The Last Adventure

Tonight, for me, marked the end of summer. But it didn’t end without one last blow-out adventure to send it on its way. Really, I think we saved the best for last.

Tuesday afternoon we set off to go to work with Daddy (which is how all our adventures have started this summer), but this one took us much farther than any previous adventure. Six and a half hours south to be exact. And where does that take you if you live in Orlando, FL? Well, it brings you to the southern most tip of the continental united states. Key West.

We didn’t make it in time to get to Mallory Square for the nightly sunset festival, but we saw the sunset in all its glory. And man was it beautiful. Just imagine yourself driving across a 2 lane bridge with ocean on either side of you and watching the sky change from blues to yellows, oranges, reds and pinks. Watching the sun appear to literally sink into the ocean and the clouds be painted all different hues from its disappearing light, and the colors being reflected on the miles of ocean in front of you. And you’ll just have to imagine it, because I have no pictures. A bummer yes, but truthfully I don’t know I could have captured its beauty with my lens.

After Anthony had his hearing Wednesday morning (remember we were there on “business”) we set out for a few hours of adventure. And seriously there are of ton of options of what to do there. Train rides through the island, naval base, old war ships/museum, ship wreck museum, aquarium, glass boat tours, dolphin site seeing cruises, Ernest Hemmingway’s house, a presidential museum…told you there were a ton of things on this tiny little island. We only had about 5 hours so we opted to make a stop at an important land mark -

And to go with the theme of the rest of our summer, see the beaches there.

  

And really, the beach was the best choice. We’ve definitely decided we want to go back and spend some time there and experience the other things, but the beach was gorgeous! It was unlike any other beach we had been to. When I was in the water chest deep I could look down and see down to my toes (not completely clear, but still I could see them) and we saw lots of tropical fish. The only down side was it was kind of rocky, but once you got past the rocks all was good. Anthony and I swam out to the rocks (seen in pic above) and there you could see lots of fish, we saw little yellow and black ones and schools of fish around the rocks.

The girls wanted to go out further, as it got pretty deep pretty quick, so we got the boogie board out and Daddy took them out into deeper waters.

 

I loved how the water was a teal blue, it was so gorgeous. The kids didn’t get to build the typical sand castles because of the rocks, but they improvised…

Rock Castles! It was all fun and games until Ethan decided to throw the rocks. 

Five hours to play was definitely not enough in Key West. Not because we didn’t enjoy it, but the next day I so wished I was waking up there again to go and have a whole new adventure in Key West. Even if we just repeated what we’d done the day before I would have been happy. But we had to move on, Daddy had a hearing in another place the next morning. I am so glad we went, and I am crossing my fingers that next summer Daddy gets assigned another hearing in Key West, preferably on a Friday.

Oh, and just a side note, we sang lots of “Kokomo” in the car on the 2 hour ride through the keys. Key Largo is the first thing you come to, and we sang it off and on ever since, along with having a discussion on where exactly Kokomo is…in the Keys like Anthony thought, or in Jamaica as I said. I won that one, although in a way we were both right because if the website we found is right, there was a bar on Islamorada (in the Keys)named Kokomo that also had to do with the song. Just a little trivia for you.