Alligators and Camping

So I know it’s been awhile since I’ve updated. By the time I finish nursing Lenaïc to sleep, prepare his bottles and diapers for the next day, clean the kitchen, etc…

And then there’s been the World Cup. More on that later….

In our effort to make use of our State Parks annual pass, our new tent, and teach Angelina the joys of the outdoors, a few weeks ago we went camping to Choke Canyon State Park. It was hot. I mean HOT. And HUMID.

But that didn’t stop Angelina from having fun. It’s a nice park with “walk in” tent sites that are only 50 yards from the carpark. This means it’s basically car camping, but without RVs/generators. When we arrived, the first thing I saw was this sign:






Not exactly what you want to see when you have two small children. Now, I love seeing wildlife and normally most creatures don’t scare me. But I have seen alligators up close and I know how fast they can be, and that they’ve been known to snatch small creatures – i.e. kids. However, I figured that if they let us camp that close, it probably just means alligators *exist* but are rarely seen (I didn’t hear until after we returned about my friend who felt an alligator brush up against his tent on another weekend).

Angelina, however, was very keen to see alligators. She kept asking “where are the alligators.” Mommy, on the other hand, was very happy we didn’t see any. What we did see were a ton of birds. There was an amazing variety, but since we were so focused on taking pictures of the kids, we didn’t take any of birds.

We saw our first armadillo! Well, first live one. He was strolling around our tent, cute as can be.

For more pictures, go to CAMPING.