Fan Boat and Gators

 

Key Largo, Montego, Baby Why Don't We Go

Long before we arrived in Florida, we planned to take a three-hour snorkeling trip to the reefs six miles out into the Atlantic. We've never snorkeled before, and it's been awhile since we actually *swam.* So when the tour company said, "Uh, we've got two foot waves and pretty choppy conditions, we're going to need experienced snorkelers and strong swimmers for this adventure," we said, "We'll take the boat!" Our snorkel trip was refunded and we booked an afternoon excursion to the reefs in a glass bottom boat (which is really more like windows built into the bottom, which you'll see in the pics). 

The tricky part was that sometimes the park fills up, so once you're in, you should stay in or possibly not be allowed back in to take your tour (with the privately-owned company). We had: no towels, an almost empty bottle of sunblock, no food, no beach gear, no water--wait! we might have had water. We ended up tromping back and forth at this state park in Key Largo looking for the big beach (there was no big beach). Eventually, we claimed a small patch of cement hard sand on Cannon Beach. It is so named, due to the crazy amount of shipwrecks just off the coast. Had we brought goggles or a diving mask, we could have waded out to the buoy and seen such a wreck for ourselves. 

But we did not have these things. And although we bought: towels, sunblock, food, sunglasses, and post cards in the gift shop--they only had child-size underwater gear left. Ha! take that gift shop; no more of our money for you!! (Lol--we funded Pennekamp park for at least the next three months with our unpreparedness :)

Our boating adventure was also three hours long. I can't even describe the vivid varieties of blue in the water. We took picture after picture trying to capture it, but it's one of those God's creation moments you just have to experience yourself! We mostly didn't have to wear masks on the boat. Florida mostly doesn't care if you wear a mask at all. Buck tried to come inside and see all the reefs and fish and sharks and other interesting life through the windows, but he gets motion sick and didn't want to push his Dramamine past its limits. To help combat general ocean motion sickness, the deckhands were handing out peppermints like candy ;) Caelan said she got like five, but wasn't going to turn down candy!

It was all very educational and interesting, and I'm glad that we chose this option instead of being IN the water. The kids had never been out on the ocean in a boat, so this was a new adventure for them :) And considering our preparedness (or lack thereof) and the amount of time we spent in the sun, we really didn't get that crispy!

Of course we wanted to see more of the keys than just Key Largo, so after our boat trip we started driving south. I showed the kids a live map of where we were . . . disconnected from the continental United States, except for a crazy long highway that  connects the Keys over long stretches of water. 

According to the Internets there are 800 keys in Florida! We certainly did not see all of them, but we did drive through the middle of a few. I would say, if you didn't know you were on a tiny island, from the main road, it looks like pretty much any other town with palm trees. I think we would have really needed to keep driving to the very end to see some of the quaint towns that I'd looked up ahead of time. 

One place we did go to intentionally was Islamorada. Kristin recommended a restaurant called MEAT that serves homemade sodas. It was seriously the best burger and fries I've had in maybe forever! There was a giant elk head above our table, wearing a covid mask. It was a tiny little place, but wow was that delicious food! It was also our most expensive meal of the entire vacation, because everyone ordered sodas, floats, or shakes with their meal. Good thing we had our grocery budget to spend!

After dinner, we drove around long enough to try to catch the sunset. We weren't exactly sure where to stop and watch this occur, but we found a park in Key Largo that was so beautiful! I think we were supposed to pay half a million dollars to drive into it, but no one was at the booth or the backup pay station, and we were only there long enough to take a few pictures and watch the sun disappear into the water (well, behind a little stretch of land, and then assumedly into the water :) Of course, the boys took the opportunity to play football (it was hard to play on the tiny Cannon Beach earlier--more of a handoff, like in track relays).

Did you catch Caelan's photo bomb? Lol!

Easter Sunday with Framily

Friends that feel like family = framily. My friend Alisa used this descriptor and I like it! Along with "kind of cousins" referring to our kids, another descriptor I totally agree with :) Every year Alisa's sister-in-law and brother host a massive Easter egg hunt/gathering at their beautiful lakeside home in Florida. I've watched these 100-plus people gatherings online through pics and videos and wondered if I'd ever see it in person.  Last year's extravaganza was cancelled due to covid. Well, happy for us, most of the primary attendees got vaccinated this year, the number was reduced waaaaay down to less than 30, and we happened to be in town for an invite!

It was soooooo good to see our Cali friends again! The kids hit it off immediately and headed off to the game room (which included climb-out-on-the-roof access; what kid doesn't like to climb on the roof?) Outside, they played giant Jenga and Buck and Mo played corn hole with Chris and his dad. Eventually Mick and his wife and kiddos showed up; they visited us the same time our Cocoa Beach visitors did for the big ministry conference a couple years ago.

We enjoyed Alisa's mom's compliments. With her southern accent, she said, "I saw all these big kids walk by and I thought, 'Well, it must be a youth group.' But then somebody said, 'No those are Buck and Jess's kids.' And I thought, 'They don't look old enough to have kids that age!'" She was so sweet :)

Mo grew up all over the place, and from his time in Florida, remembered catching little green lizards and attaching them to his ears like alive earrings. He happened to spot one such lizard just as he was trying to convince Graysen how much fun this was :) Well, the lizard latched on to Mo's hand and would not let go! While Graysen was rethinking this Floridian experience, the other Florida kids walked in and confirmed this was just a normal thing they all did during childhood. Ha! If I remember correctly, instead of on Graysen's ear, this same lizard found a cozy place inside a giant plastic egg (for just a few minutes) and was quite the surprise for the little boy who collected that egg during the hunt!

