We had eight days plus an evening, and almost four hundred miles to cover while picking interesting places to visit, ranging from Key West to Orlando. We tried to select a mix of interests, which seems to have resulted in mostly nature and science stops.
Our Key West stops were a combination of new places and perennial favorites: a sunset cruise, a quick peek into a Wyland Gallery, a snack at Margaritaville, sunrise at the Southernmost Point, visits to The Key West Butterfly and Nature Conservatory and the Hemingway Home & Museum. That was all under 24 hours!
The next few days weren’t quite as hectic. We started most mornings whenever we were ready, including the day we went to the Everglades National Park… that involved getting a tire replaced on our rental car, having picked up a roofing nail the evening before. (In case you hadn’t heard, there’s a bit of a shortage on rental cars; they didn’t have a replacement car available nearby.) We started at the visitor’s center just outside the gate (be sure to ask about the junior ranger activities if you have younger kids), paid our admission at the gate (good for 7 days), then drove all the way in to the Flamingo Lodge. We lucked out and saw a single manatee while exploring around the lodge, then drove back out to the Snake Bight trail for a nice, long walk in the heat. (Largely shaded, but still, hot.) Our final stop in the park was at the Anhinga Trail, which the ranger at the entrance visitor’s center had said was the best chance of seeing wildlife. The alligator by the trail clearly hasn’t read the rules that say people should stay at least 15 feet away from animals.
Our next day involved moving from Florida City to Miami Beach, with a stop at Vizcaya Museum & Gardens on the way. I had visited the gardens once, when they still hosted a renaissance festival in the spring, but had never been inside the house. What struck me about the style of the house, which was built in the early 1900s but designed to look older, was how similar in style it is to Spanish colonial buildings in Guatemala, with an open courtyard and some garden in the center of the house. Of course, it also has extensive gardens beyond the mansion, which most houses in Guatemala don’t have.
We met a friend at the University of Miami, revisiting my old stomping grounds – mainly the library, though we glanced at some of the new buildings as well. (We went off campus for a lovely lunch, which I’ll cover in my next post.) The visit to my high school was similar, rehashing memories with familiar buildings and amazement at some of the new areas of campus. (The motivation for the trip was my high school reunion.)
Then we headed north! On our way to meet up with friends in Palm Bay and Melbourne, we sidetracked to Mounts Botanical Garden in West Palm Beach (compensating for missing the Miami Beach Botanical Garden because Vizcaya and lunch ran later than we expected). By chance, they were having both a plant sale that day (no, we didn’t buy anything, it was all tropical) and a Lego exhibit. From Melbourne, we continued on to Kennedy Space Center, missing a shuttle launch by a couple days and several hours (even I wasn’t up before 4am on vacation), which was delightful and educational. Or delightfully educational? Something like that.
Our final day in Florida was spent in the Orlando area. Instead of visiting the better-known tourist traps, some of which we visited a few years before (pre-blog, sorry), we opted to visit Gatorland. With “over 2,000 American alligators” onsite, the location name is stunningly accurate. Really the only disappointing part was not trying the zipline (yes, over gators) and arriving after they had already picked a “volunteer” to hold a tarantula at the Up-Close Encounters show.
We headed home the next day and were delighted to find out that the cats are all still talking to us. Mostly to say we should feed them, but hey, we’ll take it.