The Everglades
QuestionGirl May 4th, 2008 - 10:53 amI drove my Mom to my Uncle’s house yesterday for a visit. In South Florida, there’s only one way across the state…….ALLIGATOR ALLEY. We took the old two lane alligator alley over. I hadn’t been through there since the 70’s. It drives straight through the Everglades. Look to the canals on the side of the road, and there’s gators everywhere sunning themselves. We stopped at a rest area and they had a platform where you could watch them. On the way home last night, we saw a bobcat. No video of him, though. 
On a funny note, (which really isn’t funny but you have to laugh or you’ll cry) my Mom has been wanting to visit her brother for some time. She talks about it all the time. I drive 4.5 hours to get there and when we pull in the driveway she says, “Now where are we again?” And my cousin tells me that my Uncle, who is 85, is sneaking around trying to buy a car because he thinks he should still be able to drive. So, if we’re lucky, the two of them won’t hop a bus to a car dealer and drive away.
May 4th, 2008 at 11:13 am
Alligators… jeez!
Then there are those times when I am happy to be living in Kentucky.
May 4th, 2008 at 11:14 am
FTM…
You’re mom is too funny! Starting to look like a family trait.
May 4th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
Hey, hey, hey Buck….chillax on the dissin of the family, you’re outnumbered remember. j/k
May 4th, 2008 at 4:05 pm
Maybe I’ll shut my big mouth then.
(hehehe)
May 4th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
Buck, I got yer back!
I only saw a few gators when I was in Florida, but I normally wasn’t that close to where they’d be. Seeing a manatee was pretty cool, though.
May 4th, 2008 at 7:06 pm
I’ve never seen a manatee, Bat. From documentaries I’ve seen, they’re supposed to be very timid creatures. I grew up around hogs. Most people think they’re mean, but they’re not. Friendly as they can be! But never upset a piglet or Mrs. Sow will take your arm off!
May 4th, 2008 at 9:37 pm
Wow this brings back memories! Not of FL, since I’ve never been there, but of a book my sons adored when they were young. Alley Alligator with Rangers Jim and Ray. It had originally been their dad’s, and was an early reader book with all the repetitive dialogue you’d expect in a story from the early 70’s.
I’d get sick of it pretty quick, but heaven help me if I tried to skip anything.
May 5th, 2008 at 10:14 am
At some point I started making up stories PA. Then my kids wanted me to do that instead of reading to them. Of course, my stories had two kids that would do bad things in them, like pee on the neighbors flowerbed……and then the bad deeds had to get worse and worse for it to be funny. But there was always a moral to the story. Was I a bad Mother? lol
You know, as hard as I try to remember what their favorite book was, I can’t. There were so many. Kids do love to be read to, don’t they? My daughter is a big reader. She LOVES books, even to this day.
May 5th, 2008 at 4:55 pm
I was never good at making up stories on the fly, though I did try writing them up beforehand just to give the kids something different.
Mine loved hearing family stories more than my homemade ones. From all the awful - but funny as hell - things my brothers and sisters and I did as kids to all the stories I remembered my mom and grandmother and aunts and uncles telling at family events.
I missed reading to them once they got “too old” and didn’t want Mom hanging around anymore. Still miss it actually. There’s nothing like having those freshly-washed warm little bodies curled up around you, absolutely enraptured by every word out of your mouth.