Walking around the lakes at The Oaks at Point South

We have been enjoying our walks around the lakes/ponds here at The Oaks at Point South campground.

The campground map includes a warning "Do not feed the gators!"

The first day when we walked around the lakes, I was concerned and watchful, but we had not seen any alligators, so I relaxed on subsequent days.

Monday afternoon, evening, and night, it rained quite a bit. When we headed out to walk on Tuesday, we were a little concerned about how muddy it might be on the trails around the ponds, so we asked a fellow that was coming out as we were heading in about how muddy the trail was. He said that the trail was fine except for a small part that we were about to come upon, and that there were a couple of gators in the larger pond. He explained to us where we might see them!

This was the area where he said that there was a gator in the middle of the pond.

We saw something in the water...

... zoomed in on that previous picture - but, it was staying so still that we concluded it must just be a log.

A little bit further, a youngster met us along the path excitedly telling us, "It's a gator!" Carl went down into the narrow band of trees next to the lake and took pictures -- you may see the horizontal line in the middle of the picture...

This is zoomed in... yep, I guess that's a 'gator!

The youngster was with his dad -- and 2 young brothers -- all excitedly watching the alligator that was about 50' away from the shore. It, like the one that we had seen earlier and dismissed as a log, was staying just still there in the water. The dad gave as his opinion that the alligator had already eaten as a water bird had been swimming around near it earlier and the alligator showed no interest in obtaining a meal. The dad also pointed out to us the "slide" areas where the alligators go off the bank into the water (and come up too, I guess).

We headed on around the pond and just a little bit further, we heard something plop in the water and I jumped wondering if there was another alligator... but...

... we looked more closely on a log and saw...

... a turtle, so we figured one of the turtle's buddies had thought that we were just a little too close and got off into the water.

We continued to enjoy our walk, being watchful for any land sightings of alligators. Certainly wouldn't want to disobey the campground map and "feed" any of them!