Visitors!

We recently had visitors in Florida!

Uncle Ernie & Aunt Lynda arrived in Florida last Wednesday and took up residence at the Comfort Inn just up the road from the villa.  We invited them to stay here, but they preferred their own space.  Their first couple of days were spent shopping.  I didn't take pictures at the Florida Mall or at the Flea Market - except for this one...........

......... taken from the upstairs lounge at Starbucks in the Florida Mall.  Poppa and I stopped there so Poppa could have a coffee.  Aunt Lynda didn't buy too much, but she got a few things.  Uncle Ernie wasn't impressed with shopping at all, so....

......... we drove to Homosassa Springs to see the wildlife park there.  As you can tell from the photo, we took the boat tour up the Banana River.  This gave the impression of going through..........

........... a jungle - can you see the turtles on the log?  Or.....

........... the alligator on this log???  Or...........

............. a couple of cute ducks swimming on the other side of the river from the alligator?  Or....

.............. the man-made bird habitat perched on the edge?  We saw all this before we ever entered the actual park!  Inside there was also a variety of wild-life.....

............. this is Lou the Hippo.  He is not indigenous to Florida.  He is 47 years old and was saved from a privately owned exotic animal park when it closed down.  However, right beside him...........

....... was an area with a lot of these creatures, which as I'm sure you all know - are indigenous to Florida.  There were lots of other animals there too...........

........... including these two wild fellows - are they brothers????  There was...........

.......... a small building which housed displays of local snakes - there were a lot of them!  We didn't stay in there too long............

....... but long enough to spy this American Crocodile (who knew?).  He isn't very big - maybe between two and three feet.  We saw..........

......... a large group of flamingoes, which seemed to be following that white swan up the river, for some reason known only to them.  Around the corner..........

.............. there was a squirrel sipping a drink from the water belonging to these birds.  We had to....

........... stop to see if we could spot the.............

......... black BEAR!  That's him in the back right corner - yeah - that little black blob is him.  There was another one sleeping on a pile of rocks, and I took a picture, but he was still, the rocks were a dark colour and the bear was pretty obscured - so I won't bore you with it.  We also stopped....

........... to admire the American Eagles.  There were lots of other birds too.....

................ and thankfully, there were signs posted to identify them for those of us who were not so familiar with birds.  We checked out all the available critters...........

.......... including the timber wolves - who looked kinda annoyed at all the tourist gawking at them........and then..........

............ we crossed the bridge (are they brothers?) and headed to the underwater observatory.....

........... where Aunt Lynda took some pictures, but there were no manatees in sight.  We did see some in the river, but they were not high enough to get a decent picture - maybe next time.  As we approached the exit.......

............. we did find a couple of large ones!  Look at that!