Loxahatchee AKA the place where we were surrounded by ALLIGATORS

So I've never seen an alligator and always have wanted to see one in the wild. We could've seen one at Disneyland but I wanted to see one out in its natural habitat. Everyone always talks about how they see alligators in the roads in Florida and in people's pools so I knew they couldn't be that hard to come by. To get to Everglades National Park was a little far from where we were so I found another patch of everglades where there is a game preserve called Loxahatchee.

Angela and Cami at the "levee"

We arrived at the preserve and asked where the best alligator findin spots were. We were directed to the levee where we saw fishermen....AND...off in the distance...something slid into the water and surfaced. I was like, "Ummm...is that big huge thing in the water an alligator?" It looked huge from where we were and it was a little unnerving since I've never been around these creatures before. It swam errr...floated across the river but never got real close to where we were...darn. So off we went to the other spot we were told about.

We started walking down the trail and I thought I saw some eyes in a puddle....well I did. ALLIGATOR #1! Do you see him? I zoomed in on the photo on the right to help you. NOW do you see him?

It was a little unnerving to see one so close and think we could've walked right by him. We got distracted by some other birds and this annoying lady who was ranting about something with a bird and us with the alligators. I didn't know I liked birds so much but the birds in Florida are COOL. The black one is called an Anhinga and the one on the right is a Great Blue Heron.

Here's me and another one....and another cool, colorful creature we found on one of the signs....

Pretty soon we started to think we wouldn't see anymore alligators. THEN...they were EVERYWHERE. As soon as you see one or two you learn how to find them and then they were all around us which was a little disconcerting...In all the pictures I include the original picture first and then a zoomed in version. Remember you can click on the picture to see the full size version.
Alligator #2

Alligator #3 - he's a big one

Alligator #4

Alligator #5

Alligator #6 was by far the biggest....but we could only see his tail....we can't imagine how big his whole body must have been....Here's Angela in shock at how big this tail was...