We had the chance to experience the "real Florida" this past Labor Day weekend with a visit to the Everglades Holiday Park(click above title to link to site) to ride in their "state of the art" airboats for an hour or so (Apparently the state of the art has been frozen in time since about 1975). For those of you familiar with 1970's southern fried revenge movies, I was waiting for Buford Pusser to enter glade right. Nevertheless, the Everglades, its scale, and its non-human residents are wholly impressive. Large gators calculating whether its worth the effort to make a meal out of you as they glide by; flocks of vultures hoping the gators decide in the affirmative; massive non-native iguanas which would just love for you to try and pet them if you have a couple of fingers to spare; and just to throw you off vibrantly colored happy looking birds. Oh and don't forget the poisonous spiders and deadly snakes hanging out in the lily pads. Now I know it caused massive environmental damage which our children will pay billions of dollars to repair, but its not too difficult to understand why a century and one-half ago Governor Broward thought it might be a good idea to drain the Glades considering his contemporaries were misguided enough to try and live around here in the first place. An interesting way to spend a half of a Saturday.
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