~Do Not Feed the ALLIGATORS~

Tuesday afternoon, as we pulled out of the church, where we had just attended a pastors conference, Sam noticed this snapping turtle crossing the road ahead of us.  He was such a strange looking fellow we had to pull over and get a good look at him.  Seeing this little guy got us curious to what else we could find.  We looked for the nearest lake in hopes for an adventure.  We pulled into a state park of some sort and the lady approached our car, we asked her if there was anything to do or see in the park, she let us know it was mainly used for campgrounds.  So we drove around the circle to leave, there was a small river on our left.  

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I saw this tree and it's reflection in the water and just had to get out of the truck to get a picture.  As I was taking the photo, Sam says, "haha... take a picture of that sign".  You know, the funny thing is, on the way into Florida the kids were getting tired of being cooped up in the car and I told them the first one to see an alligator got $10.  I really never expected any of us to see an alligator.   It did however get the kids minds onto something besides being pinned in their car seats.  So I turned and took a picture of the sign.  We are from Texas/Oklahoma and we found this to be quiet amusing!  
 

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Well, since there was nothing to do at this park, we looked for another one.  We soon found a little lake in a residential type area.  We drove around admiring all the tropical trees in the yards and then decided to pull into the parking area so I could take a picture of this bird on the bridge.  I took this picture from the parking lot and then decided to get a little closer to the bird.  He was not afraid of me one bit.  I think I was about ten feet from him when I got this photo.

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As the kids come running up on the bridge they notice down in the water these colorful birds.  We were watching them and talking to a couple of Floridians(I guess that's what you call them).  We asked if they ever see alligators here.  They told us of a place where we could go see some but they said they don't see them at this particular place very often.  Well, we turned to head back to the truck and we stopped to see all the turtles swimming around.

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Sam got to talking and I was getting nervous about the kids falling off of the bridge... alligator or not... I did not want to have to dive into that water to rescue one of them.... so I lead them off of the bridge, and that is when I noticed this sign.  I had the kids pose for a few pictures in front of it and they got more interested in the berries and flowers that were lying around.  They seemed to be content so I wondered off into the grass to take a few nature pictures.  

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I guess I got a little curious and started looking out into the edge of the water.  I saw a long dark object and threatened one of my whining kids that I was going to feed them to that alligator.  I really did not think it was an alligator, just a long wet log.  Well, about the same time I was trying to scare the kids with my fake alligator, Sam, still up on the bridge, says, "hey you guys that's an alligator".  I am probably about ten feet from this thing... I did what most moms would do... I told my kids to get back up on the side walk and then I took about two steps closer to get a better picture of him!

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Yep, they have Alligators in Florida!