National Park Pages

Happy Saturday everyone. Last night was one of those Friday nights that once I sat down, I never got up. I feel sleep early and slept late this morning. Guess the week had caught up with me. (Smile).

So today I have a few pages from my Florida travel journal to share with you. I don't know what I love doing  more, taking the trip or making the journal when I get home. It's all my usual messy colorful style made with bits I have at home and bits I picked up along the journey.

I have a little Passport stamp book that the US National Park Service offers where you can stamp as you visit parks. (Well I actually have 2 since one of them full, except for the Midwest Section). Here's a few of the stamps I got while in Florida.

 Then I recreated those stamps a la artist license into a page I made for my journal.

 The National Park Geek you see on my page is a patch I have on my travel bag. That's me. Just a geek. The hat I made is actually black but I outlined it in white  so it would show up better. I think I need to go back and paint it white to really be able to see it. (Probably why it is white on the patch of course.)  But that is easily done. You can see I also added eyes to the glasses/binoculars.

Onto the Everglades.

I'm not really happy with the big gator on the left hand page. It looks a little too fat and like a stuffed animal might. But she will stay as is. Since alligators come in black or white only, it was hard to color her and have the babies show up. 

This was my inspiration photo. Mama with some babies on her back. I coerced the hubby to walk back a half a mile so I could get a photo of this. We had seen her from a tram tour we took (which was at Shark Valley and really amazing).

And there were another 13 babies swimming around her and floating on the water plants and water lilies near her.

And here's a few more gators for you to see.  First some more babies from another spot along the tram ride.

And then some adults. Thee were not as big as the gators we saw in the Big Cypress swamp however.

But they weren't small either.

All these other photos were taken from the tram ride.

They told us there has only been 1 alligator attack in the Everglades since they became a park.  It was a child that fell onto a gator. I wasn't taking any chances however and followed the park rule on distance. 

And here's the tram we rose in the Shark Valley.  We got there early and took the first tram of the day as they say (who knows if it is actually true) the best ride to see wildlife since they haven't yet be spooked away from the road. You can either bike, walk or ride the tram along the park road, no cars are allowed. We saw loads of gators and also a lot of birds. 

OK, I am sure you are Evergladed out at this point.  Time for me to get moving. 

Hope the start of your weekend is going well.

Thanks for visiting.