well. we have learned that big cities aren’t our favorite. they are always sort of a letdown (boston, austin, los angeles, san francisco, seattle, portland…) our kids are usually dragging. it’s so expensive. parking and traffic is annoying. and the cool things to do are usually not all that kid friendly. but still, we decided […]
florida
biscayne national park.boca chita key
soooo. biscayne national park is pretty much mostly underwater. we did some research to try to figure out the best way for our family to experience the park, given our varying degrees of swimming abilities, adventurousness, curiosity, and enthusiasm. we settled on a boat ride out to one of the keys, where there was a […]
big cypress national preserve.
originally, i had absolutely no desire to drive the 1:40 over to the northwest corner of the everglades and into big cypress national preserve. i figured it was likely more of the same, but probably a bit more wildernessy. but, when we got our ranger books for the everglades, we realized if they did activities […]
general florida february stuff.
on february 1st, we concluded our time at the “happpiest place on earth” and headed west to st. petersburg. but first. we needed breakfast. which was more like brunch. this is what our crew looks like on the morning after four straight days at disney…. our first stop after disney was a quick weekend in […]
a very brief st. pete weekend.
well. this post is way out of place. i’ll probably adjust the timestamp on it eventually, so it lines up properly in my archives. but, when i was getting ready to recap february miscellaneousness, i realized i never posted about our weekend in st. pete before we went to fort de soto. so, here goes… […]
everglades. anhinga trail and miscellaneous.
our campground in everglades was sort of in the middle-ish of the park, at a no hookup site in long pine key campground. thankfully the power of the sun helped us to not have to run our generator too much, but the extreme heat and mugginess sometimes necessitated a bit of air conditioning and generators […]
everglades.flamingo & pontoons.
our second day in the everglades took us down to the southside of the park to pretty much the southernmost tip of the florida peninsula (not counting the keys and their claim to that famous location). the flamingo visitor center was closed, due to some extensive damage by hurricane irma, but there was a makeshift […]
everglades. shark valley airboats and trams.
after the sunshiny, beachy, florida keys, we stopped at the muggy, buggy florida everglades for a bit of exploring and learning. i won’t lie, i wasn’t super excited about this park, but it ended up being pretty interesting. our first adventure was to head to the north side of the park, for an airboat ride […]
the turtle hospital.
as soon as we booked florida keys campground reservation, i knew i had to go to the sea turtle hospital. i had heard such great things about it, and our money goes to a good cause. so, derek booked us a tour in advance, and i’m thankful he did, because on the day of our […]
florida keys aquarium encounters.
when we were in the florida keys, there was no shortage of options for aquariums, and it was hard to sift through all of the reviews and choose a good one. but, when we were at dry tortugas, one of the staff members at the bookstore gave us a coupon and recommended a place near […]