Month: January 2017

The Keys For New Year’s Eve

The Keys For New Year’s Eve

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We were sooo close to The Keys that we really didn’t want to miss checking them out, but we couldn’t stay long. We do have a schedule and in order to keep all of our doctoring appointments we could only spend two nights in The Keys. And…those nights happened to fall on New Year’s Eve.

I knew we were in trouble when the water turned this amazing color of blue as we drove along the Over The Seas Highway. I knew right then that we were all going to love the area and that we weren’t going to want to leave so soon.

For anyone curious…it really is just a bridge connecting a bunch of little islands or “keys”.

For our first day there we were supposed to get there, set up, and then spend the entire afternoon in Key West. It went really well until we hit the traffic. It ended up taking us about four hours to go maybe 60 miles. It was a little insane. We did make it to Key West, but so did roughly a million other people (I may be exaggerating that number by a couple). We stood in line for 45 min to take our pic with the Southernmost Point buoy.

We tried to go to a fort, but it closed at 5pm and we were late so we headed over to the place I’d found for Key Lime Pie…but there wasn’t a free space to park…anywhere…within several miles. So, we left. We were tired and it was getting dark and I’d been warned beforehand that Key West after dark wasn’t exactly family friendly. On the way to the Key Lime Pie place we passed by the end of Highway One! We’ve been on this highway on and off all year so it was kind of neat to see mile 0!

The next day we had reservations for a snorkeling excursion! We woke up to a very cold, but pretty morning.

The water was so cloudy from the choppy water that we couldn’t see a thing. And…the water was pretty cool. Not cold, but cool enough that no one (there were 15 people on our boat) stayed in the water long. We were kind of bummed about that, but it’s hard to be in a bad mood when you’re surrounded by the beauty of The Keys.

The Captain of our boat felt really bad about the conditions, but there wasn’t anything he could do about the weather. He ended up taking us on a little sightseeing tour to make up for the snorkeling! You can see Seven Mile Bridge in the picture above.

We got to see a pod of dolphins playing around! I didn’t get the best pics of them…they didn’t jump out of the water or anything, but they would surface and play. You can see two of them near the bottom center of the picture above.

By this time in the tour it was starting to warm up to a balmy 70 and we’d all stopped shivering.

 Our snorkeling/boat tour was a great way to spend our only full day in The Keys. We were done by noon and were able to relax the rest of the day.

I did get a little video of the boat ride. What do y’all think? Do you like the videos or not? It’s all done right on my phone…I’m not a professional at all…

Our Captain took us by this place. It’s a dockside restaurant called Burdines. We ended up going there for lunch!

Everything was fresh and we had some of the best burgers we’d had in a long time!

We were able to get some Key Lime Pie…

two different ways. Regular and fried! It was soooo good! We experienced the laid back Keys vibe at Burdines while we were waiting for our food. It’s not the fastest place, but it does warn you right at the top of the menu. Everything is made fresh…it’s not fast food. You didn’t go to McD’s. Everything we had was top notch and our server was genuinely nice.

 After we got our fill of food, we moseyed over to Bahia Honda State Park and stopped by this bridge view on the way there. This is the same Seven Mile Bridge you saw in a pic earlier. You can see it better here.

We’d heard that there’s camping at Bahia Honda State Park that’s suitable for RVs and we wanted to check it out. Unfortunately, only registered campers could get to the campground. But…we did get to stroll around the beach and do a short hike to the view above!

We hung out at the SP long enough to see the beginning of a spectacular sunset.

It was so pretty; I’m going to give you another shot of it.

We got back to our RV park just as the sun was sinking. We headed back to our little home on wheels and had a very nice, very quiet New Year’s Eve celebration. Our tradition is to have a Back To The Future marathon and some sparkling cider at midnight.

There were pretties everywhere, but I somehow only got a shot of these. They were at the park we stayed at.

We hated to leave The Keys. The small amount of time just made us hungry for more of the island life and we were already making plans for round two before we even pulled out of the RV Park.

See y’all down the road!

