it's that time of the year again, only this year some friends down for thanksgiving wanted to do an airboat ride. i wind up on these things about once each decade. i gave my friends a few options. they chose this one:
Explore the South Florida Everglades with Sawgrass Recreation Park's Everglades Airboat Tours
curiously, i did a quick search to find out who owns the property (i thought maybe the seminole tribe, but no). oddly the county property appraiser's map stops just south of privately held sawgrass recreation park.
my last airboat ride was with my best bud at the seminole's big cypress facility
http://www.seminoletribe.com/enterpr...ss/index.shtml which i enjoyed much more than this urban/everglades experience. i'd been to this facility once before when i was in high school.
so this year's airboat ride was kind of lame but my friends seemed to enjoy it. for about $20 you get a 1/2 hour ride which is really just a 10 minute ride and about a 20 minute idle. the boat operator gives a little lecture, shows off stumpy, the three legged alligator, and then you return to base.
there you visit various caged gators & a croc and hold a baby gator or just watch the neurotic wolves and panthers pace in their confinement. it's all rather depressing actually.
so for your viewing enjoyment, here's a florida airboat ride (now you can save yourself twenty bucks).
waiting for enough people to show up so that you don't get a great view on the boat
leaving civilization
fashionable ear plugs (noisy airboat)
all the people sharing your experience by blocking your view
what you look like from another airboat
how come they got the good empty airboat? can we switch airboats?
here comes stumpy
and this is why he's called stumpy
he should have four of these
stumpy comes right over to the boat when you call him. it seems obvious they feed stumpy when no tourists (or state wildlife officials) are on board as he is not shy at all.
Linear Mode
