Day #8: Wednesday - January 9, 2002

I don’t know how it happened, but somehow I actually managed to get a few hours of sleep that time!  Granted, I still woke up every couple of hours and by the end of the night, it felt like somebody had slept on my privates, but all in all it wasn’t that bad of a night’s sleep.  Between the hours of eleven and seven, that’s a good eight hours of rest – surely enough for any growing boy!  I couldn’t have felt better!!!

Oh, who was I trying to fool?!?!?  Of course it had been a horrible night’s sleep – I could hardly walk!  It was a wonder that I had even been able to pry myself from that seat in the morning, but just the idea of fresh air and something to drink was enough to get my crippled bones moving.  Unfortunately, instead of fresh orange juice and a smiling face, I was stuck with orange juice from a can and an over-priced vending machine – oh, we must’ve been close to home now!  Little did I know that we still had an entire day of driving ahead of us…
 

Zombies??? I suppose that'd be one way to describe it!

It was another quiet morning, although this time sounds of research and actual studying filled the aisles!  Knowing that we’d be tough-pressed to compare notes once we were home, we used those last few hours to patch up any holes in our field notebooks, identify any last mystery species’ we’d come across and so forth.  Libby had long since given up on her school’s homework that was due the next day and others shuttered at the idea of even having to deal with homework again!  I was a little better off, knowing that this would be the last homework assignment I’d be faced with for a while, although I still had a bad feeling that I’d once again find myself pulling an all-nighter trying to finish it on-time.  No matter how much I prepared myself, it wouldn’t matter – February 3rd was destined to be a long night for me…
 

	Steve and Suzy peer over days worth of field notes...   [Photo by Kathy Germain]
She's making a list, and checking it twice... (or something like that!)   [Photo by Kathy Germain]

Sadness came quickly among us as we entered Michigan once again and shortly after, members of our group began to depart.  Well, I suppose I should add that they were dropped off – they didn’t just jump off the moving bus or anything - but either way, it was a sad time.  First Amanda left us, and then Cynthia, but I knew that the hardest was yet to come.  As we entered the Flint area, it was time for Amber to go on her own way and it was definitely not a happy time.  It wasn’t easy leaving somebody who you’d grown so fond of over the last week, but the small notion that we’d meet again some day was enough to keep smiles on our faces and the tears away, at least for the most part.

The remaining three hours seemed to take forever and were of course made even worse as we once again passed through Gaylord on our way back to Petoskey!  I knew I’d need at least the next forty minutes to gather up my things from around the bus anyways, so I guess it wasn’t a total loss.  As we approached the college once again, the feeling of happiness just being back home finally took over and we all knew that our trip to paradise was finally completed.  Although one would think that we’d be sick of alligators and birds by this point, we were all more than ready to go back to our loved ones to tell the stories behind all of our adventures in the Everglades.  We each had brought back memories that would last a lifetime and I, for one, wouldn’t trade them for anything in the world.

In the eternal words of The Muppets, “I’m going to go back there some day…”