A is for Alligator

Last week, my sister talked me into canoeing with the alligators. Well...to be precise, she talked several of us into it.  We had travelled down to Sarasota, Florida for a few days with my brother to join a friend who was vactioning there from Germany.  The weather was beautiful and warm after the gray, snow-bearing skies of February here in Ohio, and it was our last afternoon before we needed to head back north.   We had already braved about as much sunshine, water, and sand as our winter skin could handle, but it seemed criminal to end our stay indoors when we would be heading back to the brisk chill of early spring weather in a matter of hours.  "Canoeing!" she says, and "Okay," the rest of us say.  And so we headed out to Myakka River State Park and a slightly more Animal Planet experience than most of us had anticipated.   (My sister had apparently been dreaming of the Everglades so this was an acceptable second!)

Or maybe we had all just watched too much Animal Planet?  The alligators we happened to see were peacable and content and mostly just disappeared under the water when we came too near.  Adrenaline and nerves aside, it made for an incredible afternoon of beauty and bird watching. We didn't count, but I wouldn't be surprised if we saw more than 20 different types of birds. Most of them birds we had never seen in real life before.  It made for an excellent and memory making afternoon. And now I can say, I've gone canoeing with the alligators.

What about you? Have you ever done something you never thought you'd do, only to find out it was something pretty special?