the rest of our time in Florida

Um, sorry about the long hiatus, again.  It isn't very easy to get blogging done in between whatever the kids need right. this. minute.  And helping them, mostly A.J., with summer workbooks.  Plus finishing up my last class, and trying to keep up with making enough food to keep Jon full. (Oh, my goodness.  That boy can eat.  A lot.)  So, here is the rest of our Florida trip.

When we came back from the Grand Bahama, we spent the next morning at a laundromat and the afternoon at a local beach.  We headed back to the "hotel" and the following day went to the Keys.  I know that it is rather bizarre to visit the Florida Keys, and even stop at the nation's first underwater state park and not even get in the water, but I was still rather sunburned from the snorkeling in the Bahamas, and just didn't feel like it.  It just means we have to go back! :)

We did take several photos, though.  Here are some of the best ones.





I just loved this little archway.  It made me think of outdoor weddings, and since this trip was partly for our 10th anniversary, I thought it was particularly fitting.  (No, we didn't have an outdoor wedding.  Are you kidding?  It was January, in Missouri.  And snowing.  But if we had, it would have been in a place like this.)

We walked a couple of short trails around the park, and kept seeing these little lizards everywhere!  We could sometimes hear them rustling in the leaves and not see them at all.  A helpful tidbit we learned while there: poisonwood trees are related to poison ivy.  And, if you even stand under one to shelter from a rainstorm, you can get the irritant on you.  So, if you are going to southern Florida, you should probably learn to identify this tree.

Look!  It's me!  You can't see the sunburn, it was on my back.  But, apparently this state park is known for some sort of violent history.  I just didn't bother to read about it.









John Pennekamp has a sister park nearby.  Bahia Honda was going to be a very fancy gated community.  Somehow, the state of Florida acquired the land and turned it into a park.  It is very interesting.  And the most spooked I've ever been while walking in the woods.  There was NO ONE else there.  Even the ranger is stationed at Pennekamp.  Creepy.


This is a huge spider that we saw over us on the trail.  Sometimes, there are great advantages to being a little on the short side. 

This is a cute little hermit crab trying to cross the road at Bahia Honda, and probably totally surprised that there were people on his route.  Eventually he hid next to my shoe trying to escape Aaron's pestering.








And, then?  Ahhhh.  After walking around South Beach (and taking no pictures, because the camera is heavy and it was HOT) we drove to the hotel we'd been waiting for.  We had one night between our "package" and arriving in Georgia.  So, Aaron cashed in some points and we stayed at the Marriott Harbor Branch.  Oh, we will be staying there again.  It is gorgeous!!  And very family friendly.  There weren't any kids running amok through the lobby or anything, but no one gave the kids that were there a second glance.  The pool was fantastic.  The beach (private!) was beautiful.  The food was lovely.  And, because he hadn't stayed in a Marriott in a while, the lady at the reception desk gave us a free in room movie.  We watched "The Young Victoria."  That was great, too.

I think that every room had a balcony.  And, they were all secluded from the neighbors' balconies.  Prepare to swoon.

This is the view from our 10th floor room.  See the pool?  It's huge.  See the beach?  Very quiet.  Plenty of lounge chairs for everyone.  A towel kiosk poolside, so you don't have to carry your wet towel through the hotel.  Simply the best ending to the week we could have asked for.

Florida, without kids

We were lucky enough to get to leave the boys with family in MO for a week and be in Florida all by ourselves.  It was lovely.  Many, many thanks to all the people that took them in and shuttled them around.

We had some kind of cheap/free/reduced hotel* package, as long as we spent one morning listening to a timeshare sales pitch.  And we got a (very) short cruise to the island of Grand Bahama out of it, too.
 *  "Hotel" might be overstating the conditions somewhat.  Musty, old hotel smell.  We stayed both before and after our cruise.  When we got back, they gave us a handicapped room at the back door.  The shower was zero entry, which really only meant that the floor got totally flooded, and had no drain.  The battery in the key card reader died, so we couldn't get into our room after swimming (the pool was lovely, by the way) and the head maintenance guy had to hike to the front desk to get the hard key out of a safe, the sink was about to fall out of the wall, and the WiFi didn't work.  That turned out to be the final straw.  We got a different room at that point.  The next one wasn't perfect, but also wasn't nearly as bad. 

