Since we got here we have wanted to get out into the swamps and everglades and see wild Florida. The airboat is perfect for doing that, plus it looks like a lot of fun. We picked up a couple from the campground and headed for Lake Okeechobee which has miles of what we were looking for.
The airboat is an aluminum flat bottomed boat with an engine mounted on the back and an airplane propeller connected direct. Its very noisy and if my hat blew off I wouldn't be reaching back to grab it, I'll tell you. This was right behind me. It has a top speed of 50 mph and he took it up there; great fun.
The real benefit of these things is that they can go anywhere in the swamps and reeds. If a mud bar is in front, he just speeds up and slides over it. My problem was that I was sitting at the side and some of the reeds slapped me as we whipped by. Darn things stung so I leaned left when in the reeds.
Once out of the large lake area we went down one of the tributary creeks. According to the driver, this creek hasn't been touched by man and looks like it would have 200 years ago.
Its been cold, but we were lucky today that the sun came out. Gators started climb up on the bank to soak up some sun so we got to see a few. We were feeling quite cocky sitting there in our big heavy airboat. We wouldn't have gone so close in our canoe I'll tell you. This guys about 9 feet long.
We saw a lot of birds and turtles. With the noise of the airboat we sure weren't sneaking up on them, I think it was the speed, we got there before they could react, or they were just used to the noise, one or the other. If you look close you can see a turtle on a log just ahead on the right hand side. It was over a foot long; not our little red sliders at home.
Here's a big cypress tree along the edge. Notice the root knobs sticking up all around it? These are 2 to 3 feet high. They help the tree breathe so if the area floods the tree doesn't suffocate as long as these are above the water. Isn't nature amazing?
Another airboat company uses this stream as well so this is kinda what we look like. You may have noticed no one has a life jacket on. They are on board and we were shown how to use them but we were told that if we fall in its a lot easier to just stand up. The deepest water we went through was around 3 feet deep. Not like our streams and lakes back home, these are just shallow muddy puddles.
I don't know what it is about us and water. Just after we turned around to come back it started to rain. Fortunately we were only a mile or so from a bridge we had gone under so we stopped there till the rain stopped. But we still got soaked.
We sat for a few minutes while the storm passed. Notice our driver on his I phone; he's checking the weather and has the satellite picture of the storm cell thats raining on us. It stopped shortly and we made it back fine. By the time we got off, it was nice and sunny again. Our friends are farmers from Saskatchewan; I think they enjoy rain.
By the time we got back to the campground we were treated to a beautiful sunset. Another day of adventure in Florida!
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