I am covered in mosquito bites swollen into red pock marks on my legs arms and hands – but happy. The irony of this is that I almost packed army grade mosquito repellant but didn't because I for some reason thought we would not be spending that much time outside. Maybe in my father's version of Florida, but here in the Keys we've spent almost every minute in the great outdoors.
Our adventures today started at Coco Plum Beach, one of the only soft sand beaches in the Keys.
This one comes complete with pine needles from some unidentified never ending source.
We sunned ourselves for about 5 minutes after shellacking on the sunscreen, attempted the water but stopped at knee deep because we couldn't see the bottom through the murk, picked shells, and Evan built a sand Wizard to converse with about his fear of sharks.
Then we left having exhausted our beach fun options and had piña coladas and conch fritters at our resort's tiki bar.
Refreshed from our little lunch break we got into the car and drove to the Dolphin Research Center to engage in the world of sea mammals.
Cheesy as its highway appearance may be we learned quite a bit inside and met the grandson of Flipper.
This is Gambit 3-year old grandson of Flipper, showing off at his narrated training session.
Below is the blind SeaWorld refugee sea lion named Karen sunning herself in the afternoon rays. We saw her a half hour later sunning the other side. Such a cat.
After an adventure at the local walgreens to pick up hydrocortisone cream for my ever growing mosquito bite collection we freshened up and made our way to Lazydays for sunset dining and authentic Florida Keys cuisine.