The first day we spent at the Shark Valley entrance of Everglades National Park.  It was pretty hot, so we opted for the narrated tram ride around the loop, rather than renting bikes.  Our tram guide Thelma was very knowledgeable about Everglades creatures.  Apparently she had previously worked at a wildlife rescue center, so she even had intimate knowledge of turkey vultures.  However, she was not very impressed with the National Park Service.  Because she works for a concessioner that has an arrangement with NPS to provide tram tours, she felt at liberty to bash the NPS and some of the decisions and policies of the past.  What she failed to recognize, however, was that some of us really appreciate the NPS and what they have managed to do.  They're not perfect, and some really bad decisions have been made.  However, without the NPS, there would be no job for Thelma, since there would be no contract for the concessioner to make, and most of the Everglades would have been developed.  More even that what has already been developed.

Anyway, we saw a lot of neat stuff, and got pictures of most of it.  Some we didn't get pictures of included a soft-shelled turtle, a baby gator, and some of the other things down in the water.  Here are a few pictures of the good stuff.

First up, a beautiful Great Blue Heron just after taking off.

This is a Wood Stork, that should have migrated already, but continues to sit at this same spot every day.

The loop led to a tower, which overlooks vast areas of the Everglades.  This is from the top.

This funny little guy is a Double-Crested Cormorant.  He hung out under the kiosk with all the maps.









The Everglades were amazing, and I definitely want to see more in the future.  We'll take the boys sometime.

After our torturous time-share tour, in which the sales people clearly didn't understand the basic principles of mathematics, we boarded our cruise ship to head to the island of Grand Bahama.  The boat was fine, but nothing spectacular.  We didn't take any pictures.  Apparently, you have to drink heavily and gamble a lot to really "enjoy" your cruise experience.  Whatever.  We read our books on the quiet back deck, watched the lightning shows, and loved it.

On our day on the island, we had booked a snorkeling expedition (but not through the ship, thankfully.  The ship's snorkel tour got canceled.  Ours didn't.)  While everyone else on our boat boarded tour buses to head east, we got on a little shuttle bus and headed west.  The 8 of us (there was another cruise ship also docked at port that day, and some of their passengers had booked with the same company) got a personal tour of some of the more interesting parts of the island.  Little known facts such as Freeport is literally a free port.  Companies that operate within certain boundaries, and their employees, pay no income tax.  This was a result of a bargaining agreement with a developer and Great Britain, the governing body at that time.  The Bahamian people are still required to abide by this agreement, until the 99-year time period expires.  We saw a lot of damage done by Hurricane Wilma, some of which has been repaired.

The snorkel tour is run by a family and a few additional employees.  They have a great little stand, with all the gear you need, and even a little restaurant/grill.  $41 for all day snorkeling, including lunch was a pretty good bargain.  The tour through the boat, that didn't happen anyway, would have been $69.  I think we got a steal.  This tour was a little different.  Most of them are snorkel from the boat, but this was so close to shore that you just swam out to the reef and got to see several different habitats.  We snorkeled over seagrass beds, sandy bottoms, and rocky outcrops.  We don't have a waterproof camera, so we don't have any photos of the sea life, but we saw some great stuff.  Aaron saw a turtle, while I saw a sting ray.  It was a great day.

The reef.  Off to the right of the picture is an opening in the reef where you can swim through to the back side.  All the dark areas in front of the reef are the seagrass beds.

Us after our long day of snorkeling.  We got burned, even though we used sunscreen and applied more than once.  Ouch.  It hurt to lay down, I stuck to the sheet, and the back of my legs were on fire, too.  That was far and away the least fun part.  Especially since we tried so hard to be careful.  Oh, well.  We managed.







After Grand Bahama, we headed back to Palm Beach, where we did our laundry (at the cleanest laundromat I've ever seen.  Aaron said it was even nicer than the one at the MTC!) and then sat on the beach for a while.  We had run into a frequent traveler at the Atlanta airport that suggested a restaurant to us, the Aruba Beach cafe.  It wasn't spectacular, but it was fun, and I'm glad we went.

 We did some more in Florida, but that's going to have to wait.  It's time for bed.