Florida

Remember that trip to Florida I was yammering about (wow, I just said "yammering," that automatically makes me like 80 years older)? The one tha was $22, yeah. I have some pics and a trip report.

We left LGA at about 7:00AM on Saturday, right on time, and landed in Fort Lauderdale about three hours later. Once we basked in the 85 degree heat and got our rental car, we drove south on Florida's Turnpike to its end. Here's a very tropical looking picture in Homestead:

After the turnpike ended, we drove on US 1 to Key Largo and John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park. If I had had my way, we would have gone snorkeling offshore there at the actual reef. But we, like, didn't, because my mom didn't want to. Anyway, we had lunch on the beach and then rented a canoe to travel through the mangrove channels. What more can I say, there were mangroves, in a channel...

Yeah, that's my mom. Anyway, after canoeing, I decided I still wanted to snorkel, even if it wasn't going to be in the most spectacular part of the park. So I rented gear and I snorkeled by myself off the beach. Here are a couple of pics:

Left: the beach.
Right: me snorkeling. You might want to click on it for a bigger view...

I didn't really see much, just some sponges and a few fish. And I helped this old dude find his mask, which he dropped under water. So then we left the park and drove to Everglades National Park, which was having a free admission day due to its 60th anniversary. We went to the Royal Palm Visitor Center and hiked two trails--the wildlife-full Anhinga Trail, which went along a freshwater slough, and the tropical Gumbo Limbo Trail, which went through a rainforest with vegetation more typical of Central America than the US of A. Here are pics from the a trails:

Above: gator and Everglades on the Anhinga Trail.
Below: Tropicality of the Gumbo Limbo Trail.

We were planning to do a hike in the Long Pine Key area before it got dark, but unfortunately we took the wrong road and had to leave the park due to the setting sun. SPeaking of which, I did get some ppretty good pics of it, here's one:

We drove up the Tunrpike again to our Days Inn at Sunny Isles Beach (basically North Beach Miami), which we arrived at around dinnertime. Our hotel was in an odd location--a low slung 4 story motor inn surrounded by 50 story Trump-owned resorts. We ate dinner at the best restaurant ever, an all you can eat sushi place. It may sound like shit, but the fish was fresh, you could see the people making it.... Anyway, the next day we had to get up at 5:00 to be back at Fort Lauderdale International Airport for our 7:00AM flight. So in total, we spent about 21 hours in Florida. The flight cost $44 round trip, the hotel was $60, and the rental car was $35. Not bad.

Updatings

It's 2008. Yep. I wonder, if you get shot at about the same time it becomes midnight in a nEw Year, which year of death do they put on your gravestone? We were talking about that during la clase de math today....

Today we had to go back to school, which sucked a bit. BUt meh, I have another break in 2 and a half weeks. And it's just as long as this one, so, uh, woot. And then after that break, there's another one in mid-February, 2 and a half weeks later. So between December 23 and February 25, I have a total of 4 weeks off from school. I think.

So uh, my thumb. I still have a scar. And I can't feel a portion of it. And I probably wont ever be able to. Oh wells. I have to get back to my hw.