June, 2008 Honeymoon in
Heaven
After an incredible wedding
in beautiful Bermuda amongst 18 of our closest family and friends, Melissa and I left for our honeymoon.
Most honeymooners depart for the romantic getaway of their dreams, but for us this meant wrangling alligators and crocodiles
in the mud. It was awesome! Don't get me wrong, we started our vacation innocently enough by spending
two days at Seaworld in Orlando, FL and three days at Discovery Cove.
Discovery Cove is an incredible all-inclusive park where you can feed and pet birds in a huge aviary,
swim and interact with dolphins, and snorkel in a man-made tropical reef teeming with fish. It's also where I asked
Melissa to marry me by having a dolphin bring her a buoy that read "Will you marry me?" on it. We couldn't
resist going back there for our honeymoon. But, being around all of these animals made us just want more!
Melissa surprised me for my birthday by booking a "trainer
for a day" program for us at Gatorland. We had done it once before, and it was great to go back and see our friends
there. This time, it had a spin on it: Because we work with animals and we had done the trainer for a day program
before, we were going to be allowed to do things no other training groups could do. Our three objectives were
to move an eight foot alligator to a new enclosure, dig up eggs from an alligator nest, and dig up eggs from an endangered
cuban crocodile nest. My wife is sooooo good to me.
