Gator Gal

When you get up to the lake, know that for a good long while it belonged to two of the most famous boats in Florida — a pair of giants named Gator Gal and Myakka Maiden. Let me tell you about them, because their day is done now, and they were something to see.

For decades, if you came to Myakka, the thing you did was ride the airboat. And these weren't your little two-seat swamp buggies — these were enormous. Gator Gal and Myakka Maiden were billed as the two largest airboats in the whole world, great broad barges each carrying dozens and dozens of people at once, driven by a huge aircraft propeller roaring away in a cage at the back. You'd load aboard, the pilot would fire up that giant fan with a noise like the end of the world, and off you'd skim across the shallow lake, flat-bottomed, gliding right over water only inches deep, out among the gators and the birds, the warm wind and the spray in your face. For generations of Florida kids and tourists, a roaring ride on the Gator Gal WAS Myakka — the great thrill of the trip.

They ran those two giants across this lake for thirty-six years. Thirty-six years of sunburned tourists and screaming kids and that big fan roaring over the water. But time and machinery being what they are, the old giants finally wore out, and back in twenty-eighteen they were retired for good, and the great airboats fell silent on Upper Myakka Lake.

So don't come expecting to ride the Gator Gal — those days are gone. There's still a fine boat tour out on the lake, a quieter pontoon boat that'll carry you out among the wildlife in peace. But when you stand at that boat basin and look out over the water, tip your hat to the two roaring giants that ruled this lake for a generation and more. A whole lot of Floridians' happiest childhood memories are out there on that water, in the wake of the Gator Gal. Roll on.