Key Largo

Jason and I just returned from our babymoon in Key Largo, Florida! We left June 3 and flew into Miami where we rented a car to drive on to Key Largo via the Overseas Highway~ we arrived at our hotel late the first day so just relaxed and enjoyed a nice dinner. On day 2, in the afternoon, with our newly purchased grocery store snorkels and masks, we headed out to the beach front, right in front of our room...





...and swam around in the aqua marine waters. We discovered all kinds of plant life and little fishies... After a short time in the water, we both noticed our legs were stinging. Turns out the strange plants that seemed to be 'breathing' were actually upside down jellyfish and we were swimming all around them! I didn't get a picture of the actual ones, but here's what they looked like~ Don't worry, we didn't get stung too badly ;) The red marks disappeared the same day!



I decided to brave the camera in a bathing suit in order to document what 30 weeks of pregnancy looked like on me.



And Jason being a model... (I posed him that way ;-)



Day 2 was also our 8 month weddding anniversary, so we went to dinner at a seaside restuarant called the Mandalay. Food was kinda good... there was a better place yet to come ;)

After our fun experience with amateur snorkeling we decided we wanted to do the real thing and go out on an actual snorkeling tour with John Pennekemp Coral Reef State Park. So, day 3, we suited up and headed out. We bought an underwater camera, but I still have to develop the film... hopefully I will be able to add those pics this week and stay tuned, hopefully my barracuda picture came out clear! In the meantime, here's the website so you can see what we saw!

http://www.pennekamppark.com/snorkeling.html

and another random barracuda, but not mine ;)



Here's my barracuda!



Anyways, so after snorkeling, we had a late lunch picnic style at the park and then later that night we decided to try out a fun local pizza place, The Tower of Pizza, family owned for 25 years! The pizza was so good that even though we had no microwave, we decided to bring it back with us. My engineer husband decided the coffee pot was really just a nondescript heating element anyway and thus proceeded to heat up the leftovers in a somewhat unconventional way ;)

Day 4 we decided to lay out at the beach by the hotel. Jason had gotten burned on his back from snorkeling the day before, so he spent most of the day with a towel draped over his head and shoulders. We also had fun with the little beach side activities including a ping pong table... Here's Jason whipping up on some of the hotel guests.




We followed up our day with our favorite place to dine in Key Largo, Snooks!



There was a cool musician guy there who was jamming it up with his guitar and synthesizer keyboard and drums. People were dancing some salsa and calypso... and they closed the night down with a rendition of Sweet Caroline sung by 'Scotty' and his drunk English friend.




On Sunday we decided to head back to John Pennekamp where we wanted to rent a kayak and go through the mangroves (Florida's 'walking trees')... It turns out a kayak isn't best suited for a pregnant woman, so we opted for a canoe instead. I sat in front to steer while Jason gave us horsepower from behind. We brought the video camera along and captured footage complete with boat crashes and surprise ocean creatures ;-) To be continued...



That was our last full day in Key Largo... The next morning we packed up and headed over to the beach for one last sand bag tournament before heading back to Miami. There was a sweet little family sitting near us and they had a 2 month old little girl with them. She was precious and so tiny... It was the perfect reminder, as our babymoon came to a close, of the blessings we have to look forward to in meeting our precious little boy in a few weeks to come.