But don't worry, we weren't allowed to sleep too long! We had a tour of Biscayne National Park at 9:30 AM, and we needed to be there by 9 AM. This meant breakfast at 8:15 AM, and 7:45 alarms set.
We made it down to breakfast on time, but I forgot my rain jacket, and this boat tour can supposedly spray you pretty bad. So back up to the hotel room I went, tearing apart my suitcase for the rain jacket I know I packed. It was nowhere to be found. Finally I realized I had packed it in case I needed it for Dry Tortugas, and found it in our duffel bag.
We sunscreened ourselves for our upcoming boat tour outside the hotel, finished about 3 half empty bottles, and turned out to be running a little late because of the whole process. Oh, well. This didn't prevent us from taking our classic sign pictures, though.
We checked in and waited around the dock for a while for our captain… I guess we weren't late after all. His name is Fern and he is very lovely. We even got a selfie with him!
One of the other captains on the dock told us Fern was the second best captain, but we think he's the first. He pointed out and let us see a dolphin, a manatee and a stingray! Plus, the movement of the boat created some nice wind. The whole tour was really lovely! At one point we were able to walk out on one of the keys, Boca Chita Key! The sand got my feet so gross I had to rinse them off when we returned to the hotel room.
To make the day even better, after the tour we went into the air conditioned visitors center. Ahhhh. So nice. They even had some cool art for sale and a little auditorium where you could relax and watch educational videos! It was awesome! And of course, we stopped by the gift shop. I even got a little snack! Chips Ahoy, how I love you.
Our tour went until about 1 PM, so we were all quite hungry on our way out of the park. Dad found a high rated local place for us to have a nice lunch. We had what they called corn ribs
which were strips of Mexican street corn in the style of ribs. Delicious! Their mac and cheese, sweet potato waffle fries and sweet tea were all also excellent! It was pricey, but the portions were large and everything we ate was decent!
With that, we decided to head back to the hotel and stay out of the sun a little bit. Me and Gideon went to grab our aloe and blogging materials from our room, but we couldn't find our keys. I knew I put them in my wallet this morning but… oh. I bet I left them in my rage mess when I couldn't find my raincoat. Oh, well. The front desk guy was very helpful and printed us a new copy. Sure enough, they were under all my clothes.
We had a little party up in Mom and Dad's room. For us, that consists of drinking water, applying aloe, watching Big Band Theory and writing blogs. How fun! But it really was a good afternoon for recovery.
After some avid blogging, we decided we all needed a break, so we headed out to dinner at Olive Garden! The waitress pushed us in and out of that joint in like under 45 minutes. Fair to say we were stuffed. So of course we did what stuffed people do and went to Publix to grab some snacks for the hotel room.
But after that trip, it was back to the hotel rooms and back to work for everyone. So many blogs to write and publish! And we got to watch the Lord of the Rings movies while we did it, so that was great.
We called it a late night because we were so wrapped up in our work. We were going to have a tour the next morning, but between what the weather looked like and what our skin looked like, we decided we could use a day to recover. More blogs and photos to come!
Nice deed of the day: Wrote awesome google reviews for Fern and our lunch restaurant, JJ's cuisine!
Boy Meets Comb:
No way. Too early in the morning for this boy to style his hair. He barely got up at 7:45.