A few day trips

1

Written on 6:25 PM by Jim Harmer


Em and Ruger under a little hut in an indian village we stopped at. I'm DYING to buy one of their stuffed alligator heads.


We've made it a nightly ritual to take Ruger out each night at sunset for a little walk around the beach. He usually sleeps through it, but I think he secretly loves it.


There have been some MAJOR fires around Naples this last week. I was driving to the library and saw the police evacuating a residential street as the fire was getting close. It was really sad. I saw a mom ushering her kids into the van and just carrying everything she could fit in her arms before her house burned down. Here's a pic I took of the firefighting effort.


Cool white bird in Big Cypress National Park.


Em took this pic of Ruger lounging on the beach. It POURED rain all the sudden shortly after this picture. We all huddled under the umbrella and ran back to the car. Our condo is PERFECT because it has all of the beach chairs/umbrellas that we need for the beach. We haven't had to buy anything except food.


Emily thinks she's the boss of everything. She even tried pulling the sun up so we could stay on the beach later :-)


This is a group of alligators we saw today. We saw DOZENS of them just roaming out in the wild. There are SO MANY OF 'EM!

We went to see the Everglades today after my job interview and we didn't even make it to the park. We kept stopping beside the road because we saw so many alligators, birds, snakes, deer, fish, etc that we didn't even have time to see the Everglades! It was really fun. There's so much wildlife!



Here's a little baby alligator. We really liked watching this little guy swim around in the swamp about 5 feet from us.



We're loving Florida! I've been searching around for a job, but not too many places are real excited about hiring me only for 4 months before law school starts. I'm sure I'll find something, though.

NAPLES!

5

Written on 6:36 AM by Jim Harmer


Just wanted to post a few pics of Naples and our place. We took Dan and Emily and Dad and Mom on a video tour last night using the web cams. We're really liking Naples now, but the first week was CRAZY!

I searched and searched for a house and couldn't find ANYTHING for a few days, so we had to stay in a hotel for 10 days. I bought a car for $1500--the transmission died on it TWO DAYS after buying it. The guy had LOADED it up with transmission fluid to run smooth for the test drive. What a jerk. Emily got strep throat and we had to go to the doctor, where we waited 2 hours to get in at ER "Quick" Care (no kidding, that's what it's called). We went out one night to buy a bouncer for Ruger. We got home all excited to set it up for him, but when we opened the fabric to put on the frame, there was POOP on it! I guess it had already been returned to Walmart. Yuck. Anyway, it's been an eventful few weeks.

We're really glad to be here now, though. We got a decent car and an INCREDIBLE condo for a great price. We've just been playing on the beach, eating all the fresh fruit, swimming in the pool, and enjoying the warmth.