taychellewis 
We’re back!
We decided to take it a little bit easier this trip since we have two kids now and don’t want to come home more tired than when we left. We chose to visit the three national parks in Florida: Dry Tortugas, Everglades, and Biscayne, and top off the trip with a couple of relaxing beach days.
We dropped the girls off in Statesboro with Taylor’s parents and left at 2 AM on Monday to make it down to Marathon by lunchtime. It was cloudy, so while sitting by the pool we didn’t bother to put on sunscreen. Big mistake. We got sunburnt without realizing it, and weren’t too excited to spend our trip in sunny Florida trying to avoid the sun.
Tuesday we woke up early to drive the rest of the way down to Key West. To our extreme disappointment, our boat trip to Dry Tortugas National Park was cancelled. High winds and heavy rain were expected all day. What a bummer! We wandered around Key West, noting how sleepy it was at 7 in the morning. We took photos with the most touristy things on the island. We drove back up to Marathon. We read in our hotel room. We looked wistfully out at the rain pouring into our fancy infinity pool by the sea. We cried a little into our pillows. We ordered some chicken fingers. Finally, when we were satisfied with how long our pity party had lasted, we changed our hotel to one in Miami and made our way there. At least there we could walk around a mall, eat Cabo Flats for dinner, and attempt to bowl even though it was too busy to actually bowl!
At the bowling alley but not bowling
Wednesday – the day our luck improved! After breakfast at the hotel (yes, OUR hotel, not the one next door), we drove to Everglades National Park. We walked on a few short nature trails and drove around a bit, but realized there wasn’t much else to do that didn’t include a boat. So, checking that one off the list, we headed to Biscayne National Park!
Since Biscayne is mostly ocean, we took a small boat to one of the islands named Boca Chita. It was dreamy, empty, and isolated. We had an hour to walk around, sit at the private beach, and look out at the crystal clear water, and it was the best hour of our trip at this point! We hope to go back and camp there one day.
A second private beach that was a ten minute walk away
That evening we drove to Fort Lauderdale, had a ridiculous Walmart/Target shopping experience (I don’t even feel like going into detail), and had dinner in our room. The next two days were full of sitting at the beach, eating buffet breakfasts, avoiding other families with kids, and napping. Those were my favorite days. There’s nothing more relaxing to me!
Overall, there were definitely some disappointments on our trip, but we had a great time and really enjoyed coming back home to see the girls. They had changed so much! Blake was speaking in fuller sentences, Maggie had two teeth, and she was rolling from back to stomach easily. We are so thankful to Jojo and Pepa for keeping them for us. We don’t know when our next trip will be, but for now we’re excited to be home!
