Key Largo

Our stay in Key Largo, Florida was at a State Park called John Pennekamp Coral Reef park.  We ended up staying at this park for a total of two weeks and it was pretty amazing.  The park is one of the only underwater state parks and is made up of miles of coral reef.  We bought everyone a mask and snorkel and spent an hour or two every day at the beach exploring the coral reef close to the shore.  There were tons of cool looking fish and a shipwreck replica that was close enough for us to go and explore.  There were also some enormous fish (Tarpin)  swimming around in the water where we were exploring which freaked us all out a little.  There were lots of trails and mangrove forests on shore that we were able to explore as well.  One of the days we were there, the kids and I signed up to go on a bird and butterfly nature walk with a park ranger.  She took us through the forest trail, pointing out different trees, butterflies and birds and then she showed us an old fruit orchard where mangoes, avocados, and key limes were still growing.  We were even able to collect key limes that were ripe and brought them home with us.  We ended up making a fresh key lime pie with the limes that we had collected ourselves.  That was pretty cool. And delicious.

Eric took the kids fishing many times while we were at the park.  He even got up early in the morning a couple of times to take Haydn and Ada out because he had heard from the locals that there were lots of fish biting in the morning.  They didn’t catch anything that they brought home to eat, but they did catch a few little fish and crabs and the kids had lots of fun.

We celebrated Ada’s birthday while we were in Key Largo.  She requested Lasagna, Caesar salad and garlic bread for supper, and a red velvet cake for dessert.  For one of her gifts we bought her an underwater camera which we though would be awesome to take pictures of all the cool underwater sights.  It is hard to believe that our sweet, little baby is 10 years old already.