It is even later than usual for me to start blogging, and Travalon took like 150 photos today, so I'm actually not going to put them on at this time. Perhaps tomorrow morning, or on tomorrow's post. I will post a couple of photos from our resort. We hung out for a bit there this morning, since it was so wonderful. Here is the view out our window.
After we sat on our balcony enjoying that fabulous view, we hit the road and went to John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park, where we hiked on a woodsy trail and checked out the beach. Unfortunately they only do glass-bottom boat tours Wednesday through Saturday, so we couldn't see the only coral reef in the continental United States, or the famous underwater statue. Then we drove north to the top of Key Largo, but we weren't allowed to do anything up there, because the crocodile sanctuary isn't open to the public, and neither is the club at the top of the island. We could have parked on the road and bushwacked a trail to Crocodile Lake, but that sounded like too much work, so we drove over a bridge that spans the lake. We kept a lookout for crocodiles, but we didn't see any. That area of Florida is the only place in the world where the natural habitat of alligators and crocodiles overlap, so if we'd seen anything, how would we have known if it was a crocodile or an alligator anyway?
We had lunch at a local chain called Pollo Tropical. As the name implies, they serve chicken, and they also had Quatro Leches Cake on the menu. I was fascinated, since I'm very familiar with Tres Leches cake, but the guy taking our order couldn't tell us what the fourth milk was. He did say it was really good. We got one, but it was frozen, so we drove a while before digging into it, and it was very good, but really it tasted like a tres leches cake. That was our big Valentine's Day dessert. (I wanted to post a photo of two pelicans looking all lovey-dovey for the holiday, but Boethius wouldn't post even one photo from Travalon's camera.)
We hiked at the Shark Valley Visitors' Center of Everglades National Park, where I got Travalon what he wanted for Valentine's Day: a stuffed Florida panther. Then we walked along the canal and saw all sorts of birds there: two kinds of egrets, several types of herons, anhingas, and cormorants. We also saw lots of alligators. I heard some squeaking and looked down into the water, where I saw tiny baby alligators. I called Travalon over excitedly, thinking they were making the squeaking noise, but he noticed Big Mama Alligator right nearby, and we realized she was squeaking to warn us away. We skedaddled! Still, what was she thinking, building her nest right by the busy path full of humans? That's on you, Mama Gator!
We stopped again at the boardwalk where we had seen so many birds a couple of days ago, and again we saw anhingas, birds that look like anhingas but all black, juvenile anhingas, egrets, herons, cormorants, and a crow, along with several alligators. Then we drove through panther country but didn't see any panthers. In Immokalee we wanted to go to the Chinese buffet for dinner, but wouldn't you know the one day they are closed is Tuesday? That's just like the Chinese place near our house. Luckily we found another Chinese restaurant which actually has a menu virtually identical to the one near our house, so I got what I always get there: shrimp lo mein and a shrimp egg roll. Then we drove to our hotel in Sarasota. The internet seems slow here, but I got a text message saying I had used 75% of my data by using my phone as a hotspot, so please use WiFi whenever possible. It did say my data would renew today, so problem solved? Who knows?
Famous Hat
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