Matt and I went canoeing today at a state park not far from here. If you like wildlife, Florida is the place to come. We saw a lot of it. It was really hot and there isn't any shade out on the river, but it was worth it. We saw 10 alligators, a couple of which weren't really far from the canoe. We actually tried to get as close as we could to one of them, but we kind of ticked him off and he took off in a huff. It's one thing to see alligators on TV or even from the car, but to actually be in the water only a few feet from them is humbling and intimidating at first. I took several pictures, but the gators like to stay below the water with only their eyes and nostrils sticking out, so there's not much to see. Here's a picture for you anyway:
That's our gator, right there in the middle. He was probably 15 feet from the boat at the time I took the picture, but when we first saw him, he was only about four or five feet directly in front of us.
We also saw a lot of fish including these strange fish that jump quite a ways out of the water. We never really figured out what they were doing. We saw some stingrays, a few turtles, lots of birds including a hawk that had a fish in it's talons and a river otter (that was the pleasant surprise of the day). We definitely plan on doing this again!
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