The Everglades and the west coast of Florida…

We left Bahia Honda about 3:00pm and drove the two hours north to Homestead, to the same RV Park we had stayed in on the way down. It was only an hour or so from The Everglades.

It was Saturday and the parking lot at Everglades State Park was full so we had to park the rig out on the highway and walk into the park. Highway 41 is the northern border to the park and is known as Alligator Alley for good reason. We weren’t in the park five minutes when we spotted the first one. Not two minutes later the monster you see floating down the river in the picture below appeared. Driving west from the park entrance we saw dozens more gators.

Pictured are some gators and some wild birds spotted at Everglades State Park.

























We stopped at Naples on the West Coast of Florida and stayed the night at The Neapolitan RV Resort.

Pictured are pelicans on some pilings at Naples Beach. There's also lots of white sand at Naples Beach but I didn't want to keep rubbing it in...













All of the RV parks around Naples are expensive so we drove north to Bonita Springs where we’ve booked into Bonita Lake RV Park for a week.

Pictured is the pool and the 'lake' at the back of Bonita Lake RV Park.











We went for a long walk our first morning in Bonita Springs and were finding it too weird to see all the Christmas wreaths and other decorations down here in the tropics, and so early. Yesterday, riding in the truck in the heat of the afternoon, with the windows wide open, we heard Brenda Lee's Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree!

Today we visited the sand castle exhibition at Bonita Beach and I'm glad we didn't go a couple of days earlier when there was a fee to get up close. Compared to the sand sculptures we saw at Harrison Hot Springs a couple of years ago, it was lame.

Pictured is one of the sand castles at Bonita Beach. We only included it to show you how well janice's new camera works. She dropped her old camera in the sand the other day and it stopped working. We were told that it would cost more to fix than replace, so she's now the proud new owner of a Nikon Cool Pix.










Later we stopped at Hickory Park Beach, pictured below, and did some body surfing - not pictured.









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We had a request for Janice’s recipe for crab cakes so, here it is:

1 egg lightly beaten
¼ cup mayonnaise
3 tbsp flour
¾ cup Panko bread crumbs
¼ cup finely chopped red onion or four green onions
2 cloves fresh garlic crushed
1 to 2 tsp of hot sauce or Sambal - depending on tolerance
¼ cup of Cilantro or Parsley chopped
1 lb Crab meat, picked over for shells

Mix egg, flour, mayo and hot sauce until well blended
Stir in everything else
Shape cakes using about 1/3 cup of mixture for each cake
Refrigerate for at least an hour
Melt equal parts of butter and olive oil (about 2 tbsp each) in a pan and cook cakes over medium-high until crisp and golden brown

They taste great with Mango Salsa.