Last week was pretty amazing - I spent it in the Keys! Dad and Cathy invited me to stay with them and their friends Jack, Earline, Mark and Grace in Marathon for lobster sport season. I used to go down with them pretty much every year, but of course work and school has gotten in the way of that in my more grown up years. My last time down there was in 2005 - sooo long ago!
I drove down REALLY early on Monday morning. They were already down there and I knew they'd already be out on the boat, but I wanted to get down there early enough to do something fun for the day (I can't waste a vacation day off work sleeping and driving!). I got down there around 11am and headed to Bahia Honda State Park. There was a tiny island about a mile offshore, so I rented a kayak and headed out. I had the island all to myself for the majority of the day and I definitely made the most of it and had an awesome time. I did some shell hunting, explored the rocky shallows, read some Harry Potter and just relaxed. I wanted to snorkel, but I didn't think to bring a dive flag with me! Lucky for me though, eventually a small boat came and "invaded" my island (which I named "Isle Melissa" by the way), but it was ok because they had a dive flag :) Even though there wasn't too much to see, it was fun exploring around in the shallows - I saw a TON of tiny parrot fish, all different species, and managed to find some really pretty intact sea urchin skeletons. The only bad part was I was a pretty big idiot and walked out there with no shoes on and stepped on a living sea urchin - OUCH! When I first stepped on it, I didn't know what it was, so I looked under water and realized the shallows were covered in sea urchins! Of course I wasn't about to walk back up to get my shoes, knowing I would step on more on my way there, so I had to call out to the "invader" who was exploring "my" island to throw them out to me - definitely NOT one of my smarter moments. But it was all ok; I now know that I'm not allergic to sea urchin venom and the pain and purple dye they inject only lasted a couple days! Even with the evil sea urchin, this was such an amazing day, and one I will not soon forget.
Hanging out on "Isle Melissa"
After I returned the rental and finished exploring the rest of the park, I headed over to their rental house on Sand Colony Beach. Tuesday morning we woke up to A LOT of rain! We hung out until the weather cleared up a bit, and then spent the rest of the day until sunset scouting lobster holes and figuring out which ones we wanted to hit. Wednesday and Thursday were the actual two days of sport season, so we spent them both doing our best to catch our limit. The lobster haven't been great in the last several years, there were a ton of other boats out and the water visibility was pretty crummy, but we still managed to only come up a few short of limit in the end. I had to leave on Friday, but I was hoping to get one last outing in. Dad mentioned maybe going to Sombrero or Looe Key, however Mother Nature for some lame reason decided that wasn't a good idea - the ocean conditions were way too rough :(
Dad, Me & Cathy out on the boat
But it was ok, because I did have one last fun thing planned on my way back up to Orlando. Through working for Discovery Cove/Sea World, we get into a ton of places around the state of Florida for free, one of them being Theater of the Sea in Islamorada. The ticket was free, so I figured why not? Again, I figured it was a way to not waste a day off work with just driving. It turned out to be a super cute facility with 3 really cool shows - a bird show, dolphin show and sea lion show. They also had a bunch of sea turtles and other cool marine life as well. The icing on the cake was that the owner is a huge cat freak and had a TON of rescued cats everywhere; being a crazy cat lady I of course loved this and definitely spent some time in the gift shop, not looking at the goods, but playing with the kitties :)
Theater of the Sea
After leaving, I grudgingly drove back to Orlando, which was a safe and uneventful drive. Going back to work the next day was super tough. I had such a wonderful time and I hope it's not another 4 years before I get to go back!
Bahia Honda Pictures
Lobstering/Boat Pictures
Theater of the Sea Pictures
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