Kneeling in a field, I held out my hand to coax a wild deer to approach me. It did, verrrrrry cautiously, sniffing for food and finally putting its wet nose into my palm. I felt enraptured, at once surprised that the animal didn't bound away upon seeing me and thrilled that the encounter resulted in actual contact. With little expectation of even sighting a deer, this experience ranks right up there with one of my top outdoor memories -- and it just happened recently.

Kelly, my fiance, and I took a jaunt to the Florida Keys, ending up at the end of the road in Key West. But as we passed Big Pine Key just after sunset, she spotted a rare Florida Key Deer grazing less than 30 feet from the asphalt. We returned the next day, eager to visit the National Key Deer Refuge and hopefully see more of the little creatures -- about half the size of regular whitetail deer. Driving the perimeters of the refuge for nearly an hour, we saw nothing. However, in a small field near an adjoining neighborhood, Kelly's keen eyes caught the form of a deer squatting under a tree. I stopped the car, quietly opened the door and stepped out. Suddenly one deer turned into two, then four, as others walked into the field.

As we crouched and watched them graze while warily keeping an eye on us from a distance of about 100 feet, I almost came unglued when a deer ambled right behind our car. Evidently sizing us up as non-threatening, its dark eyes locked with my green eyes. I softly sweet-talked, saying, "You are so beautiful," and out went my hand toward it. That's when the deer closed the distance and we touched. Interestingly, the other deer saw this and, noting that no harm came of its brethren when it walked away, they returned to their grass-eating routine.

In the next hour, Kelly and I saw 10 more Key Deer loping around, usually in groups of two or four. We drove slowly, took many pictures and refrained from feeding them. We couldn't have hoped for more.

But our little adventure odyssey didn't end there. Heading west across the Tamiami Trail from Miami to Naples the next day, we pulled into the Shark Valley in Everglades National Park. We opted for the tram ride to the lookout tower, a 15-mile roundtrip on a hardtop road with a guided tour. We oohed and ahhed at all sorts of birdlife like herons, egrets and hawks, but the stars of this show: alligators. Kelly and I saw dozens of them along both sides of the road and a huge monster gator floating in the tower pond. On the loop road back to the visitor's center, we took pictures of turtles, anhingas and even four deer -- all does -- moving from a cypress stand out into the sawgrass prairie.

We returned to Tampa with loads of great pictures, a couple of souvenir visors we bought at the Park gift shop, and had grabbed lunch at a Miccosukee Indian restaurant where we sampled the Gator Bites (yep, you guessed it: Tastes like chicken!).