Our Key West trip had some bumps, to say the least. We had decided to drive to Ft Myers with my parents, take the boat from there to Key West and stay on the base. It began when my dad and stepmom arrived to pick us up in Tallahassee with a broken air conditioner. He didn't know until he reached Georgia and tried to turn it on (it's still cold in Ohio). We spent the first day waiting for that to be fixed which pushed our arrival time in Ft Myers to 130am, ouch! Once we arrived in Key West we decided to take a taxi to our condo because of all the bags, I mean it's not even a mile, how much could it be? Turns out it's $35! Yikes! Immediately we flew into emergency planning mode of "how can we get around the island for the next week without spending a small fortune?!" We decided we would rent bikes. As we were walking to the bike rental place, a city bus drove by....hmmm.... looked it up and a one week bus pass was $18 for ALL of us! Perfect.
Our first bus ride took us to the grocery store to stock our fridge for the week. When we left, we got on the WRONG bus (they came out of order) and our 7 minute ride turned into over an hour on the bus and instead of dropping us off right in front of base, it was a mile away....carrying a bunch of groceries and two sleeping kids. Lesson learned! After that I thoroughly researched our route noting which buses we needed before even leaving the condo. Then one day while running to catch the bus, I tripped over a cement something hidden in debris. For a few seconds I thought I was going to recover, but no, I landed hard. It hurt so bad that I ended up laying there crying until my mom came to help me up. I scraped up seven different parts of me and deeply bruised my elbow.
Asher was with me when I fell. That night he said, "I should have moved that branch so you not fall". I told him it wasn't his fault. He said, "I should have caught you, Mommy". The next day when he walked to the bus stop with Grandpa he did move the stick (he was convinced that is what tripped me). He is such a sweet and thoughtful little boy!
Oh and another thing, there's a crazy amount of these guys running around. This is looking out our front door.
The population has grown out of control after having been released when cockfighting became illegal. They don't crow at dawn like you'd expect, they crow all day every day AND NIGHT. Our first night, one woke me at 230am. Another morning they woke me early and I went downstairs to hush it and there were 5 taking turns crowing! We joked about threatening them with a chicken dinner, until we heard they are protected and you'd be looking at jail time for taking two EGGS. I don't want to know what they do to you for hurting their precious, keep-you-up-all-night, full grown roosters.
Each time something crazy happened, we just had to laugh about it.
We laughed a lot. Now that I've told you the bad, here's the good.
On our first full day in Key West we went to Fort Zachary Taylor
State Park to explore the Civil War fort that was built in the mid-1800s.
State Park to explore the Civil War fort that was built in the mid-1800s.
Asher was very interested in the cannons.
Seeing him next to the cannonballs really shows how big they are!
The fort used to be surrounded by ocean. The land has since been built up but a moat remains.
Afterwards we relaxed on the state beach that is adjacent to the fort. It was beautiful but rocky.
We took turns snorkeling. I saw a stingray, eel and quite a few brightly colored fish. At one point Daddy and I were
snorkeling together and ran right into a school of two-foot long fish. It startled us and when we came up the birds were
swarming above us, swooping down and snatching up the small fish. Later I caught a photo of them doing it again.
A short walk from the State Park is the Eco Discovery center which is a free science museum and aquarium. The kids had fun doing a photo scavenger hunt, watching a 3D show of the creatures in Key West's waters and learning about the Aquarius, the only undersea lab where divers can spend up to a month living underwater and diving for up to 9 hours at at time.
That night we went to Mallory Square to watch the sunset celebration. The kids liked this sea sponge guy.
The kids REALLY enjoyed watching the street performers. This guy does tricks with his cats.
This guy breathes fire while standing on top of six stacked chairs.
