March 5, 2014, Still here

It's my birthday!!!  Never thought I would get this old and no way be on this adventure!  Thanks to all you Happy Birthday wishers!  Love hearing from all of you.

Went to the Everglades with Field Trip, Reunion.  Very interesting.  Ate lunch at Flamingo.  Got to see lots of alligators close up, lots of birds, many I have never heard of, saw Mullet jumping in the lake.
Went back to Sharkey's in Key Largo for supper and had a Bushwacker for my supper along with some of Curt's shrimp.  Stopped at the Carribean Club which was supposedly the site of the movie " Key Largo" with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, had a quick walk thru, other's didn't want to stay because it really still is a "DIVE", smoky and smells of beer, a few people there, definitely a beach bar.

This is winter in the Everglades, the circles of trees are from the alligators digging a hole in the ground till the water comes up then the birds and other animals come take advantage too.  The trees grow up around this hole.  Looking across the open fields we expect to see Giraffes or Zebras, it looks just like pictures of Africa.

 Nice walkways to walk over the spongy mat of algae, small fish can be seen in the open water as well as turtles.

 Air plants growing on the trees

 This red bark is a special tree found here in the Everglades will try to find out the name of it.

 Carol, Martha, Curt walking along the path, we try to be quiet so as not to scare the animals away.

 Bob said this smothering vine was in National Geographic quite a few years ago, he grew around a tree and killed the tree.

 Lots of little lizards and spiders in the trees

 We saw several of these birds, saw one in the Little Shark ancorage on the west side of Florida but thought it was a Flamingo.  Apparently Flamingos are not often seen in Florida wild.

 Would you camp in the Everglades on a Chickee?  Not me!!!!

 Finally got to see what a sea grape looked like

 Who would of thought Mahogany trees in the Everglades.

 Spanish moss hanging off a tree over the water at one of the lakes we went to.

 Orange butterfly by some flowers

 Open Everglades, sometimes the Duckbill Stork would fly over or you can hear the pig frogs, they sound just like a feral boar making noise.

 Just had to take a picture of this, there were several boxes to get tarps out of for your car.

 Cute bird, can't remember the name of him.

 Lots of alligators

 This one opened his eyes and would close them, we were 3 ft. away, not sure why we weren't more nervous about him deciding he wanted supper.

 Great gray heron waiting for supper

 The crescent moon was beautiful, as it was getting dark we tried to capture the reflection in the water

 Just happened to come up on this guy after he crossed the walkway in front of us.

Not often we signs like this but in the Everglades we saw them several places.  Just leaving at dark, the animals were really moving and making noise at our last site we walked around.