April 10, 2018

Central Florida Adventures: Airboating

There’s a lot of things to do in Central Florida. A quick google search will bring up an abundance of lists guiding you to Disney, Sea World, Universal, I-Drive, or the beaches. However, when you live here and you’ve done all those things too many times to count you want to find something else to fill your downtime. That’s the dilemma I found myself in recently when trying to plan a day of activities for my Husband and I to do on a Sunday. I wanted something different and that’s when I found a listing for Air boat adventures. If you’re not familiar with life here in Florida, just know if you see a body of water, any body of water even small neighborhood ponds, assume there are alligators in the water. Near our house in Seminole County is a business right on the edge of Lake Jessup called “Black Hammock Adventures.” It houses a restaurant, a bar and multiple adventures you can partake in. Fun Fact: Lake Jessup also happens to be the most alligator populated lake in Florida.

We have been to the restaurant at Black Hammock numerous times and never realized that they have so many other options for entertainment. I actually came across the air boat adventure while looking through Groupon. So not only did I find a new adventure, but I also saved money!! Win-Win! We started our adventure by having lunch in the restaurant which has excellent seafood. We appropriately got alligator bites, a fish sandwich and an alligator tacos. All was delicious.

After we finished out lunch we headed over to sign in for our ride. We were doing that 1 hour daytime ride which you have to call and make reservations for your time. The do them 7 days a week so you will have no trouble finding a time that fits within your schedule. They also have the option for shorter 30 minute rides which you can just show up with out a reservation for one of those rides. Our boat had a total of 6 people on the tour, and took us all over the 16,000 acre lake.

They give you sound cancelling head phones to wear while the air boat is flying across the waters because the boat is really loud. There’s also the option for life jackets if you want them, children are required to wear them. There were tons of alligators out the afternoon of our tour thanks to the warm sun and calm water. One of the stops they take you to is a little island out in the middle of the lake called Bird Island. It’s full of different birds that are resting in the trees and alligators sunning themselves around the shores of the island. It’s pretty neat to see all the animals co-habiting together on the island and even around the edges of the lake, where there are cows living happily even with so many gators in the water.

After you return back to the dock there’s a few more perks to taking the tour and one of them is that you get to hold and take a picture with a baby alligator. Don’t worry the have his mouth taped so there’s no risk of him trying to bite you. He was actually quite cute.

A fun little bonus activity we did was not planned, but when we were leaving Black Hammock we noticed a sign for a place called Pappy’s Patch. It’s a pick your own strawberries patch. It’s a huge field filled with rows upon rows of strawberry plants. You can walk up and down the rows picking your strawberries, or they had baskets of already picked strawberries you could just grab and go. We chose to pick out own and each filled one container to take home. They also had a few blueberry plants for sale.

We lucked out the day we passed by that they were open for picking. I hear they are not always open, because their hours depend on whether there are strawberries ready to be harvested. Make sure you check out their Facebook page to see when the strawberries are ripe for picking next. Overall it was a great  day of exploring our hometown and seeing nature. I highly recommend both of these activities if you are looking for something a little different.

If you check out either activity be sure to share pictures of your adventures with us below!

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