Florida Keys: The rest of the story...

Okay. Get ready for picture overload.  Now that we're home from our trip I can more easily share the rest of our picture. And there's a lot. But none of them do justice to just how beautiful and breathtaking it is down there. Here are a few more pictures from Key Biscayne and the light house.

 

Before we made it to our hotel in Miami, we stopped off to see the Coral Castle.  A place built entirely out of coral that some guy dug out of the ground years ago supposedly all by himself.

There were chairs and tables everywhere as well as beds a bath tub and stove to cook food.

There were also massive lizards crawling all over that were about 10 times the ones we are used to seeing at our house. 

Then ate at this awesome barbeque place called Shivers. We didn't get any pictures but just imagine something you'd see on Diners Drive ins and Dives, we were there. That night at our hotel Luke was doing endless cartwheels in excitement for our camping trip the next day. He brought along a spear he had made for fishing and spent the evening making sure it was tied to the string well enough so he'd be ready.

 The next morning we headed south for the keys and we saw miles and miles brilliant blue water. It was seriously amazing.

Like I said, these pictures don't do it justice.

On our way to Bahia Honda to camp. We stopped of at a Robbie's pier to feed the legendary tarpon fish.

We bought ourselves a couple of buckets of little fish...

Layed on the deck holding out the fish...

And waiting for the 7 ft Tarpons to jump out of the water to snatch it from you.

It was a little bit freaky but totally awesome.

 If you weren't careful the pelicans would come and snatch the fish from you instead.

 Mer has the reputation for always knowing someone wherever we go. It held true for the keys as well, she ran into a couple of friends from school as we were leaving the dock.

The boys kept track of our trip progress with their map.

We finally made it to our camping spot.

We immediately hit the water to try out our snorkels. Doug was glad he brought his wet suit cause the water was chilly and it was really windy there as well.

They didn't have to go far to find some cool stuff.

 The sand was just made up of tiny chunks of shell.

Then we tried our hand at fishing. I got lucky an caught a parrot fish. Actually Luke was holding the rod with me and helping me when we caught it. I shooed him off it though and reeled it in. It was really strong and we were sitting on a sea wall. I was afraid he would be pulled in if he reeled it. So maybe it was his luck that caught the fish.

Jack and Luke had fun collecting snails.

We fished until the sun went down.

This was our first camping trip all together as a family. Some of us were more thrilled than others. Let's just say it was a long, windy night extended by multiple escorts to the bathroom.

We woke up just in time to see the sun rise on the other side of the island.

Then it was back to fishing...

 and exploring...

These spiders were everywhere (at least 2 inches from end to end). Thnakfully we didn't have to walk through any bushes.

we tried out a couple of different areas and Mer got lucky this time.  Actually no one was around her when she caught it. We had all just walked to the other side of the bridge. She kept yelling "Hey guys, somebody, I caught a fish, what do I do?" We were only gone for a couple of minutes so it all worked out.  She was pretty excited.

This one was called a grunt I think.

Then Doug caught a Jack (I think)

Before we headed back home the boys went snorkeling one last time.

They found another huge sea snail and a hermit crab.  Can you see him peeking out of his shell? (it was about 8 inches across

And then we said goodbye to the keys and hit the road for the 5 1/2 hour journey home.

That was a fun vacation. Fast but fun. We will be coming back for sure.