#easternloop2016

South Miami, FL

South Miami, FL

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We spent two weeks in the South Miami Florida area. This post is going to be a big one, guys!

Our very first night in the area we decided we should try some Cuban food. Y’all know we love to try the local flavors. We found a spot called La Carreta. I kind of wish we hadn’t. Cuban food is kind of…awesome. We spent the whole two weeks there wanting more Cuban food.

Our main focus in the area was the Everglades National Park. It took us three very full days to see what we wanted and we still didn’t see it all.

We started our Everglade exploration in Shark Valley where the main thing to do is take a tram tour. I was skeptical. The tram tour is extra. But it was the only way to really see this part of the park unless you want to walk the 15 mile loop…with all of the gators…and the heat. Um, no thanks. Can you spot the gator in the photo above?

The tram tour is guided by one of the National Park Rangers. Our Ranger braved the muck and the gators to teach us about the sawgrass prairie. She went out there bare foot. With the gators.

She brought handfuls of the soil and the periphyton (the stuff that floats on the top) for everyone to feel. Littlest wasn’t impressed with the texture and slime of it. Ha!

We saw tons of birds.

Please don’t ask me to name all of the birds we saw…

our ranger named them all…but, I’ve slept since then.

And we saw plenty of gators!

These guys were laying right by the road where the people who didn’t want to do the tram tour were walking. Right. By. The. Road!

We took an airboat ride. This place is one of only four companies allowed to go right into Everglades National Park!

I could put up tons of the pics I took while on the ride, but sometimes a video does the job better. So here’s a little peek into our airboat ride through the Everglades National Park.

The airboat place had a restaurant that served gator and frog legs. We had to try them. I’ll be honest, I wimped out trying the frog legs. I just couldn’t get pass the frog part. But the gator was excellent!

We spent an entire day making our way to the Flamingo Bay part of the Everglades NP. We stopped and did some of the hikes on the way down and some on the way back. If you go…take bug spray. They were really bad during one of our first hikes. We forgot to spray down for that first hike, but you better believe we didn’t forget on the second hike!

We saw several trees we hadn’t seen during our travels yet. The red barked tree is a gumbo limbo tree. We also saw tons of mahogany trees.

We made it all the way down to Flamingo Bay right about lunch time. We stopped by the marina there just to check it out and was rewarded with our first salt water crocodile! And he was a big one!

We also got our first look at a manatee! They kind of look like a huge floating potato.

I took this shot quickly as we were leaving the marina area. I didn’t notice the crocodile in the bottom right corner until I was looking at the shot on my computer.

We’d heard there was a campground down at Flamingo Bay so we went to check it out and scout for future trips. We found this great place for a picnic. It was pretty deserted there.

We stopped by the Royal Palm area for the last hike we wanted to do. We got there and noticed tons of these guys. Then we noticed there were tarps on most of the cars there.

Apparently, the vultures are destructive.

The NPS provided tarps and bungee cords for everyone to use while in the area.

We also made it to Biscayne NP. This NP is mostly underwater. We did get to walk the one small trail at the Visitor Center.

We had to be quick since the little spit of land the trail takes you out on was disappearing as the tide came in.

We were treated to a storm cloud and a rainbow while we were making our way off the little spit of land.

We were in the Miami area for Christmas. Our Christmas tradition is tamales. We searched high and low for Mexican tamales and came up with a big fat nothing. Nadda. But we did find this place. El Palacio De Los Jugos. This Cuban market is awesome!!

Our Spanish revolves around food items, but that didn’t help us here

because we weren’t familiar with everything here and there weren’t any labels. I’m pretty sure we were the only ones there who didn’t fluently speak Spanish. We got some of this and some of that. All by pointing and gesturing. We were pretty confident that we were in the right place because the line went out the door. Everything we got was absolutely excellent. We ended up with some Cuban tamales with some fixings for our Christmas dinner.

