Florida Christmas: Canaveral Beach and the Search for Manatees

Our trip was nearly complete, with the exception of a long drive home.  However, there were a couple of places along the way that touted manatee sightings, so we decided to check them out.  We went to Merritt Island, to no avail, but were told about a great place where all the manatees stay for the winter.  We decided it was worth the detour.  Lucky for us, Canaveral Beach was on the way, so we stopped to check it out.

B is pointing to one of the Cape Canaveral launch pads.  Pretty cool, right? 

After all the fun beachiness, we headed to Blue Springs State Park for one last attempt at seeing manatees.  When we pulled up to the entrance, we were greeted by a park ranger, and a sign that stated how many manatees had been spotted that day: 345.  We were in the right place!

Blue Spring is a designated manatee refuge during the winter season and a large portion of the spring was partitioned off so people would not get in the manatees' way.  It was so fun to see them as the swam nearby and went up to the surface for air.  We even saw a baby manatee with its mom!

And that was the conclusion of the fabulous Florida Christmas.  Well, except for another day's worth of driving north.  It was such a fun trip and one I'm sure it's one our family will always remember.

Florida Christmas: Robert is Here and Even More Alligators

A co-worker of Brandon's gave him a list of places in southern Florida that he thought we would enjoy.  I think Robert is Here is about the only one that we actually went to, but it was so worth it!  It's this amazing fruit stand that has all sorts of crazy fruits, vegetables, honey, you name it.  Plus, it has it's own milkshake stand where you can order milkshakes with all the crazy fruit they sell (Brandon got a black sapote with strawberry).  Kiddo loved the antique trucks out front and I had a hard time making BG leave the little petting zoo in the back.  Also, I think the key lime pie I bought was the best I've ever had.  It was a blast.

After that, we walked a few trails to see some mangroves and, yes, even more alligators.

Florida Christmas: Ten Thousand Islands and More Alligators

In an effort to see manatees, we went on a boat cruise through the Ten Thousand Islands region off the coast. Did we see manatees?  No.  But we saw dolphins(!) and a plethora of beautiful, big birds, including an island covered in pelicans.  The boat was practically empty and the cruise was lovely.

We also climbed up the observation tower in Everglades City:

The rest of the day was spent in detours to see alligators in as many places as we could:

We also went back to Shark Valley because it was on the way back to the hotel and, well, we thought the place was awesome.  It was getting close to evening by that time, so there weren't as many alligators out on the path, but it was also fun watching the anhinga birds out drying their wings:

Florida Christmas: The Florida Keys

What better way to spend Christmas Day than on the beach in the Keys?  We drove about half way down the keys before stopping for lunch at Marathon where we found a great restaurant (conch chowder!) right on the bay.  The kids loved sitting at the water, watching the birds and the boats as we ate.

Finally, we stopped at Bahia Honda State Park to play at the beach.  We had heard that the water in the keys is lovely and warm--"like tepid bath water."  It may not sound that great, but Brandon had never experienced warm ocean water, so we were excited.  The water wasn't actually that warm and the beach itself was only ok, but what made it really fun was how far out in the ocean we could walk without the water getting any higher.  It was awesome! And a great way to spend Christmas Day.

Florida Christmas: Shark Valley

We had an awesome Christmas.  Seriously, it was amazing.  This year, instead of staying here by ourselves or flying across the country to see family, we hung out in Florida for a week.  Brandon has long had an irrational desire to see alligators in the wild and I'm a manatee lover, so it was pretty much a no-brainer to take this trip.  Plus, we'd never even been south of Virginia before, so think of all those states we could drive through on our way to the southernmost point in the continental United States (although, granted, we didn't make it all the way to Key West)!  Chelon agreed to come with us for part of the trip, and we were on our way.

We made the drive down in two days (stopping in Savannah, GA--and no, we unfortunately didn't explore Savannah) and it went pretty well, considering we only had to make one emergency stop at a park to get some wiggles out.  The drive definitely gave Brandon and me new confidence in the manageable length of road trips for the future.

The first item to check off the itinerary was Shark Valley.  It's a national park with this great trail that has a plethora of alligators just lying about, sunning themselves while you walk by.  In fact, we saw our first alligator next to the road as we were driving to the Shark Valley entrance.  And another as we were walking from the parking lot to the trail.  And many, many more after that.  We ended up spending almost the entire day there.

We nicknamed this big one Satan because of its size.  He was probably the largest one we saw the entire trip.

We also saw this baby alligator(!) which, you know, you're supposed to stay away from in case the mom is around and gets protective.

We stopped for lunch at this place, where nearly everything on the menu was fried (it was a running theme for most meals on the trip--my pork chop sandwich from a bbq place in North Carolina was nothing but a deep-fried pork chop on a bun).

Brandon ordered the sampler: from L to R that's fried gator tail (good, but fatty), hush puppies (which we had about a half dozen different times during the trip), fried frog legs (kind of fishy--does that mean they weren't fresh?), and fry bread (the best part of the meal).

We ended the day at the beach near our hotel in Fort Lauderdale and, since it was Christmas Eve, enjoyed some Indian food for dinner.  A great start to our vacation!