Sunday, February 3, 2013

The promised snorkeling pictures!

This post is still about Christmas in the Keys. From the 1st day we went snorkeling. We had to get up at 7am (the picture below shows how many of us actually made it), to get to John Pennekamp State Park by 8, then we boarded the boat at 9. The water was a balmy 88 degrees, which is not nearly as warm as it sounds. Hence the wetsuits. Anyway, here's a great picture of my mom, my brother, and me. It's rare to get such a good picture of multiple people, so I'm really happy with this one!


The water was neon. This picture came the closest to capturing the absurd color.

These were crazy coral balls. They were huge, and too close to the surface to swim over, so I just sort of sat there staring at them. I have no idea why they formed that way.


Fan coral!


barracudas were everywhere! Every time I saw one I started singing Heart in my head. So... I was singing it constantly.


We saw sea turtles!!!! I had thought that because you don't see them on beaches in the winter, that we wouldn't see any. But if they're not on the beaches, than they're in the water!  Duh!


more fan coral. And some other cool corals


Coral reefs are so full of life! Who knew that they actually look like they do in paintings/movies (Nemo)/ at the aquarium!


Every time I look at these photos I just want to snorkel again! 
-Stella


Friday, February 1, 2013

Christmas

 It's hard to keep up with my blog these days, what with facebook being a perfect place to post my  pictures and tell about them all. And now, almost everyone I know is on facebook, my blog is pretty redundant. Soon I may give it up altogether. Maybe. Anyway, for the first time in my whole life, my family did something different for Christmas. We went on vacation! I haven't been on a family vacation since I was 14, I think.  So it's been 13ish years. Wow. That made this one all the better. Now that I'm an 'adult' I can appreciate how awesome family vacation is. You stay in a hotel go out to eat 3 meals a day, hang out on the beach and in the hot tub, and basically do whatever else you want FOR FREE. Unless you're the parent. Then you have to pay for everything. Luckily, I'm not the parent! So the whole not paying for anything was just about the most amazing thing in the world (thank's parents/aunt and uncle!!), and on top of that, I got to see a whole new part of the world, and have some pretty neat experiences.

We went to the Florida Keys. I wanted to go somewhere in the continental US so that I could drive. I hate flying. But I was surprised to find that my mom and brother wanted to drive with me. My brother because he wanted to stop at climbing areas along the way, and my mom because we had talked about taking a bonding roadtrip together (and, I learned, flying isn't her favorite activity either). We left my dad, sister, aunt, and uncle to make the 3ish hour flight by themselves, and set off 5 days earlier. Our first stop was Chattanooga, so we could fufill Joe's wish for the drive: climbing. Here we are at LRC (Little Rock City), bouldering. My mom even climbed with us!
Our next stop was Tampa, FL, where our old neighbor Kathy now lives. She had to work during the day, but gave us suggestions as to where to go and what to see while we were visiting. Here we were on the coast in a manatee sanctuary. It was a canal that was warmed by the nearby electrical plant. Overall "beautiful" scenery. We didn't see a single manatee! (but we stopped again on the way back and were rewarded by glimpses of hundreds of them. And the camera died.) But we did see this egret (or heron... I just called all the white ones snowy egrets, and all the blue ones great blue herons). It was our first wildlife sighting.
Our final stop on the way to the Keys was the Everglades. It's the only place in the world like it, so we HAD to see it, so we stopped in and went on a couple hikes. Here's a purple gallawrignalkrg... something. You might have to blow up the picture to see it, but it's a beautiful bright purple bird with huge yellow feet. And it walks along lilypads. How these birds haven't all been eaten by alligators, I don't know.

This bird is called an anhinga.

Here's an anhinga drying out it's wings. They dive down under the water to catch fish to eat, but  can't fly with wet wings, so they have to sit, air drying their wings all the time

our first alligator sighting! We were on a boardwalk, leaning over, looking into the swamp for at least a minute before we noticed him, right in front of us.

At some point on our drive south, palm trees started popping up. Just growing wild. I thought they were all planted. I didn't realize they grew wild (you may have seen an earlier post where I was at a desert oasis, hugging a wild palm tree. I had forgotten about that...). This one, however, was at a visitor center, and was most likely planted.


a great blue heron!

The tree my mom is touching is called a gumbo limbo tree. It has tissuepaper thin red bark that peels like a birch tree. Some people call it the tourist tree. For it's peeling red skin. Get it?

The Keys! Driving between islands, you're rewarded with breathtaking views like this: shallow blue-green water on both sides, with mangrove islands dotting the horizon.

One of the Key's only natural beaches. All the brown stuff is sea grass, deposited on the shore with the tides. While growing, it is a favorite food for sea turtles



This is our hotel's beach. See how there are actually rocks next to the water? A fake beach, but the biggest one in Islamorada (the key we stayed on). It was pretty nice.

a teeny crab!

When I read that our hotel had bikes that rode ON TOP of the water, I got SO excited. Seriously, I was excited about this for months. I somehow wasn't picturing the wheels to be half submerged and it just being a paddleboat. It wasn't nearly as fun as I expected. Here's Hanna and Joe trying to enjoy themselves (don't get me wrong, it  wasn't THAT bad...)

This picture has everyone but me in it! Hanna and Joe on the bike, my mom and Aunt Paula looking for the crab as I shout directions from behind the camera, and in the backgroung, my dad and Uncle Jay on the beach.

We also rented a standup paddleboard. They conveniently had some to rent at our hotel. Here's Hanna taking my mom for a ride on Christmas day. I was un-beaching them so they could get started.

This summer I learned how to do a headstand on one. Headstands are actually easier on a paddleboard than the ground. Handstands, however, are WAY harder.

Joe (of all people) got up before sunrise on our last day to take sunrise pictures. He had no idea how to use the camera and finally another lady doing the same thing told him he still had the lens cap on. Ha! Anyway, he did a great job once he figured that out.

We stopped by the Everglades on the drive back too. This time we saw gators everywhere. Literally, for miles, there was a creek following the road, and if we looked at it, within 15 seconds, someone would say "there's one!". Here we stopped at an observation platform. There were about 30 alligators there. They must feed them or something!


Well, I'm waiting to get the pictures (I will post them later), but the very best thing about the Keys was the snorkeling. There's a reef off the coast, and we went out twice. Once just me, my mom, and Joe, and the next time everyone. But wow. Reefs are amazing! Even though everything is blue, there's still so much color! The coral, the fish, even the water itself was neon green! We saw angelfish, fish that looked lie Dory, puffer fish, hundreds of other fish I couldn't identify, barracudas, my sister even saw a shark!, and the best - sea turtles!!! I can't' really express how amazing it was. At first it was scary and uncomfortable to breathe through your mouth with a weird tube in it, but the more you see, the less that matters. And here's some random knowledge that helped me have a great time. There's such a thing as a DRY snorkel. It means that no water can get in from the top of the snorkel. So, next time you go snorkeling, do yourself a favor and pay extra for a dry snorkel.

-Stella