My fabulous husband planned an amazing 3 day birthday celebration (I turned 28...no shame in sharing my age) weekend getaway for us in the FL Keys. He has been multiple times now over the past several years on his annual guys' trip, but this was my first trip ever. He did a pretty good job of keeping it a surprise, but I am really good at guessing and he eventually broke and told me. In my opinion, it's really hard to plan a surprise trip for a girl because only a girl knows how to pack for herself. He arranged all of the baby-sitting and made the reservations. We left at 1:00 a.m. on Saturday morning and with the help of some sleeping pills, I slept for about 5 hours of the 6.5 hour trip. We had some time to kill before we could check in at our campsite so we ate breakfast and drove all the way down to Key West. Then, he bought me some snorkeling gear (another first for me).
After checking in and setting up, we headed out to snorkel. The campsite we stayed at took up the entire Ohio Key so there was several beach access points. We just walked in and swam around for a bit. The water was calm and fairly comfortable. That night we went to this awesome restaurant that we would highly recommend and definitely plan on returning to. It's called Sunset Grille and is just north of the 7 mile bridge. It is an enormous tiki hut with open sides and is right on the water. We ate just after sunset so the weather was beautiful. I have to admit that I definitely did not keep my diet, but it was my birthday so I earned it! Yummm!
It rained pretty hard that night and was really breezy so the water was a little rough the next day. These are a couple of pictures from the morning.
For anyone thinking that my diet really isn't working that well...these pants are actually very loose on me and the wind was blowing them.
This is where we snorkeled from the first day.
The palm trees in the background was part of our campground.
Sporting my new wetsuit (another awesome gift from one of George's co-worker friends)
Our campsite. The rest of the campgrounds were pretty much filled with snowbirds with amazingly nice RVs. They come down for months and then head back north once schools get out. We talked quite a bit with a couple from New Jersey that was camping next to us.
I wanted one picture of the both of us!
After learning that the steaks we brought down with us were spoiled, we went to another local restaurant, which we definitely would not recommend. It is called Sparkie's Landing. The service and food was sub-par.
I walked over to the beach the next morning and watched the sunrise. Kate wanted me to bring her back a pretty seashell so we did our best to find one. We found several conch shells while we were snorkeling, but you can't take them if they have something living in them. George did take a hermit crab shell and we found some empty scallop shells. The camper's next to us had some beautiful conch shells that they found just walking the beach, but we weren't so lucky. We were able to bring back some pretty ones though.
As we headed back, we ate at Jimmy Johnson's Big Chill restaurant. It was right on the water and beautiful. Another place that we would definitely recommend. It's on Key Largo. And we also happened to see Troy Aikman eating lunch there, too. I'm pretty sure we also saw Jimmy Johnson himself.
George has definitely passed on the Key's bug. I would love to go back as a family and either do the camping thing again or invade his normal trip in August!
This picture was from this morning. Kate eating breakfast on the couch with her daddy. A little treat since we know they missed us. Back to the grind...
A huge THANK YOU to all of our family who watched children and Bella. George and I really needed some husband and wife time!
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