When I was a child our family visited St. Augustine with our friends, the Smiths. We went to the fort, Marineland, and the Alligator Farm. I haven't been back to the Farm since then so I was eager to relive my childhood by heading back there. Of course, the kids were interested.
We went there first today. The grandparents opted out and toured Flager College instead. The alligator farm is now a zoological park. It opened in 1893 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. They have over 23 different species of crocodiles along with the hundreds upon hundreds of alligators. I have never in my life seen that many gators in one place. The alligators first were collected from Anastasia Island. It was a great tourist attraction for all of the people coming to the beach.
We sort of broke off into small groups to explore the place. At one point I got left behind while I was watching a movie about the first mammoth alligator at the farm. I walked out by myself to follow the trail to the feeding exhibit. To get there I had to walk across this huge winding alligator swamp.
A sign at the beginning told me to walk slowly and not hold or lean over the railings as it was a natural preserve and the birds could and would land. I started walking and it got swampier and swampier, and I was the only one on the wooden walkway across the swamp.....except for the hundreds of alligators swimming the swamp and sunning on the banks. It was the creepiest feeling. I started counting alligators and hoped they would not jump into my pathway. I stopped counting at 123 alligators. Ugh!
At noon the Alligator Lagoon, the one thing I remembered about the farm from my youth, held a feeding demonstration. I wish I knew how to put on a video on this blog because the feeding was amazing. I don't know how this zookeeper woman could even step foot into this pit of gators, but she did, armed with a stick and a bucket of giant rats or possum. These she fed to the hungry gators while she made them walk toward her and open their massive jaws.
As we started out of the park it began to pour. We hung out in the gift shop (of course) for it to let up some and then we headed into the city where we got back on our friendly trolley. We explored Flager College, The Flagler Memorial Church which Flager built in memory of his daughter, the Hotel Alcazar, and the Old Drugstore We got so that we could recite the tour around town. The rain came and went and the trolley drivers gave us all rain ponchos. By the end of the day, we were soaked from the waist down.
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