A nice visit.

The last three days have been a wonderful respite from the normal.  Harry and Tay came to visit us at Thousand Trails for three nights and it was great to see them.  We had them over on Saturday night for a steak dinner (Tay is vegetarian so I fixed her fried tofu with ginger sauce - surprisingly tasty!). Then on Sunday we went to Gatorland for the day and then ate at a Chinese buffet.  It was the longest that I've been up and walking since the ACL injury, but all went well.  Monday we did our own things until they came over again for a dinner of chicken salad, smashed potatoes and green beans (yes, I enjoyed  fixing another vegetarian main course for Tay: cannellini beans with collard greens and garlic).  Oh, and the wine was plentiful too.

Gatorland was a mix of beautiful animal refuge...

and commercial entertainment.  You can spend hours watching the 'gators and birds or go to the 'gator wrestling, watch the 'gators jump for meat...

or have your picture taken while holding a small alligator and a large snake. 
One thing to note was that the food was reasonably priced, unlike some big places like Kings Dominion.

Harry, who is an excellent photographer (his site), had some of his nice equipment including his 500mm Canon lense on a Canon 5D mark II.  Man what a setup.

Here's Harry wondering what I'm looking at...

And me with Harry's camera.

It was fun to watch the alligators try to sneak up on the the birds that hung around.

And I caught this little guy yawning (I guess).

In the rookery section there were so many nests to watch.  It ran the gamut from eggs...

To little chicks...

To big chicks that were more than a little aggressive when the mother didn't bring enough food back.  Here is one chick clamping down on its mother's head!

We went in the truck, so I wanted everyone to see how good Val looks driving the Rumblebee.  She's a pro now.

More pics from our trip later.