MIDWAY AIRBOAT RIDE

SWAMPED-ST. JOHN'S RIVER-CHRISTMAS,FLORIDA

                                             Oh give me a home where the cattle roam and the alligators and egrets play. Where never is heard a discouraging word and skies are cloudy today.
                Home, Home on the St. John's River where the airboats travel each day.
                You see gators, Cypress trees and knees,egrets,Great Blue Heron,and cattle grazing away.

We paid $30 each for a guided air boat ride with Midway Air Boats at noon on the St. John's River outside Titusville,Florida on Rte 50.   It's called midway because it's halfway between the
St.John River's source near Vero,Florida and its mouth near Jacksonville,Florida. The St. John's is one of the few rivers in the world that flows north.  It often looks like a swamp or even a dried up river bed.  This year there's plenty of water for the cows to graze in.  

Our $30 was well spent as we zoomed around the barely 10 ft. deep water in an air boat full of ten people wearing headsets to muffle the motor noise and to listen to the captain conduct the nature tour.  We stopped and saw cows free grazing on the grasses in the river.  Unfortunately they add to the nitrates build up in the water which hurts the fish.    Ten foot and smaller alligators were sunning on the islands in the river.  One opened his mouth and showed us his teeth as a warning to stay away.     Great Blue Herons along the river have been known to eat baby alligators.  Alligators in turn will eat them and also the calves of the grazing cows.  The air boat zoomed through a raft of coots but the driver slowed down so one slow one wouldn't be mowed down.

Eventually toward the end of the hour long tour we ended up in a cypress swamp in the Tosohatchee National Forest.  It was very still and peaceful when we turned off the motor.  The Cypress  knees are roots which stretch into the water.  The knees are an adaptation for drought periods to sustain the Cypress.  On the way back to the  Midway Air Boat dock, we passed an island which had been an Indian Mound in pre-Columbus days where the first peoples in Florida sought high ground during storms.  There are many of those islands in the river from Vero to Jacksonville.

Back at the dock, our guide let each of us have our picture taken holding a young alligator with its mouth tied shut.  Midway has an extensive gift shop.  As we were leaving we met the local muralist AL RAO who painted illustrations of the animals seen on the tour all over the outside of the gift shop.  Mr. Rao is originally from New York City and later the Catskills.  In Titusville, Florida he specializes in Florida landscapes,birds and animals. His murals are all over town including The Sunrise Bakery.  I own three of Rao's Florida landscape paintings.

As for us, we were back for lunch in Titusville at The Italian Fisherman on US 1 on the Indian River across from the Kennedy Space Center  in ten minutes.  The Fisherman serves breakfast,lunch and dinner like a diner at reasonable prices.