Yesterday, I almost ran over an alligator with my bicycle.

Picture time!  Yesterday, my brothers, my dad, and I went on a bike ride around St. Marks Wildlife Refuge.  We biked for a long time on what, I am assuming, were dikes.  At one point, I was two feet away from running over a small alligator.  It thrashed its tail, snapped, and then disappeared into the marsh.  The rest of the ride was me going THIS IS SO COOL I CANT BELIEVE I RAN OVER AN ALLIGATOR WELL ALMOST WE BETTER LEAVE HERE BEFORE IT GETS DARK THIS IS AWESOME WOW I HOPE WE DONT RUN INTO ANYMORE ALLIGATORS.  We stopped for a while to fish in the salt water; I caught a flounder, but it was an inch or so too small to keep.  We had to rush back to get to the car before dark; at one point, one of the largest alligators I have ever seen crossed the path up ahead of us.

The best part of the whole ride was when two or three very large deer were leaping around through the dikes / marsh.  It was like being in a fantasy film, just the four of us following after some sort of a dream.  I've never seen deer so close to the ocean before; there was sort of a wild beauty about it all. 

Here are pictures:

My brothers and me (sorry for the jpeg quality).  You can see some of my backyard!  And the ol' basketball hoop...

Us with my dad.  Front yard.

  

 Siblings biking along the dikes.  I am straggling along in the back.

Can you see the deer running ahead of us?!  To the left.  It has a white tail.

 This is what I think of when I remember the GOOD part of Florida.

  

No cars, no streets, no buildings, no people...  (except maybe for the ones I love)

Pulling my hair back?

Setting our bikes aside to fish for thirty minutes.  We had to race the night on the way back! 

Other weekend highlights include:  eating tempura ice cream, watching Blade Runner, dining at the SHELL OYSTER SHACK and playing STAR OCEAN (second story)

I heard that DTGS went off without any major disasters.  Hooray!