Miami

We left Key Largo and moved onto Larry and Penny Thompson Memorial park in Miami, Florida.  We decided to park our trailer at this park for one month since it is way cheaper to pay for a month rather than night by night.  We figured we would make Miami our home base and explore some of Southern Florida while we were there.

One of our first adventures in Miami was Halloween.  The kids got all dressed up, (we had a witch, a werewolf and a scarecrow), and we headed out looking for a fancy neighbourhood.  We drove around for at least half an hour scoping out different areas, trying to find other kids walking around trick-or-treating.  We were not very successful.  We stopped on one street and went door to door, only one house that we knocked at was handing out candy.  So we got back in the car and headed out again, eventually we found a street that had some other kids walking around so we hopped out and hit up the houses there.  We are not exactly sure how Miami does Halloween, maybe there are certain neighbourhoods that people go to for trick-or-treating, but after that street we were all ready to head back to our trailer. Our trailer was parked in Miami, but it actually took about 30 minutes or so to get to the main stretch of beaches in Miami.  So with homeschooling and Eric working, we really only were able to head to the ocean on the weekends.  Usually either Saturday or Sunday we packed up our stuff and spent the day at the beach.

[caption id=“attachment_1192” align=“aligncenter” width=“531”]

We saw some unique sand art at the beach

One of our weekends in Miami, we went on a airboat tour through the Florida everglades.  It was pretty awesome.  We got to go on the airboat which was really cool by itself, but we actually saw 5 or 6 alligators out in the wild and we stopped the boat and saw them up close and personal.  The kids each got to hold a baby alligator, and we stopped in at a little restaurant to try frog legs and alligator tail.

We celebrated Emma’s birthday while we were in Miami.  It is hard to believe that she is 12, but she is definitely giving us all the eye rolls and attitude of an almost teenager!  She is really into jewelry making right now, so she got some wire and beading stuff and a gift card to her new favourite store (Hobby Lobby!.

One of our weekends in Miami was spent out on a boat on a deep sea fishing trip.  The total trip lasted around four hours, which was four hours too many if you ask Emma and Ada.  They did not take too well to the rolling sensation of the boat, so while Eric, Haydn and I were busy reeling in fish, Ada and Emma were laid out trying not to throw up over the side of the boat.  I was torn because I wanted to rub my children’s backs and hold back their hair, but I also wanted to fish!  All together the five of us caught 9 fish which the crew cleaned for us when we got back to shore.  We battered and fried those puppies up, and boy were they delicious.

On our last weekend in Miami, we threw our bikes into the back of the truck and headed into the Everglades for a bike ride.  I had done some reasearch online and found a trail called Shark Valley trail that promised to be full of alligators along the way. The trail was a loop with a total of 15 miles. I figured we would just bike part of the trail and then come back….It ended up that we managed to bike the entire 15 mile trail!  It wasn’t without a few tears, (Haydn was terrified that the park was going to close before we got back to our truck and we would be locked in all night), but we did it!  There was a lookout tower at the halfway point and we saw many alligators along the way.  Definitely a bike ride to remember!