South for the winter
I'm a bird if you're a bird. The Notebook
I decided to spend my first winter on the Road somewhere warm. So I opted for FL. With fewer restrictions for Covid, there are many more restaurants & shops open than in most other warm states.
Everglade City FL
Airboat Capital of the world
I started down the west side of the coast. I have to say the ocean was beautiful, but the cities seemed to blend together & all looked the same. No unique architecture. Just all modern commercial style. Kind of boring, if I am honest. So I headed on down south. The Everglades smell like butt in a jar. A sewer smell seemed to be in the air almost everywhere I went.
Still, there was beauty & the town called Everglade City was really cute. I enjoyed some great seafood at a roadside dive. The City boasts of being the airboat capital of the world. I saw no reason to challenge this as they are everywhere & so very loud. It is like a large airplane sound on steroids. But the reason I opted not to take a tour is that I have a strong, let's call it, respect & not a fear of gators & sharks. (Pssst.. it's really a fear) So I avoid any place I might meet one.
There were some Hispanic gentlemen that were tossing lines in the water nearby & drawing them in by hand. None of them spoke English, so we used impromptu sign language to communicate. I had asked what they were doing with mimicking what they were doing. The man smiled & said something & make what looked like crab pinchers with each hand in the air. I said, oh wow, crab fishing? Shaking his head with such enthusiasm, I didn't give my assumption a second thought.
I asked if I could take a picture holding up my phone miming taking a photo. Again met with an enthusiastic nod. I thought Fuck; this communication thing is cake. I stood next to the man & I bent, readied my phone for the pic. Soon I noticed that they had a chicken leg tied to the end of the rope. I thought that's weird. How do you can't crabs like this? No sooner had I begun to process that point when there was a tug on my guy's rope & everyone got excited & drew their attention to him & then me.
For some reason, they were trying to conceal snickering & giggling as I bent close to the water, not wanting to miss a bit of what would surely be great footage to post on my website. I could see the "crab" was putting up a hell of a fight & I started to get nervous being so close to the water, so I started to back up while keeping my camera steady. All of a sudden, this 3' alligator comes flying out of the water. Not gonna lie; I peed a little again. They all pounced on the child of satan & burst into laughter at my expense simultaneously.
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Obviously not the actual gator. I never did get the shot.
BTW the word he kept trying to say sounded like La Gatta when he said it again. I was like, Copy that, Bro. Freaking Aligator, got it.
And that is my wonderful day in Everglade City, where I had a pile of seafood & almost left a pile behind.