The Everglades

From the Alligator Farm we headed straight to the Everglades. Which included lots of driving. But was really, really beautiful. I've really wanted to go all the way down to Flamingo (the area of the Everglades that hits ocean) but we haven't made it a priority, so I am super (in Will's voice: "yew-per!") glad we got to go!

I didn't take any pictures at the visitors center because I felt awful. But with tylenol and antinausea and lunch, I started feeling a little better. But I have pictures of it last year on Christmas Day, if you happened to want to go back in my blog. After the visitors center, we continued on to several hikes. Which I thought I had pulled my camera out for, but apparently not. It was fun to see all the trees and things. We listened to a park rangers spiel on alligators v. crocodiles and got all the answers right since we had just heard all of it at the alligator farm. Megan was quite proud, haaahaahaa. 

These pictures are after several hikes, we stopped and nobody wanted to get out to do this hike. So only mom and Megan went, haha! I usually am totally up for these things, but like I said, I was not feeling well. Plus, I was worried about zika and there were SOOOOO many mosquitoes outside that day! Anyway, Sterling was the man, because he walked around and said "I need your camera, you would love this!" and then went around and took pics for me so I could enjoy it. Thanks, babe!

So, throughout the day with Megan, we discovered there are 4 areas of everglades. I can't remember what they are officially referred to as. But basically, different vegetation grows in each one. So primarily it is just open, vast wetlands of grass. But there was one tree section, one pigmy tree section, and I guess one other. Oh man, should've kept our information sheets! We did hikes in all of the sections, except the one above.

There's a lot of boardwalks in the hikes there, because everything is water.

This next hike was my favorite, except we all ended up running to the van because we were getting eaten alive by mosquitoes. But the vegetation was SOOOO cool. Also, they had a couple crazy big trees that had been hit by hurricanes, and it showed how shallow their root systems were because of the water, but it looked like half a basketball court was dug up around the tree!

Cutie cousins. Will insisted on carrying around his Ninja Turtle backpack. He's pretty adorable.

Mahogany Tree.

These next pictures are when we reached Flamingo. The last area of the Everglades. It was kind of a bust because we got there around 5pm and everything closed at 430pm. But Megan hunted down a guy to swear in Ruth and Devaney to their Junior Rangers. Haha. 

We came all this way because Jared heard that you have a 50/50 chance of seeing manatees and dolphins and other ocean things in the wintertime. We've seen manatees. I've seen them at Deering Estate and then we all saw them in Key West. But Jared REALLY wanted to see one. We didn't see anything. And we all ran into the van for safety from the horrible mosquitoes. But Jared and Megan weren't there. So we drove over there and THERE WERE THREE MANATEES. Jared was sooooo happy. There was also a crocodile, because in this part of the ocean, you get crocodiles, not alligators like the rest of the Everglades. It was a huge success. 

The massive crocodile. This is very zoomed in.

The manatees tail.

The manatees were hanging out right under the boats at the dock.

After that we drove back to Robert Is Here and our hotel for the night. It was a wonderful hotel. Will was tired, Ruth was carsick, I threw up in the hotel room a handful of times. Kiersten called around 8:45 to see if we were coming swimming or to hang out and we were already in bed. It was sad because we wanted to hang out with them...but man, that was a good night! None of the kids woke up until around 730, which is unheard of. We all slept sooo much! I guess keeping up with Megan wore us out! Plus the kids hadn't been getting their normal naps. Megan's kids had fun swimming, because the pool was heated, yay!, and hopefully had a great night.