2 April 2019
Welcome to Battleship Memorial Park, home of the USS Alabama:
This is the USS Alabama:
*pew pew pew*
The deck was a bit patched…
GIANT WRENCHES! (I liked the machine shop):
GIANT MIXER!
Matt is a bad apple
We were free to wander pretty much wherever we wanted- they just gave us a map and let us loose 🙂
down in the engine room
Inside one of the turrets:
Pretty sure that’s the table we use in Ecuador!
Creepers gonna creep…
A present! I wonder what it might be…
We also got to go inside a submarine:
Lots of equipment packed into not a lot of space:
 
Matt ascending the hatch:
Our next stop was at Alligator Alley!
We got there right as they were getting ready to feed the gators!
This big guy came up on land for a treat…
He would boop the gators on the nose with his hat to try to get them to stick their noses up higher:
  
Gators are not-so-graceful when they try to get out of the water:
We got to hold a baby gator!!! Â This is Charlie, an approximately 2 year old gator:
  
Hatchlings- they were under a red light that messed with my camera’s white balance:
A little guy making a break for it?
A very toothy grin:
This guy looks so content!
This guy looks like he has an overbite:
This guy was quite photogenic:
Top-down view:
We bought a cup of pellets to feed to the gators:
  
A well-fed gator:
Gators like mud baths?
Gators cruising through the swamp:
  
Naps in the sun:
Pals?
Nose-bumps!
This guy may have been in a scuffle:
This bird was pretty, but seriously noisy!
There were also some other reptiles, like this beautiful rainbow boa (he was iridescent!):
  
A free-range tortoise:
Tiny tortoise hiding under a rock:
Bearded dragon:
Farewell, alligators!
Hello, Florida!
Their Welcome Center had free orange juice samples, so we had to stop 🙂
