Bad postcard of the week:

The Everglades, allegedly with alligators, but certainly with bland buildings
From:  The Grand Rapids Press

I was on the dock waiting to get on one of those sweet air boats at Billie Swamp Safari in the Everglades a few years ago, leaning on the railing and looking in to the water.

We’d just seen some really big alligators in pens with high walls.

Looking into the water, I said to my dad and son: “I wonder if there are alligators out there in the water, or just in the pens for the tourists to gawk at.”

As soon as the words left my lips, as if on cue, the snout of an alligator floated out from under the dock, right below me. After a moment or two, the rest of the gator slowly floated out from under the dock. It was massive.

I looked over at the air boat and knew how Chief Brody felt in “Jaws,” when he uttered, “We’re going to need a bigger boat.”

We had several other encounters with gators that day, ride, along with wild ostriches and other beasts on dry land and in the water that is the Everglades, which is nearly 1.5 million acres in southern Florida.

I tell you this because there is nothing wild or exotic about this week’s bad postcard, which takes us to the Everglades National Park.

We see a generic-looking government building, with just a little bit of water. What kind of building is this, and where are the man-eating gators that were so cool to see?

The back reads: 

“Everglades National Park is a massive portion of Florida named ‘Pa-hay-okee’ (grassy water) by the Seminole Indians.”

That’s it.

C’mon, postcard! You need to do better than that! Give us a hint about what we’re looking at. Maybe it’s a visitors center. Maybe it’s the administration building. It could be a post office, and not a very exciting one, for goodness sakes.

I see no Seminoles, or anyone else, for that matter.

Heck, there’s not even a lot of grass in that grassy water!

Truth be told, the Everglades are technically a slow-moving river 60 miles wide and 100 miles long with water that overflows from Lake Okeechobee.

I did not see any monster-sized gators during my recent visit. However, we saw Marlins and Cardinals in the fancy new stadium in Miami – with the Bobblehead Museum and spinning, dancing spurting art deco home run display that alone is worth the price of admission.