Tuesday, March 29,  Wed, March 30

I located a guide in Weston (South Florida) that did Air Boat excursions and fishing just North of Miami.  They just happened to have a opening on Wed for a 3/4 hour day of playing.  Guide was Cody.  Hell of a guy.  Our reservations were at noon on Wed.  We stayed at a nice Comfort Suites, leaving the coach in the camp in Titusville.  We had an interesting meal near there that was Columbian.  I say interesting because we could not read the menu so we did not know what were eating.  Mine was a thin spicey state and Renies was a deep fried Port steak.  Good, but not good enough to try it again.  

Wednesday, March 30

The weather was getting hot and the humidity was getting to be about 70%.  We boarded the boat at noon as promised.  About the boat.  It room for about 6 without crowding.  Only Renie and I were on this trip.  Some things we learned about the Everglade.  It is a big ass fresh water river that is only a few inches deep to about 1.5' deep. Fresh water, did I say that?  There are a few types of grass that cover it and the air boats make trails in the grass.  There are natural channels that might get to 3' deep.  The grass is tall, making up large percentage of the area.  The grass has been used by the Indians back in the day for medical use, bandages, sun burn, etc.  Just split off the surrounding skin and you can get a substance that looks and feels like Aloe.  The other side of the blade can be stripped using the back side of a knife to make a gauze type of substance that can be used to cover a wound, much like a sticky bandage.  There is not fragrance to either of these.  There are hundreds of critters that live in the glades, including gators of course.  We saw a lot. One was about 11' long, but most were in the 6' length.  I think Cody said there is 1 alligator for every square mile. And there are a lot of square miles there.  We did not see any, but they have a real problem with large snakes like a python. They are eating up a lot of birds nests.  We pulled up into a channel later in the day and started fishing among the lily pads and caught a bunch of small bass.  Catch and release as they were not too big.  The weather was overcast with winds, so the fishing was pretty poor.  Near 3 or so, we were heading back to the fish camp and the car.  The trip Cody took us on was about 40+ miles.