The Florida Keys

Sorry that it’s been a while since our last post.  Our “off-season” is coming to an end, and we really needed to get in a little R&R.  But we’re back now, and ready blow this blog up.  We’ll have to start with our trip to the Keys.  We made quite the adventure out of our vacation by stopping often along the way as we drove close to 3000 miles.  Luckily, we had some family we were able to visit along the way.

“Ellie” was an amazing “trip-car.”  We had her packed up pretty tight.

Our mainstay was in the town of Tavernier on Islamorada Key.  We used the VRBO site and found this beautiful place to stay… right on the bayside.

Yup, that’s the hot tub to the place.  Not a bad view while soaking with your coffee in the morning.

Jen and I had a quest to find the perfect sunset while we were down there.

This was one of the best parts to our trip…the owners of our rental had a canoe.  It was amazing rowing through the ocean…and it ended up to be quite an adventure.  Here, we found a mangrove tunnel.

Hilarious, some local kids built a fort in the middle of it.  A pretty good fort at that!

We ran into some amazing wildlife.  Like a Great White Heron.

Long story.  But yes, those are toilet seats!

These next shots recap the highlight of our canoe trip.  Jennifer spotted something popping out of the water about 100 yards away… so we went to investigate.  And look what we found… Manatees!  They were huge.  We heard that there were about 5 that lived close by, but weren’t sure if we’d get to see one.  Jen has an amazing video that we’ll have to share a little later.

To top it off, we jumped in for a little snorkeling.

Gosh, my little girl is beautiful.

We made a day trip down to the colorful,beautiful Key West!  (the next three were taken with our point-and-shoot)

The southern-most tip of the United States!

We stopped in at Everglades National Park, just to walk a few trails.  We both wished we had more time to stay here.  You can actually camp on the beach there.  Oh well, looks like we need to go back now.

Here’s some of the amazing wildlife along the trails.

There were a lot of gators!

We stopped off at the famous “Robert is Here” fruit stand in Homestead.

And one last stop before we slowly made our way home…

AIRBOAT RIDE!!!  This was amazing.  That’s our two-seater below.  It was funny, because both Jen and I couldn’t remember the last time that we sat back for a half an hour and just grinned from ear to ear.

And I got drive for a little stretch.  I think the guide was really working his tip!

Much more to come.  And I promise, this time you won’t have to wait so long.

Have a great day!