasn’t witness to it. I awoke about 2 hours later to the car stalling, though I think this was somewhat on purpose. We were in a Wal-mart parking lot and a after a very small amount of rearranging we both fell asleep.

I’d like to tell you about what’s happened so far this morning but I guess I’ll leave that to Isaac.

 

 

Interesting observations:

Isaac has a bad habit of literally nodding off. Whenever I’m driving he puts his leg up for whatever reason and then promptly begins to fade off into the world of dreams. As he does so, in the real world his leg starts inching over until it is almost laying on my arm as I try to shift. I’ve had to push his leg off of me several times.

Alligators feel almost exactly like their scales found on purses and such, surprise, surprise. But the bottom of an alligator is actually pretty soft, for scales that is.

Turtles really aren’t fast. When we were speeding along on the airboat we ran over one. Poor little guy, he was probably okay though, they have shells for a reason.

Key west would be a fun place to live. It’s beautiful, doesn’t appear to be too expensive (there were a bunch of $5 sales), and has basically everything you need not to mention good nightlife.