While we were looking for Mexican tamales, we asked around at the RV park we were staying in. One of the ladies in the office offered to try and find some for us and when she couldn’t she offered to bring us some that her mom was making. I should mention here she’s from Mexico. We were thrilled with the offer, but unsure if she would follow through. The day after Christmas she delivered with about a dozen homemade tamales. Guys, they were the best tamales we’ve ever had! I meant to snap a pic of them but they were devoured before I could think to stop and take a picture of them. So, you’ll just have to take our word for it. They were wonderful!

Since we’re talking about Christmas, I’ll mention here what we did on Christmas. We started our Christmas morning at Miami Beach.

We weren’t really impressed with Miami Beach. There were tons of jellyfish and more trash than I like on a beach.

We got there early and pretty much had the beach to ourselves for awhile. Right about the time we were ready to go, the crowds started to come out.

We stopped by a fruit stand called “Robert Is Here” one afternoon.

It’s an avocado. I sat a lemon and a key lime next to it so you could see the size difference. We bought one. We haven’t eaten it yet, so I can’t tell you if it’s good or not. But it is huge!

We got suckered into buying some of this fruit. I’m not sure where this guy is getting his cotton candy, but he needs to find a new place. This fruit was nothing like cotton candy. It was kind of a slimy gel texture that made me want to go brush my teeth. Mr. Man and Littlest both liked it.

We also bought one of these. It’s not ready yet, so I can’t tell you if we got suckered again. I’ll let you know.

We did find some really good Mexican food.

A good friend of mine met us at El Torro Taco! I got the plate above. It did not disappoint! So. Good! It was so fun spending time with another of my HP friends! *waves to friend and her fam* Her kiddos and my kiddos are all about the same age and into the same nerdy stuff. They all hit it off. My boys have already asked when we will see them again. It’s been fun this year meeting up with so many of my HP friends!

There are flower stands all over the place. People also sell them on the street corners.

Are you ready for some pretties? The pic above isn’t the best, but I wanted to share it anyway. The purple flowers and the bright orange/red seed pod are the same plant! Whhhaaattt…. mind…blown…

I took so many

pictures of pretties here.

I could have done a post

on just the pretties.

We love this area. We’re already trying to figure out how soon we’ll be able to come back…and spend more time.

See y’all down the road!!

#easternloop2016

Harry Potter And Some Other Stuff

Harry Potter And Some Other Stuff

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Hey Guys!! I have a confession to make. I pretty much planned this whole loop so we would get to Universal Studios before Christmas Break started for most of the country. So, yeah…I planned this year around Harry Potter. There…I said it…it’s out there. Now let’s move on.

I could do an entire post on the awesomeness of the Universal Studios Harry Potter sections of the park, but I won’t . I’ll try to keep my Potterhead geekiness to a respectful level. No promises though. I took hundreds of pictures…be warned.

Welcome to Harry Potterverse!

Officially known as Universal Studios.

It will always be Harry Potterverse to us though. We spent four very full days soaking in the magic of Diagon Alley and Hogsmead. We got there when they opened and didn’t leave until they closed. I might as well throw in a disclosure here…this post is not in order at all. I’ll be jumping back and forth between the two parks. The pic you see above is at the Dragon Challenge Ride on the Islands of Adventure side. Here’s a little tip…if you can find all four golden eggs on the ride, they’ll take you on a tour of the ride queue. Which for photo bugs like me is awesome because…there are no cameras or phones allowed on this ride. You go through a metal detector before you get to anything good.

 The amount of detail that went into creating Diagon Alley and Hogsmead is astounding. They’ve really thought of even the smallest details. The pic above is of the Hogsmead main street.

Speaking of details…check out the dragon. Pretty cool, right?

If you stick around Diagon Alley long enough, you’ll get to see the dragon breathe fire!

And…as impressive as it is during the day…it’s even more so at night. You know he’s gonna flame up when he starts growling. Check out all of the people in the pic above just standing there watching. That was pretty common to see throughout the day. Everyone wants to see the dragon breathe fire.

One of the things I was looking forward to was trying the Butterbeer…in all its forms. How many ways can they make Butterbeer you ask! Well, there’s the regular cold soda, there’s the frozen (this one was my favorite), there’s the hot (this one tasted like butterscotch hot chocolate),

there’s the ice cream, there’s the fudge, and then there’s the creme de potte. Yes, we had them all! And yes, we had some of them daily. Yum!!

