Florida

Sept 10th - 14th
Florida is a great place.  Beach, sun, snorkeling, sailing, surf, food, and freinds.  What more could you ask for?
Liz & I celebrated our 13th anniversary on the 13th.
We arrived in Ft. Lauderdale around 7:00AM after a red-eye flight from Salt Lake to Los Angelos to Ft. Lauderdale.  We found our rental car and were off to Sanibel Island. 
We stopped at a Waffle House for breakfast.  Holy hot & humid!

Sanibel is supposed to be the sea shell capital of the world.  There were plenty of sea shells, but most were small and sun bleached white.  The air was colder than the water, but it still felt good to get in the water to cool down.  (Does that even make sense?)

Wow!  This guy needs a tan!

The next day we drove to the Key Largo where we chartered the sail boat Morning Star with Captain Rick (a New Jersey sky scraping erector retiree) and went snorkeling on Pickels Reef.  Rick is very freindly and knowledgeable.  There was a small ship wreck on the reef.  There wasn't much wreckage left, but Captain Rick said that the NOAA guys were just there and had dated it to the 1850's.  They believe the ship was transporting mortar to a new prison being built on the Keys at the time.  There were several barrel shaped mortar deposits scattered across 50 yards of the reef.  The fish variety was great.  The coolest fish we saw was a French Angel, but we saw trumpet fish, all types of tangs, parrot fish, snapper, and a small nurse shark just as we were leaving the reef.

Later in the evening we drove north to our freinds home - Tim and Josselyn Nielsen.  Neat people.  They just moved from Salt Lake City to Palm Spring Gardens a few weeks ago.  Josselyn made some incredible burgers and sweet potato fries.  After playing a few rounds of Puerto Rico and putting their children to bed, we were able to go for a nice swim in their pool.  We can't wait to visit them again.

We got a late start to the next day.  After sleeping in a bit, we headed off to South Beach Miami.  South Beach had too many people for our taste.  We drove around for an hour trying to find a parking spot for less than $20.00.  We drove east until we could park reasonably and ate lunch at an expensive italian restaurant.  After walking around a marina on the east side, we jumped back into the car and headed back to South Beach where we were able to park and check it out.  The beach was nice, but still crowded.  We even saw a couple nude sunbathers.  We weren't expecting this, especially on a beach with families and little ones around.  Needless to say, it was a surpise.

The following day was spent driving northwest of Ft. Lauderdale.  We did some shopping for the kiddos at home, hung out at Ft. Lauderdale beach and watched some Cubans fish in the surf.

Feel the Burn!

We can't wait to go back and do it all again!