Day 4, 5, 6, and 7

Day Four by Shogo

We started our day at 5:30 and drove to Florida Crystals.  Florida Crystals is a sugar factory that is located next to Lake Okeechobee. Florida Crystals grows organic and non-organic sugarcane, then boils it into sugar.   We were given two tours.  On the first tour, we drove to the sugarcane fields and watched the sugarcane get harvested by huge machines.  

We also got to sample some sugarcane and take some with us.  

On the second tour, we went inside the factory and saw the sugarcane get milled, cleaned, then refined into sugar.  The aroma wasn’t exactly enjoyable.  We went into the room where the sugar was packaged and you could taste the sugar in the air.  The most amazing thing that I saw in the factory was the sugar barn.  The sugar barn was a giant 300 by 100 foot barn-like-thing where they stored all the unrefined sugar.   We walked inside and there were literary 100ft tall sugar dunes.   After our journey in sugar land, we came back to the Winsburgs and went to Green Cay Wetlands.  The wetlands were really cool.  There were over 25 different bird species, a couple alligators, turtles, and frogs.  

Day five by Sage

On day five, our trip drove to the everglades. Before that, we volunteered at the Pine Jog environmental education center. We helped remove invasive species of plants. We also saw their controlled burn areas. 

THEN we drove to the everglades. On the way there, we stopped at this fruit stand called Robert Is Here. Robert Is Here is an AMAZING fruit stand in Florida City. They sell all sorts of weird and tropical fruit. Some of the fruit there is Mamy Sapote, Camilla , and dragon fruit. They had so many types of honey. The honey was SO GOOD. I LOVE HONEY. THIS IS EXCITING. HONEY. Anyway, they had all these FREE samples of honey and all of them were AMAZING! There were also REEEAEAALALALLAYYYY good mangoes called Kent Mangoes. They were so much better than any mango I’ve ever had in my life! 

After RIH, we drove to our campsite in the everglades. We walked to a pond there and an Alligator swam towards us.  

Baby alligator or lizard? We'll let you decide.

Day 6 by Micah

We went to a thing called Vintage Day at Royal Palm in the Everglades, which is an annual celebration of the protection of the Everglades. We saw a historic debate reenactment about whether to drain the Everglades or not. We walked on a boardwalk and saw alligators and sunbathing alligators and birds. 

We ate all the fruit that Sage was talking about plus miracle fruit which makes sour things sweet. Miracle fruit is a little red berry that makes sour things sweet and we had key limes and grapefruit and it made them taste very sweet. 

Miracle fruit sticks to the sweet receptors on your tongue, and when you eat sour stuff it activate the sweet receptors on the tongue. We also went on an alligator watch at night and saw alligators up close. Their eyes glow because the light goes through their eyes and bounces back, stimulating the rods and cones twice to get them to have better night vision. It was cool to see alligators and eat so much crazy fruit.

Note the "Wild Sage" sign

Day 7 by Minto

Today, we went to Flamingo and saw American Crocodiles. 

After that we went to look for a place we  could park our bus and swim at the beach. We were looking for parking for about an hour and a half and we were right next to the beach, but there were too many people and no parking spots. That was horrible. Finally we found a place to park and hung out at a beach for while, then came back to Green Kay farms to stay for one more night.