There are two Harry Potter themed restaurants. One in each park. You’ve got the Three Broomsticks on the Hogsmeade side and the Leaky Cauldron over on the Diagon Alley side. We ate at the Three Broomsticks first. It was good…portions were small…prices were pretty high. But you don’t eat there for the meal…not really. You go for the experience and that didn’t disappoint at all.

Again, the details and thought put into each building…each sign…it was pretty cool. Every day I noticed something different.

We ended up eating at the Leaky Cauldron twice. We liked the selection better there. The pics not the best, but it was dark outside which made it even darker than usual inside.

This was the bangers and mash at the Leaky Cauldron. Pretty good portion and really tasty! Not your usual park fare food. Out of everything I ate there, my favorite was the Fisherman’s Pie. The Dude and I both got one our last night there and we were both pleasantly surprised by how good it was!

This is the Leaky Cauldron’s menu. Pretty nice selection. I didn’t get a shot of the Three Broomstick’s menu. The two places offered different things.

 And to wash it all down, why don’t you try a Dragon Scale or perhaps…

 a Fishy Green Ale! Any guesses as to what it is?

We waited for the end of our first day to go to Ollivander’s to get our wands. If you’re lucky enough, Olivander will pick you to go through the choosing ceremony where your wand picks you…just like in the movie. Littlest was lucky. He was beyond thrilled!

Let’s talk wands. When you go to buy your wand, you have two choices in mechanics…interactive or not. The interactive wands allow you to do spells at special locations throughout both Hogsmead and Diagon Alley.  If you get an interactive wand you also get a nifty little map that tells you where all of the spells are located throughout the two Harry Potter sections. Or does it? There might be a couple of hidden spells… **insert evil laugh here* Sorry. Ok, so besides the mechanics you’ve got tons of choices in style. There are character wands and then there are Ollivander’s specials. Good luck picking one out. It actually took me all four days to decide. I didn’t get my wand until the very last day right before we left. I ended up with a non-interactive wand. I felt like it was more solid. Any guesses as to which wand belongs to which nomad?

We made wand holsters so the boys wouldn’t have to keep holding on to their wands and their maps. It worked wonderfully.

You can probably guess what we did first on our second day.

Magic was of the highest priority.

And we weren’t the only ones trying to do it. We stood in line longer to do magic than we did for most rides.

The Hogwarts Express. If you get the park to park pass, you get to ride the Hogwarts Express in between the parks. This was kind of a must for me. I would suggest getting the park to park pass. We found ourselves jumping between the two parks several times a day.

Each train depot was different. Of course, there was platform 9¾  over on the Diagon Alley side

where you can watch people walk right into the wall between platforms 9 and 10.

Once you’re on the train you get to sit in a train compartment that looks pretty much like one from the movie. I loved the little extras as you went from park to park. I won’t ruin it for those of you who haven’t been yet.

The Gringotts Bank was super impressive. It really looked like they sucked it right out of the movie and plopped it down in the middle of Universal Studios.

They even had animatronic goblins.

There was a candy store in each park. Honeydukes over in Hogsmeade and then Sugarplums in Diagon Alley. You can get pretty much any candy you saw in the movie.

They even had chocolate cauldrons and pumpkin pastys!

But, if you want Nosebleed Nouguts, Puking Pastilles, or Fever Fudge you have to head over to Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes.

The Knight Bus was pretty cool. You can visit with Stan Shunpike and Dre Head near the front of the bus, but if you walk around to the back you can stick your head in and see the inside of the bus.

We did go to the other parts of the parks. I promise. We rode every ride…more than once.

The dinos over in the Jurassic area weren’t really impressed with our magic or our wands.

The Transformers ride was one of our favorites. It’s one that we would all ride. We rode this one each day we were there…some days we rode it more than once. We were impressed with how well it was put together and how seamlessly the 3D aspects of it flowed together.

The Men In Black ride was also one of our favorites. You know any time you get to shoot laser guns on a ride it’s going to be good!

