Josh's 2010 Road Trip: For-Everglades

Miles: 8197.4
Gallons Burned: 279.3
Caffeinated Drinks: 46
Gigabytes of Pictures: 18.2

This Latte is great here at Fido in Nashville. Josh and I enjoyed the Opryland Hotel & Resort and the Nashville Parthenon...Yes it exists. I'll post pictures when I get caught up in posting. Until then let's go back to the Everglades.
At a place like to the Everglades, biodiversity is the most amazing thing...No. Actually the sun is. In Seattle we get 8 months of gray cloudy drizzle 2.5 months of cool partly cloudy Fall and 1.5 months of Sun. The lack of sun makes Seattle known for its high use of anti-depressants and caffeine. So as the typical moody Seattle guy, the Sun in Florida's southern extremes is amazing.
Fist I'd like to talk about the Fauna.
Did you know there is an American Crocodile? (Yeah Alicia and Jen you know but how about other people?) I had no idea. Turns out there are between 1600-2000 adult Crocs in Florida and the Everglades is the only place on Earth where Crocs and Gators coexist. They can be clearly differentiated using three basic characteristics:
1 - snout shape - The Crocs' snout is narrower than the Gators'
2 - teeth - the Crocs' teeth upper and lower teeth are always visible, whereas only the Gators' upper teeth are visible
3 - color - The Gator is darker than the Croc
This little guy was hot so he had his mouth open to cool down. He and his bigger friend looked chill, so I walked up (ready to sprint away if he/she so much as flinched) and took this:

This little guy was next to the Crocs above:

Just like in Seattle this "Laughing Gull" is fearless and begs shamelessly for food:

I was hiking toward Snake Bight when I ducked off-trail and wandered for a 100 yards until I ran across this Snowy Egret and his with reflection.

While on the Bight path I found the secret spider that bit Peter Parker.

At Snake Bight there were no snakes but there were these neuts (or non-specific lizards). This littl eguy is about 3 inches long:

Here we see a Great Egret, notice the distinctive beak that differentiates it from the Snowy Egret. he was sunning himself, so I used my old trick to get close to him so I could get this shot. Oh what's my trick? Hmm... I don't want to tell you otherwise you tell a cat or bird and they won't fall for it anmore.

My only shot of Manatees, you really need a boat to see them well and Jolly Green wouldn't stand for the injustice of having to wear that hat (cars with kayaks on top look like the "cool" kids with their fancy hats).

I made a friend! "Tony", an adolescent Brown Pelican, hung out with me for 45 minutes when I wrote those blog posts from Flamingo Bay. Again the trick worked!

As I stalked an egret to get a great shot, I saw this little fellow.

The rare and illusive "Bowen".

Moving on to the glade part of the Glades
As a registered "amateur, amateur botanist" I feel qualified to use the Latin classification of genus and species when referring to the flower below: Prettius Flowerus

See how dense the undergrowth and Mangroves gets.

Again this "amateur, amateur botanist" will use my massive knowledge of plants to classify this little fellow: the Parasitic Aloe. Actually my mycologist friend Josh informed me it is a Bromeliad.