John Chestnut Park

So the last time we posted it was Dana's weekend work that had kept us from having new exciting pictures to put up- this time I am to blame. After weeks of late nights working I have finally reached September 15th, and will actually get to leave work while the sun is still shining. What a novel concept.

Last weekend I was able to leave work one afternoon just in time to go home, grab the camera and Dana, and head up to John Chestnut Park; which lies on Lake Tarpon a little north of us in Clearwater. I was told by someone at work that there were some gators there, and I had been dieing to see one in the "wild" (since then I have seen 3 from my office window).

While we were able to see a gator at the park, we also saw a lot of other various animals- much to our surprise. And mosquitoes. A lot of mosquitoes. Remember when I said I just had time to get home and grab the camera and Dana? Yeah, well.. we missed the bug-spray.

Alright, on to the good stuff... lining the ponds in this humid hole of a park were these signs warning us of the monster gators that, at any moment, would rush from the water and eat you...

As you can see, it was truly frightening...

(yeah, I know... we are easily entertained)

In reality though, the gators seem to be pretty calm and elusive. Or we lucked out- cause we pretty much just walked the banks of the ponds hoping to stumble across one of them; and probably could have been eaten at any time.

After a few minutes of looking at the stagnant water and swatting away the pesky bugs we finally saw one. He, or she, was pretty small.. maybe 2 or 3 feet long. Regardless- we saw an alligator in its natural habitat.

While walking through the rest of the park we stumbled upon some more wildlife...

A fish that was munching on some weeds:

A mama squirrel that was much more aggressive than the gator ever imagined being:

A big dumb bird:

And, finally, a huge monster buck:

In the middle of the mosquito fight and the wild animal stalking I also took a few other random pictures that I thought were worth sharing...

-Grant