This was my favorite coaster. The Hulk spits you out of that little tube over on the left of the picture going a million miles an hour (don’t quote me on that speed) then continues to take you through loops, and twists, and rolls. It’s so freaking awesome!

The whole park was all decked out for the holidays. We had the absolute best time and we’ve all been going through Harry Potter withdrawal.

Here are a few video snippets from our time at Potterverse and NASA.

We also made it to the Kennedy Space Center for a day of space nerdiness. You can see by what the boys are wearing in the picture we were still in the Harry Potter mood.

We took the bus tour where they drive you by the launch pads and tell you a little about each.

We watched the shows and perused the museums. It was all done very well.

My favorite part was seeing the actual Atlantis Shuttle.

I think I stood gawking at Atlantis for a good five to ten minutes. And then you can walk downstairs and check out the bottom of it and see all of the burns and marks it’s gotten from reentering Earth’s atmosphere.

There were some great interactive computer simulations. All of the boys took turns checking them out.

NASA was all decorated for the season too. Very pretty at night! We only spent one very long, very full day here, but it would have been better broken up into two days. We missed a couple of the shows because we ran out of time.

We took the next week to relax and catch up on school, work, and cleaning. We enjoyed not going anywhere or doing anything. Five very long, very exciting days wore all of us out!!

See y’all down the road!

#easternloop2016

Top Memories For 2016

Top Memories For 2016

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Hey Guys! It’s 2017!! Happy New Year!! We thought it would be fun to look back on some of our favorite memories of 2016 with y’all. These are in chronological order and not in rank order. We couldn’t all agree on what order they should be in.

We started 2016 off at White Sands National Monument. This is still one of our favorite National Parks! We had the best time sledding down the sand dunes!

Big Bend National Park had to make the list. The diversity of the landscape here was amazing and beautiful. The vast open expanses of land made us feel so small. We left so much unexplored.

We can’t think of Big Bend NP and not think of our border crossing into Boquillas, Mexico! The boys still talk about riding the burros. It was definitely an experience none of us will forget.

We enjoyed New York more than we thought we would. Old Fort Niagara is on our list of our favorite Forts.

Niagara Falls is awe inspiring. The sheer force of the water as it goes over the falls is breathtaking.

The lobster in Lubec, ME was a favorite for everyone. Being able to go right down to the fishing boat that caught the lobster earlier that day and pick out the lobsters we wanted was so cool.

Acadia National Park has so much to offer. The views were spectacular!

The Cape Cod National Seashore was everything we’d heard it would be. Beautiful beaches and tons of people. We would like to go back during their off season.

We were all surprised by how much we enjoyed the Newport Mansions in Rhode Island. The personal stories and history really made it all come alive.

Some people call Littlest, Panda Boy. He loves pandas and had been looking forward to seeing one in person at the National Zoo ever since I told him we would be going. I think he asked me every week when exactly we would be going to the National Zoo.

We loved all of the Monuments and Memorials in Washington DC.

Kitty Hawk, NC was another surprise for us. We thoroughly enjoyed this area and hated to leave it.

The Biltmore was a bonus this year. We didn’t plan on going to see it, but Mother Nature threw a monkey wrench into our plans and sent Hurricane Mathew up the East Coast. We had to flee Kitty Hawk and head inland so we headed to Ashville and the Biltmore.

Boone Plantation was something I’d been looking forward to for awhile. We really enjoyed the Gullah Geechee aspect of it.

Driftwood Beach in Georgia is still the most unique beach we’ve been to. It was so fun to walk up and down the beach and play around on all of the driftwood.

We saw quite a few Forts in 2016. Fort Castillo de San Marcos in the St. Augustine area of Florida made it to our top five.

And…of course, Universal Studios made it on to our list of 2016 favorites. #potterheadsrule

Everglades National Park left an impression on all of us. We loved the diversity of animals and ecosystems we found here.

We’ve had quite a year! It was really hard for us to pick our favorites.

I hope y’all had a wonderful 2016 and will have an even better 2017!

See y’all down the road!

#easternloop2016