780 Hrs.

Today, I spent the whole day with Cory and his parents, who are visiting from California, at Everglades National Park. The weather was beautiful, and we ended up taking a fifteen mile hike around part of the Everglades. I have wanted to visit the Everglades for a lot of my life, and it was pretty much just as cool as I thought it would be. As we were driving into the park, we drove past a huge alligator that was right on the side of the road! We pulled over, took a bunch of pictures, and then drove the rest of the way into the park several minutes later. After parking the car, we began our hike, and right away spotted another alligator! Once again, we stopped, took lots of pictures, and generally just ooed and awed. The next alligator we saw was not so exciting since it was kind of small. For our next five hours on our hike, we saw dozens more alligators, so it wasn't as incredibly exciting to see them by the time we left. Some alligators were tiny like the ones we saw just emerging from a nest, and some were over eight feet long. Some were hiding in the water so that we could only see their eyes, but most were lying within only a couple of inches of the hiking path. All of them scared me a lot, since I expect to see wild and dangerous animals that close only if they are behind glass! The fact that alligators are also actually very sinister looking did not help, either.