Day 5: Thanksgiving

Thursday was Thanksgiving, and along with the holiday came a decent drop in temperature. The temperature would only get to about 65-70 degrees. Great weather, especially relative to what is was like back in Cleveland, however we definitely would not be getting in the water.

We decided to check out the St. Augustine Alligator Park, which was an attraction that had some really good reviews online. I must admit that I was quietly not very enthusiastic about going here. I don't have any problem with alligator or crocodiles, but every time I see one at a zoo it's just sitting there doing nothing. I was struggling to understand how we would fill several hours of our time looking at alligators. I ended up presently surprised because it was a pretty cool place.

They of course had areas where you just saw alligators sitting around. But they also had a feeding show which was pretty wild to see. The feeding show we saw was for their main attraction which was an Alligator named Maximo. Maximo is a 15 foot long, 1,250 pound alligator. The guy was an absolute monster. It was hard to get a good picture which would illustrate his enormous size. But you can get a sense of his size based on the fact that he has an entire large turkey in his mouth as a snack.

The rest of the feeding was entertaining, mainly because these employees were willing to take on a lot of risk to let us see the alligator lunge for food. One slip and a zookeeper was about to become Thanksgiving dinner.

After the feeding we walked around the rest of the park. They had a boardwalk through somewhat of a makeshift swamp that must have had well over 100 alligators in it. That was interesting, although around this time Nolan became extremely difficult, and it was hard to focus on the surroundings.

We started making our way back towards the beginning and we walked past a bird exhibit. I commented that it was a neat looking toucan, and Natalie immediately corrected me that it was a parrot. Natalie is remarkably good and learning and remembering details, particularly related to animals. So I was happy to be corrected by our family expert.

At this point Allyson took Nolan back to the car, and I grabbed a snack with the girls before we all headed out. It turned out to be a fun place so I was glad we spent part of the day there.

We made our way back to the campground so we could relax for a bit. Eventually Allyson took the girls over to the beach to walk around and grab shells. As I mentioned, it wasn't swimming weather, but when you know whether like this is at home, you soak it in at the beach however you can:

Splitting up worked out well because Allyson could have her time with the girls, and Nolan could chill out a bit with me.

When the ladies got back we made Thanksgiving dinner. This was the second time we've done it in the motorhome, and each time it has worked out well. Below is a photo from the last time we traveled on Thanksgiving in 2020, which was the first year we has the motorhome.

This year's meal came out pretty good. We grilled some turkey, and even had meatless turkey for our vegetarian, Caroline.

We ate dinner, had some pie, and then watched a movie. Everyone was pretty worn out from the back-to-back days of activity so the kids went to bed pretty early. It was a good Thanksgiving. There's a lot for me to be thankful for, particularly Allyson and all the kids.

Tomorrow we start the trip back home in the afternoon. We are going to check out a couple more things in St. Augustine and then hit the road in the afternoon.