So Kristin told me that in every body of water in Florida, there is an alligator. The pond in her backyard was no exception--in fact, it had two. One of their Easter party traditions is to set up a target on the far side of the water and launch hard boiled eggs at it with a sling. This proved a pretty fun challenge! It was also fun to see Buck, Mick, and Mo working (playing) together again, just like the old days :) I'm sure the gators weren't complaining about their extra treat, either.

After about four hours of fun (we wished we could stay longer!), we had to start our four-hour drive south to Florida City. Drivers on the highways in southern Florida, near Miami, are CRAZY!! And they all have expensive cars and giant trucks, and apparently excellent insurance. Another distraction was this giant, glowing guitar which changed colors and patterns as we drove closer and closer to it. It turns out that this section of Florida is reservation land, and the casino bears the name of the Hard Rock enterprise, hence the giant guitar. Huh. You never know what you're going to see when you drive to new places! (Also, our hotel was terrible, awful as I was afraid it would be . . . I am currently writing letters and hoping for some money back because we WAY overpaid for what we got; unfortunately it was the only option. Okay, rant done. Back to happy vacation things!)

Kayaking at Night

Look at those gloomy skies! We had a full day to figure out how to keep busy until our kayaking adventure. First, we went and really did some legitimate exploring through the surf shops--coffee and chai in hand. The stores were super busy because everyone else was doing what we were doing . . . wondering how to fill the day without the beach playing a major factor. I decided to wait outside, without my mask, with a few of the kids . . . and suddenly, a song my friends and I listened to endlessly in 8th or 9th grade, made sense . . . "A1A BEACHFRONT AVENUE" It's Vanilla Ice. He's talking about Florida. A1A isn't a clever lyric, it's an actual road! Lol! It only took me 30 years to figure that out. See, travel expands people, hahaha!

Because it was slightly warmer when the sun broke through the clouds, Caelan and Graysen were willing to brave the waves--there were some big ones! Brennen built a . . . castle? . . . and Buck took a nap. Later, we tried to see the national dog surfing championships at a nearby park/beach, but the dogs were the next day We saw a couple of little kids surfing, while listening to depressing Jamaican music (I didn't even know that existed!) from a dj who seemed totally into it.

Seeing that the weather wasn't all that much better than the day before, we were a bit concerned we'd receive a repeat phone call cancelling our kayak adventure for the second time--but, nope! We arrived enough before dusk to see how to buckle our vests, use our paddles, and put our glow sticks on the front if we were in the front of the kayak and on our backs if we were in the back of the kayak. It also gave us a chance to get the hang of paddling while there was still daylight. Buck and Brennen were a team. Caelan and Gabby were a team. Graysen and I were a team.

We paddled for 2.5 hours against the current of a canal, across a lagoon, out into what seemed like the open ocean (it wasn't :) and through a mangrove tunnel to a mosquito pond. We saw tons of herons, cranes, and lots of manatee noses! One popped up right in front of Graysen and my kayak. We were earlier informed that manatees often flip kayaks. This was not good news as G$ and I were the least proficient rowers in the bevy of boats. The end guide radioed the front guide and they both seemed surprised that a manatee was out that far. We later heard from college/last town we lived in friends that they took the same trip early the next day, and they were told there are alligators in the water. We're just going to stick with the manatee sighting and not consider the alternative. Eeeek!!

The area through which we paddled belongs to NASA (Kennedy Space Center was a few minutes down the road). Originally nearby dry grounds were plantations, then these were confiscated to became potential astronaut training grounds, and then the astronauts said "no thanks" to the giant, aggressive mosquitoes helping them train, so now it's a wetland. We paddled under the bridge where the injured dolphin, Winter, was rescued (from the movie A Dolphin's Tail/Tale fame). We watched the sun set, all pinkish orange, into the water. We paddled through growing darkness to see bioluminescent critters in the black backwater. The bio-things were between seasons, so we saw some neon-blue flashes and dots, but not full-on glowing jellyfish. However, in total, it was pretty amazing, unique experience! I'm glad Buck spotted it, booked it, and rebooked it for us :)

We took this picture the next morning--Buck and Gabby really wanted to attend a sunrise service on the beach, but our kayak tour ended well after dark, we had an hour drive back to the hotel, we hoped to eat at The Waffle House (but it was only take-out, take out waffles? What?). We ended up at IHOP at 11 PM, had a big breakfast, and got to our room about midnight. We watched our home church on my phone as we drove to our friends' house for Easter celebrations. Of course, the sun came out and it was warm and lovely at the beach (we couldn't resist one last visit and picture before we left). But all of that is the next post, I'm getting ahead of myself!

One crazy thing that I already alluded to, a friend from college, who was in my Bible study, who helped plan my video-recorded wedding shower (I was in CA), randomly showed up in our church nursery one day, probably 10 years ago. It took me sorting through my files of faces to figure out that she and her husband had moved to our little town! We once again found ourselves in Bible study together, worked together to develop a mission ministry at our church, and then kind of fell out of touch again when we moved. She saw the pictures of us kayaking and was like, "Hey, where are you?" Through a bunch of rapid-fire messages, we realized they were staying at the SAME hotel we'd just checked out of, at the SAME time we'd been staying there. How we missed bumping into each other at the pool, in the lobby, at breakfast, at the beach, I have no idea! It seems like just about everybody is heading to Florida for spring break this year :)