Snakes and Alligators

Thursday April 11^th we were in Koreshan State Park and after making sure everyone was comfortable in the pen... (I’m not aware of anyone who can get this comfortable this quickly.  It's unreal.)

We headed over to tour the historic village.  There were several buildings where this cult lived for 40 years starting around 1920, and we were lucky enough to stumble across a cooking demonstration.  I would have rather stumbled over some real life cult ancestors we could talk to but this was good too.  We tasted dutch oven baked beans and bread with honey butter.

On our way back to the RV on the trail, Dave suddenly yells “Jesus!” and leaps about two feet to the side.  I am not as stupid as I look so when the avid camper, backpacker, naturalist and outdoorsman I’m with yells Jesus and leaps out of the way, I do the same.  After yelling my own expletive and hopping to the side, I looked down to see what it was we were Jesus-ing about.

Holy crap!  I stepped much more carefully after that.  Then we ran into a second trail resident who was much less worthy of yelling out the Lord’s name.

Let me just stop to recap here for a moment.  The wildlife we have had close encounters with so far on our trip tally as follows:

Armadillo

Deer

Manatee

Owl

Buzzard

Rabbit

Squirrel

Turtle

Snake

Thinking our canine friends could use an outing, we looked up a dog beach nearby and thought it would be a great idea to take the dogs and let them run around, leash free, enjoying the surf and the sand while Dave and I whittled the afternoon away soaking up sunshine and reveling in our day.

If only.

First, we arrived when the tide was in (at noon?) and this was the trail to the beach.

So Maiya had to wade/swim and I carried Belle and Dave carried Brodie, both of whom would have no clue how to swim or get through it.  Tiny twinges of regret started creeping in right away.

The beach was lovely and at first, things went smoothly.

But soon after we arrived I realized that “dog beach” does not mean a few dogs sniffing around and playfully splashing in the water near their owners.  Because apparently, I am as stupid as I look.  Dog beach means lots and lots of huge breeds, off leash, bounding, barking, slamming into people and other dogs, tearing across the sand and kicking it up everywhere, trampling towels and bags, occasionally getting into scraps with one another and oh dear lord was that an experience.

Dave tried to get Maiya to go for a swim to get away from the mayhem but she was too nervous and didn’t know whether to stick with Dave or stick with me.

Brodie and Belle were nervous wrecks and by the end, Belle was cowering under Dave’s legs and even then the other dogs would run up, stick their noses into her and we’d have snarling and yelping and okay it’s time to go.

You might categorize what we went through as a disaster but I prefer the term “learning experience”.  Dog beach, dog park, dog anything means wild, crazy, barking, frantic animals and that’s not our speed at this point in life.  Lesson learned.

Back at our rig site I found what I thought was someone’s discarded trash but turns out it was an orange from the tree above us.  An actual orange in the wild!  In Florida!  I gotta try it.

It was so sour I’m not even sure it wasn’t a grapefruit.

That night we took everyone for a nice long walk but Brodie was too wiped out from the dog beach so Dave lent a hand.

Friday morning we drove to Shark Valley in the Everglades National Park which is a really misleading name if you ask me because there are exactly zero sharks and it’s in a swamp, not a valley.  Dave was jazzed about the Everglades because it’s a national park he’s never visited and we were smart enough to bring Brodie’s backpack.

We walked across the boardwalk and saw baby alligators.  Lots and lots of baby alligators.

Then we saw momma alligator.  She was right there!  Inches from us!

After seeing lots of alligators and stopping for a water break, we saw a sign at the end of the trail that said no pets allowed.  Oops.  There was no such sign at the trailhead so we honestly didn’t know but maybe bringing two small elderly dogs to see alligators posed a smidge of danger.  Maybe.

Our next stop was a primitive park called Midway that has electric hookups but no water.  Electricity is an absolute must because we need AC but water isn’t as pressing because we have a very large water tank in the RV so we can go for a while on that.  And there’s always beer!

The Midway had signs around that said to please not feed the alligators (not “there might be alligators”. No, no.  It was “don’t feed them”.  Yikes.), also put food away so the bears don’t get it (bears?!), and watch out for panthers.  Alligators, panthers and bears? OH MY!