Category Archives: travel

hello everglades, hello airboat!

wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee! 

yeah, that pretty much sums up our airboat ride through the everglades.

if you have never taken an airboat ride you should. it’s super fun, a little scary, and very exhilarating. riding on an airboat feels like flying on water, because essentially the boat (propelled at high speeds by a large fan) barely skims the surface of the water, allowing it to pass through very shallow waters and over grasses and other vegetation. you can get extremely close to wildlife without much disturbance, and it’s a total blast. 

captain rick of speedy johnsons guided our boat through the narrow rows of dense mangroves and out into the vast expanses of pristine wetland. the scenery was breathtakingly beautiful – the seemingly endless sawgrass prairies dottted with palm trees, the billowy white clouds reflected in the glassy water, the large osprey, blue heron, and crocodiles in their natural habitat.

my first airboat ride was probably more than twenty years ago in lake kissimmee with my dad, and this afternoon i relived all the fun as we smiled and screamed as the boat zoomed, skidded, and spun through the amazing everglades.

i love you dad – what a great afternoon!

whizzing through the mango groves.

dad + me: windblown on the airboat!

10,000 islands to left, and water, water, everywhere!