Alligator Alley at Gulf Shores and Orange Beach Alabama

Thanks to Gulf Shores and Orange Beach Tourism for sending my husband and I on this amazing romantic vacation. All opinions listed are 100% my own.

After our first night full of fun on our romantic getaway vacation, we got up early the next morning, made some yummy breakfast in our beach side condo, and then headed out to Alligator Alley. We both are huge lovers of alligators, so we knew this was somewhere that we wanted to visit. The day we went, it was pouring down rain. We saw the weather forecast while sitting at the Brick & Spoon the day before and knew that there was a chance of rain. Stephen nor I cared. We had really been wanting to check out Alligator Alley. In fact, while we were at dinner at Lulu’s the night before, we chatted about all the kinds of gators we would see there. Our tour guide took us both after we donned our rain jackets and gave us the low down about the farm. Alligator Alley houses about 200 nuisance alligators. The guide told us that many times, people will call alligator catchers to come and get the nuisance gator. Then, instead of taking the gator off and killing it for the meat and hide, the catcher will bring it to the farm. The farm will then turn around and pay the catcher the amount of money he would have made off of that one alligator. I loved how caring and compassionate the handlers were with the big reptiles! We started out visiting the nursery first. We got to feed them these tiny little pellets. They were quite full, but a few went after the food we gave them. After seeing the little babies, we headed out to see the 1 and 2 year old gators. They were  a bit bigger and we had a ton of fun feeding them the pellets they gave us to feed them.

Then we visited the 3 and 4 year olds. They were a little bit more aggressive and hungry. They snapped at the food pellets as it hit the water. While we enjoyed seeing the smaller gators, we really wanted to see the bigger gators — but before we did, we got to hold a baby gator first.

After holding the baby gator, we got to take a walk through the farm and see all the big boys that hang out in the swamp area.

Captain Crunch is one of the biggest alligators on the farm and he is in the very back. He is pretty lazy — but if you throw him the right kind of food, he will come alive. He holds the world’s largest bite strength of 2,982 pounds. He weighs in at over 800 pounds and is 13 feet long.

After checking out all the bigger alligators, we got to watch feeding time and see all the gators coming from here and there to get in on the action.

The feeding show was pretty awesome! The handlers knew which gators were the ones to mess with and feed. While one was feeding, the other two were keeping an eye on things.

After visiting the facility and seeing all the gators, we headed back into the building and the gift shop to pick out some souvenirs to bring home.

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Have you ever been to Alligator Alley? What was your favorite part?