20060326 - Crystal River (We visit the Kings Bay Salt Flats)

This week we took a walk to the Kings Bay Salt Flat through (what I think of as) a Florida style jungle. The trail was part board walk, part mulch with palmetto jungle on both sides and lots of spanish moss (which I love). It was a beautiful walk on a beautiful day. The salt flat itself was tall grass over mud. It reminded me of the scene in Jurassic Park where the men were walking in the tall grass being hunted by the Raptors. On another note:
Max sleeps with us. In the beginning he slept in a crate at the foot of the bed. He is so cute. He likes to sleep on his back with his head on the pillow. That is where he sleeps when there is only one of us in bed (in the morning with me, in the evening with Rich). When we are both in bed he likes to sleep between us. I always put him at the foot of the bed when I come to bed at night. He then tries to wiggle back up to the top almost like a person trying to wiggle under a obstacle. When that is not successful he settles down between us at the foot of the bed. However, he does that dog thing of circling around before he lays down, and then ends up sideways on the bed. Thus the smallest person on the bed takes up almost as much room as the largest person.
After last weeks canoe adventure at Juniper Springs, I was thinking about how many of my ‘horrible when happening but makes a great story’ adventures came in, around, or on the water. Anyhoo, I’ve decided to share these stories in this blog from time to time.
20+ years ago Rich, I, and our Samoyed, Tasha took a year off and traveled around the US and Mexico in a Suburban, with a canoe on the roof, and an inflatable inside, towing a 21 foot trailer. One of our side trips was a canoe trip in the Okefenokee Swamp. There are alligators in that swamp. We saw several large ones basking on the beaches and several small alligators in the water, but the water was wide and slow moving so there did not seem to be much danger to us. The swamp was neat, with lots of banyon, and dark tannin water. Eventually we saw a large gator in the water, heading at an angle toward the middle of our canoe, when suddenly he went underwater. I’m sure you can imagine what I was seeing in my mind at that point: The alligator coming up under the canoe, the canoe flying through the air, Rich and Sue flying through the air, Rich and Sue in the water, Rich and Sue in the alligator. I was trying not to rock the boat, to sit still, to paddle as hard as I could, all the while my mind was yelling ‘Get me outta here’. Rich kept repeating ‘Susie, the canoe does not look like food to the alligator.’ The ranger (later) said that the alligator went underwater to get away from us but it sure looked different to me.

to repeat ‘horrible when happening but makes a great story’