Yesterday was "Adventure Wednesday" for the family. Since Wednesday is one of my days off, we try to take the kids out for some kind of adventure; a special park, hiking, the zoo, etc. This week, we decided to go to the St. Augustine Alligator Farm in St. Augustine, Florida. I was a bit reluctant to go at first, as we have alligators everywhere in Florida. If there is an open body of water in Florida, there's an alligator in it. You may not see one, but it's there. As a result, we get to see alligators in the wild quite frequently, so I had a hard time with paying to go see them.
It turned out to be quite the experience. The kids really enjoyed it. For a small park, it is laid out very well. They have a very big variety of reptiles. There is a huge alligator enclosure in the middle of the park that must have a hundred gators in it.
My personal favorite area was the "Florida Swamp Area" re-creation area. This was a long boardwalk through a swampy area that mimics the Florida swampland spread throughout the state. There were more alligators in here, along with various egrets, cranes, and other Florida birds. It was a very pretty re-creation of the natural Florida that I've come to love. The Alligator Farm site actually has a live web cam of this area.
We were also fortunate enough to get to the park just in time for the gator feeding. This was a crazy experience in the vein of Crocodile Hunter with the zoologist in the alligator pen for the feeding. I, of course, video taped the whole thing with my Flip video camera and posted it below. There are some great shots of the feedings! The video has a few minutes of video of the whole enclosure to get an idea of how many gators are in this area and then the feeding comes in. It lasts about 18-20 minutes, but the guy is pretty entertaining and the gators definitely keep you interested. You can also see a bunch of the pics I took at Flickr. Enjoy!
