Leather Sammy Hagar and The Magical Mystery Tour of Florida's Swampiest Swamp

Here he is - quintessential Everglades airboat tour guide. Doesn't he bear a striking resemblance to Sammy Hagar (imagine Sammy made entirely of old leather)?



Leather Sammy Hagar works for this place - Coopertown Airboat. Coopertown has a population of 8. Yep - 8. The mayor and his wife run the airboat tours. Apparently a town with a whopping population of 8 needs some leadership and this civic minded man stepped up to the plate. Remember that show Gentle Ben from back in the day with Clint Howard (yes, that Clint Howard) as the little boy who lived in the Everglades with that dude who drove the airboat and they had a bear or something? Well, that show was filmed where Coopertown Airboat is now. Thrilling, eh? EH? (say it like a Canadian or else it loses all effect)

This is me. I'm making a stupid face. I do this often. In this particular instance I'm in the Everglades. Standing right in the soup. Notice that my pants are rolled up and I'm just outside the boat. Obviously the water isn't very deep because, well, I'm not a very tall person and I'm standing in it with my pants rolled up. Anyway - my point is that Leather Sammy Hagar told me that it was safe to get out and walk around in the water since it was shallow and the gators prefer deeper waters to stalk their prey. Tossing caution to the wind I hopped right in. Once I was in the water a fellow passenger had the genius idea to ask what types of poisonous snakes live in the shallow parts. Nice.




After I got back in and we proceeded with the tour we saw a handful of these. I now look back and seriously question my judgment.




This concludes our tour, ladies and gentlemen. I'd like to take this opportunity to let you all know that the tour guide's salary is completley dependent upon the tips of the passengers, so I hope you enjoyed your tour here today and hope you enjoyed it enough to come back again sometime. (that is almost word for word straight from the mouth of Leather Sammy Hagar)