Florida Sea Base Trip: August 1-14

Florida was amazing.

Enough said. :D

Seriously, though, it was. I loved it. Sitting on the porch, watching a thunderstorm over some distant Key, or lying on the T-Docks, watching the sunset and stargazing, I thought I could live there quite comfortably.

Because of the craziness of the past few weeks, I haven't been able to get a post up about the trip, and because school has almost started, this one can't be very long. But, I thought I should get at least a few pictures up. (A note about the pictures: I supplemented mine with some of Dad's. You can usually tell which are his by the higher resolution.)

Walking to breakfast on our first day in Miami.

The group, minus the adults.
From right to left: Max, me, Ethan, Tyler, Wes, and Frank.

This is a house being fumigated to get rid of roaches and termites.
Most of us had no idea what it was at first. (My first thought was a
circus tent.)

Miami Beach

We stopped for lunch at a park that had an interesting outdoor-
gym-thing...it was so much fun. x] This was one of the
"machines"--I think it was supposed to simulate squats.

The Venetian Pool: a huge, freezing, spring-fed pool with
a waterfall and a cave. As Ethan put it, "It was like swimming in
a water bottle."

The Miami skyline

This is Stiltsville...pretty self-explanatory. 

Ethan saw something in the water, and set out to get it...

...and he found beads...

...a cast iron pot (which, along with the lid, he brought home)...

...a lid that didn't fit the pot...

...and a bottle of shampoo or cologne. We weren't sure which.

I saw this and thought, "Oh goody! A shark!"

Disappointment strikes! It was just a palm frond. 

Mr. Dixon saw a snake on the side of the road, so he
stopped the car,  jumped out, and caught it to show to us.

On the Anhinga Trail in the Everglades

Then it started to rain...but it was just a light drizzle, so we weren't worried.

A 6-7ft gator

Ha! We thought we shouldn't be worried! It started pouring
while we were on the open part of the trail. We got to a "shelter"
that leaked quite a bit, so we decided to make a run for the visitor's center.
Upon our arrival, we went into the bathrooms and used the hand dryers to
dry off ourselves and, in my case, my camera, Kindle, and notebook.

"Robert is Here," an odd roadside produce store/petting zoo.
We got some boiled peanuts (odd, but delicious), a starfruit,
a dragonfruit, and some tamarindo beans.

They also had some interesting smoothie flavors, which we shared.
We tried Tamarindo, Guayabana, Mango, and Papaya.

Arrival at Sea Base!

Heading to our dorm...

...and inside our dorm. There's another bunk bed directly
to the left.

This is the main dorm building. We were in pretty much the
exact middle--if you look on the second floor behind the
flagpole, that was our dorm.

Ethan and I were buddies for the trip. We're about to do
Confined Water Dive #3, I believe.

Us after dinner. (Speaking of dinner, the food was remarkably good.)

Our divemasters: Rich,

Keith,

and Diver Dan.

After our dives on Thursday (or Friday, I can't remember which),
we left base for a trip to Robbie's Pier. This is one of the friendly
neighborhood pelicans.

And a few of the (gigantic) not-so-friendly tarpin. You could
buy fish to hand-feed these bad boys.

We're about to get into the water for our last dive.
From left to right: Mr. Cargile, Dad, me, Tyler, Max, Frank,
Ethan, Wes, and our boatmate for the last day. Keith is behind us.

This, as the picture says, is the southernmost point
of the continental US. There was a huge line to take your
picture in front of in, so we just took a picture behind it.

We picked up some coconuts at the Southernmost Point and
had the guy drill holes into them for our straws. I must say,
coconut milk is not my drink of choice.

Apparently Wes didn't like his coconut, either. x] 

This is on our airboat ride through the Everglades on Monday.

The view looking ahead of the airboat...about 15 minutes
into the 40-minute tour, the sun got to me and I totally zoned
out...I think I fell asleep. In any case, I don't remember the rest of it.

We rented bikes to ride the 15-mile-round-trip trail down Shark Valley.

An anhinga by the side of the road, sunning its feathers.
We also saw a huge gator that we were maybe 5 feet away from, but
I didn't get a picture of it.

The observation tower at the end

...and the view from the tower.

After the ride, we ate a delicious and quite refreshing watermelon,
along with the starfruit, dragonfruit, and sugarcane from Robert.

Max, "peeling" his sugarcane.

The dragonfruit tasted like strawberry-kiwi, but I
didn't really like it--mostly because the flavor made me think
of that kid's shampoo we used to buy.

 Now, story time! On the way back from Shark Valley, Mr. Dixon (the "designated driver" of the trip) slammed on the brakes and started shouting. I thought we had blown a tire or something, but no; he had seen a Burmese Python on the side of the road. So, we backed up a few hundred feet, he parked the car on the side of the highway, and jumped out to go see if it was dead. Sure enough, it breathed no more, so Mr. Dixon picked it up and put it into one of our water coolers. When we got back to our lodgings for that night, he took it outside and proceeded to dissect it and take samples of its blood and tissue for the archives at Angelo State University. (For those of you who don't know him, he's a biology professor at ASU.) It was pretty gross: the stone bench that he dissected it on looked like a sacrificial altar or something.

  After that little ordeal, we cleaned up for the Marlins game that night and packed up the majority of our things. And the next morning, we came home. :D