SWAMP TOUR

In celebration of Ty’s birthday we went on a Swamp Tour and alligator bayou on Sunday.
The tour was a bit pricey but after it was all said and done, it was well worth the dough.
The tour was broke us into 3 stages. The first part we spent about 30 minutes looking into a man made area that contained huge snapping turtles and young alligators. The tour guide got into the pit with them then feed them raw chicken while he talk and answered questions. Next we walked over to the LARGE alligators, the tour guide once again got into the fenced area with the gators. This time he invited some of the crowd in to the fenced area to touch and pull on the alligators tail….had I not been holding Ava in my arms…I would have volunteered. Finally we all loaded up on a barge boat and took a tour through the swamp lands of Louisiana, which was uniquely beautiful. Half way through the ride the boat docked and we got to walk around in “live nature.” On our hike we saw a HUGE alligator in the wild (and kept our distance). While we were docked the guides brought out a tiny baby alligator and then a larger one that weighted around 50 pounds. I got to hold both!! It was very cool feeling their cold smooth skin. Jeff held the baby alligator (and about freaked out, almost dropping it as he threw it back to me) The guide gave him a hard time about it and jokingly hesitated to let him hold the bigger one. (He only wanted to hold the bigger one for a millisecond to get a picture with his phone, and was squirming the WHOLE time)…the bummer side to all of this is that my camera battery about 30 minutes into the day.
While we were on the boat, the guided pulled out a possum and (something that looked like a half rabbit/half rat) plus the alligators and talked about each of them letting the us touch them, Ty got a kick out of being up close and personal. At one point he put the alligator on the ground (the thing was 20 feet away) and Jeff freaks out and pulls his feet up onto into his seat.. I got a good laugh out of his fear! Jeff was so excited to go on this tour yet he acted So DIFFERENTLY then I imagined he would.
The fun part is that our tour was being filmed for a new show on the travel channel that is based on daring/unusual tours. Before we started the tour we had to sign a wavier to be filmed and possibly on tv in about 6months, so look for us on the travel channel.