Who needs Disneyworld?

We had another amazingly sweet trip to the Florida Keys this year.  Maybe someday our kids will whine and complain and drag us to Disneyworld instead, but for now we all thoroughly enjoy this version of a Florida vacation, involving (primarily) swimming, fishing, nature exploration, and eating all the local fruits of the land and the sea.  The kids were in the ocean and the pool multiple times each day, getting alternately salty and chlorinated.  Sand made its way into every crevice, and was washed away again daily.  When they weren't in the water or out on some expedition, Haley was making drip castles in the sandbox and Aiden was building forts out of coconut fronds or sneaking in another episode of his newest Netflix addition, DinoSquad.  It was pretty much heaven for a week. A huge thank you to my parents for hosting us and giving over their entire house to our craziness!

"Hapa and Mema's" house in the keys

Haley meeting a hermit crab

Aiden got the hang of snorkeling for real this time!

Mangrove (Red, i think)

Fried gator!

Aiden's "tiger den" fort

We went to the Everglades and checked out the gators and herons, perused a perfumed orchid greenhouse, sampled all kinds of crazy tropical fruit in Redlands' Fruit & Spice Park, and watched as the deep sea fishing boats at Bud n' Mary's unloaded the catch of the day.  We had a brick oven pizza party with friends, ate a whole deep fried lionfish (invasive in the keys so please order one to eat!) and a basket of crispy gator pieces.  We fed tarpon at Robbie's dock, snorkeled and lounged in the warm shallow waters at Bahia Honda, and explored tropical hammocks in Key Largo and Islamorada.

Haley in the everglades

Anhinga Trail

Sampling fruits at Fruit & Spice Park

Bananas

 Canistel, or egg fruit (left), custard apple (right)

Baobab Tree

The tour guide said you could hear water running in the tree...he might have been pulling our legs

Eating nasturtiums

Deep fried whole lionfish - a good deed to eat one since they are invasive exotic pests!

R.F. Orhids in Homestead

Bahia Honda sandcastles

Bahia Honda

We visited Indian Key State Park by boat and walked all the abandoned island's old roadways, reading about the history of the settlement and the massacre there during the Seminole Indian wars.  Between marveling over the vegetation (huge yucca plants and prickly pear cacti dominate), wading in mangrove tidepools, and exploring antlion traps and land hermit crabs, we managed to pick up some history too.

Old roadways, Indian Key

Gravesite, Indian Key

Exploring tidepools

Land Hermit Crabs

My parents' friends Dave and Linda invited us to their bayside dock to fish one afternoon, and we caught 3 big mangrove snappers which we filleted up and grilled for dinner with a tropical fruit salsa.  Later in the week, Andy, Aiden and Hapa went out fishing on the boat and caught about 30 fish (6 different kinds) - including several large grouper for Aiden and a cero mackerel for Andy.  Yes, they did have their lucky ice cream before they left the dock- at 930 am!  I think we were lucky all around though, with so many great activities and 7 days of constant sun and warm temps-- kind of hard to find a reason to go anywhere else for our winter vacation!

Fishing Dave & Linda's dock for snapper

Haley would rather swim than fish

Mangrove Snapper

One of Aiden's groupers

Andy's mackerel