Fakahatchee Strand

On April 15, 2012 I visited the Fakahatchee Strand Preserve in beautiful Naples, Florida. Some people would consider this place a big swamp, but no not me! Personally, this preserve was beautiful and majestic! Enchanting and mysterious, and thats coming from someone who isn't really an outdoors person! The Fakahatchee Strand Preserve was not what I was expecting. I thought there would be bright flower's and little furry animals. In reality it was a dark mysterious place with menacing alligators and killer bee's, oh my! Right away we saw a lake filled with two enormous alligators and five tiny babies. I was a little astonished that they were just there, with no fence or railing, it was as natural as it could be. After about a billion pictures, at every possible angle, we continued our trek into the mysterious forest.

For a couple of minutes there were mostly trees, then we reached our second main destination. The Strangler Fig! This Fig is a parasitic plant. Maybe you could have guessed that because of the name, but seriously who knew there were parasitic plants? These types of plants actually start from the top and go down a tree, strangling the tree in the process. Wrapping themselves around the tree, resembling fingers around a neck. Next there were the killer bee's. Ok, I don't know if they were actually deadly but they sure did appear to be! There were these huge bee's, and one sounded like one-hundred reguliar bee's. Me and my friends could swear to you that they were following us! They were exotic looking bee's! Then there were the mosqiutos. It wasn't even mosquito season, but the bugs were terrible! Being unprepared as I usually am, I showed up in a tank top, shorts and no water! Nearing the end of the endeavor we came upon the cave. So, it wasn't really a cave, but to be honest I'm not really sure what it was. It almost looked like a hut made out of mud! So being our adventerous selves, decided to go over the railing so we could get a closer look. Ivan, Lindsay, and I limbo'd our way under the railing and straight into the wet mud. Yes, we knew there was mud and yes sadly I was in flip flops. But what we didn't know is that it would be wet, cold, and we would sink! Finally, we continued on our adventure. Next we came across these absoulutley gorgeous, out of this world, flowers. They were round, yellow, and green. There were the petals, then there were these stem like petals that came out of it. A billion pictures later, we came across these two huge trees on both sides of the boardwalk.

Now really they were just plain old trees, but kids with their imaginations, we thought to take pictures of them. But not just pictures of the trees, we took pictures of us with our feet on one tree and our hands on the other. It was amusing. Then after a mile long walk full of laughter and joy, we reached our destination, the observation dock. Personally, I think it pales in comparision to the rest of the other features. It was interesting though, the water was covered with green, and there was one lonely alligator. So what we thought would be a typical field trip turned out to be a amazing joyous adventure. Turns out you don't have to go far from home to discover amazing things.