The Ranch - Day 6

This was the day we had all been looking forward to since we got to Florida.

First, we had mom take us on a tour. Like one she does for people who come to check out the ranch. In the bus. She drove us around telling us about the ranch, and trying to find some alligators. We did see some small ones. I'm so mad I didn't take any pictures of the land on the ranch. Mostly our tour was just to see the land...and facts about the things we saw. We got all our 'facts' throughout our trip, which I'll share later. So, on our drive, there is the swimming hole. And it's just that. In some parts it's as deep as 12 feet I think, and they've built a diving board, and other things to climb & jump from into this water. It's all gated in so the gators don't get in. And once a week they put chlorine in it to clean it out. It's basically a manmade pond, that's fun to swim at. Colby is wishing now that they would have went swimming in it.

After our tour, we came back and had some lunch then drove over to Melbourne to the beach. We only stayed for a little more than an hour, but that was good.

The boys (all of them) had a great time!

Lexie didn't like the sand much. She preferred papa, or me. Or anyone who would just hold her.

I finally got her to go down to the water. A wave came up and I thought it would be fun to have it splash on her feet. Well, it was a bigger wave than I thought and splashed all the way up her legs and she did not like it. So then I was back to holding her again.

I just liked this picture

After that, she got hot, and tired, and wasn't having fun.

When we got back to the ranch the boys showered and we got dinner ready. But not before catching some more bugs. It's one of their huge grasshoppers. Those things are ginormous! Even Lexie liked being in on the action.

After dinner...

The best part of the whole trip.

Hands down!

Yes folks, that is an airboat.

We totally went on an airboat ride!

I still can't get over how much fun it was. Those machines are the coolest things. They go over everything. So Where you see us is right where we started. Then we went off to our right down into those trees. There's a little, and I mean tiny creek. Almost no water in it. We drove, or floated, or whatever you call it through that for about 10 minutes and then turned out into a river. It wasn't deep, but it was wide. And boy did we see some alligators. But they're fast, so I had a hard time getting a picture of them.

In this picture, above each of the x's is an alligator. It's kind of hard to see them, but this is what it was like. They were all out sunbathing, and as soon as they heard us, they ran into the water. It was so cool!

I tried to mark this one so you could hopefully tell how big he was. The left mark is his tail, the right his nose. He was probably 8 feet long. These things are huge.

Once we got back to the ranch we hung out on the porch for a while trying to soak everything in. I think the kids were just beyond tired, they were being so silly. Beyond exhausted. After the week we just put them through, the heat, the walking, not much sleep. They were troopers.

Oh my gosh. Lexie was being so funny. She had just started saying eeewww. The boys were showing her a dead bug and she kept saying it. With this little girl voice, it was so funny.

Oh my...we were wind blown from the ride. My poor mom, sorry mom. Your hair... is kind of sad.

Lexie didn't like the saddle nearly as much as the boys.

But she loved this alligator. Meet Gus. Gus was killed on the ranch a few years back. He's about 8 feet long.

This ended our first whole day on the ranch. It was action packed and we were all pooped. But we still had another whole day so we headed to bed to try and get some sleep. I hardly slept though. When my parents first got back there, they'd been there about a month, they had a snake in their house. So I kept worrying that one was in the trailer we were staying in and it was going to crawl up the bed and get me.