Day #4: Saturday - January 5, 2002

I think I’m starting to understand the entire cause of my never being able to get up on time to get an actual meal in the morning: the schedule itself is misleading!  While it does accurately list breakfast at 7:30 AM - sharp, it never actually says when it’s time to get out of bed.  On top of all of that, there are a number of bathroom-related procedures which must be carried out before I’m ready to actually be seen in public – primping and curling and whatnot.  This look doesn’t prepare itself, you know!  Now I know what you’re thinking: Scott, you’re an adult, well, sort-of; by the age of 21, you should be capable of knowing when you need to get up in the morning…

Anyways, needless to say I might have been less than on-time for breakfast that morning, but when it comes to competing with three other guys for valuable floor real-estate in our spacious “six-man tent,” I think it was almost worth missing breakfast just to get an hour of sleep without worrying about waking up in any compromising positions!  I don’t know how these manufacturers come up with their dimensions when they’re making these things, but we could hardly fit the four men we did have inside this one, let alone two more!  They must do their product testing using midgets, or small people for the politically correct in the audience…

Today we all piled on the bus just in time to miss seeing a red-shouldered hawk flying overhead, but unfortunately we just didn’t have time to waste on Michigan birds that day!  We had only a twenty-five mile trip to Pa-hay-okee Overlook, which was boasted as one of the best panoramic views of the “River of Grass” in the Everglades.  This was also my first opportunity to download the pictures I had taken from the previous day and needless to say, the ride itself was over in no time at all – it takes a while to download 175 pictures, but just think about how long it would take the folks down at your local one-hour photo shop!
 

Just picture our class lined up across the boardwalk!

The layout for Pa-hay-okee was rather simple and I honestly didn’t think we’d be there very long, to tell you the truth, but once we actually got out onto the boardwalk itself, the entire story changed.  The path itself was about a ¼-mile loop, with a large observation platform at one end.  There wasn’t much to see as far as wildlife was concerned, except for maybe a few birds soaring overhead here and there, but between the plants and landscape views in general, we had more than enough to keep us occupied!
 

"Where do I start?!?!?"   Amber looks across the overlook in awe...

Looking out across the vast sawgrass marsh from the top of the platform, it was hard to imagine a flowing river of an unfathomable width just beneath the surface, but upon closer inspection, I can safely announce that there is actually water out there!  As shown in several of these very cool algae photos, the water isn’t necessarily very deep in places, but I suppose that’s why they call it a marsh, eh?  Nevertheless, I also got the assumption that many visitors here often got extremely bored, or maybe they were just careless with their garbage?  All in the same, even though I can picture couples coming here and walking the boardwalk in five minutes just for aesthetic purposes, I was nonetheless pleased and impressed to see another couple educating their youngest to the beauties around them, all while trying to explain it in terms they would understand.  Maybe our future isn’t a lost cause after all!
 

	Which picture do you prefer???   Styrofoam?
or Algae?

Upon finishing our rounds on the boardwalk itself, we proceeded by foot down the road we had originally entered on to see about finding us any wildlife.  It was fairly quiet at first, but eventually we started coming across various birds and other small creatures nestled in the bushes alongside the road.  We came across an ungodly number of fire ant nests, which the majority of us chose to avoid.  Of course, K.C. can never be a member of the majority when logic is involved, so he pursued the modest goal destroying every single hill he came across, using all the necessary force he could muster up!  I vaguely recall Kathy preaching something about fire ants, to the tune of “Avoid them if at all possible!  We don’t want to make a trip to the hospital because of you!  Fire ants are bad, bad, bad…”
 

One Lonely, Innocent Fire-Ant Hill, Pre-K.C.

When the doctors finally gave us the ok to enter his room in the lower wing of the emergency ward, K.C.’s body was hardly recognizable…  Just kidding, although I really don’t know how he didn’t get bitten, considering the millions of ants he’d thoroughly annoyed by destroying their homes.  Nevertheless, this wasn’t even the beginning of the hilarity that morning, when a true encounter with death presented itself.  Ok, technically it probably can’t be considered a deadly encounter simply because one of the creatures alive was no longer with us, but it was still a funny story… 
 
 

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