The things that made this trip the best were not just the sweet blue crab claws cracked on chickee with an IPA beer, or the laid back efficiency of our storytelling leader, or the alligators that we saw in the mangroves, or the really sweet new friends we made while learning the names of all the Everglade birds; but there was this immense sense of a different kind of wilderness, a marine wilderness with Gulf of Mexico sand and all that the ocean brings.