About a week and a half after getting home from Hartfield, we left for a week in Florida. We had planned to visit there last summer for some fun and to visit Mark’s family that lives there, but Covid had other plans for us last summer. So, we were really glad to be able to make the trip this summer. It’s been a long time since we’ve seen Mark’s family, and we had planned some fun activites to do while we were there. Within minutes of arriving at Mark’s mom’s house, the girls were in the pool (happy to be out of masks from the airport and flight which we haven’t been used to for awhile).
After relaxing our first evening in town, we headed off to Cocoa Beach the next day. We had a sunny hot day to hang at the beach. The water was crazy warm as compared to the water of the Delaware beaches. After getting our fill of the beach for the day we went to the world’s largest surf shop, Ron John’s Surf Shop, in Cocoa Beach. It was practically a destination in itself and a really cool store.
The next day we went to Discovery Cove which will be a post itself, but then the day after that we headed out to Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. We had read this was the place to go to see lots of cool Florida wildlife, so we went with high hopes of seeing some really cool creatures. We didn’t see all the wildlife we hoped, but we saw a cute armadillo, lots of unique water and marshland birds, a gator, a couple manatees, and fish and turtles. Manatees have had a record bad year in Florida the first six months of the year, and we were told not to expect to see them, so we were really happy when we saw two at the Manatee Observation Deck.
The day after the wildlife refuge was a Sunday, and we had a nice evening visiting with some of Mark’s Florida family. On Monday we had booked a bioluminescent kayak tour at night. It looked like it was going to be a really cool experience. In a section of the Indian River (close by where we were when we went to the wildlife refuge), you can take kayak tours out at night to see the bioluminescence given off organisms in the water. We had a low key day on Monday as we knew we were going to have an active and late night. In fact, Nina and Lyla were excited because they were allowed to have coffee drinks in the late afternoon to keep them up that night. Our trip was supposed to set off at 10pm and go until 11:30, so we drove to Cocoa first for dinner, then made our way to our kayak location. On the way from dinner to the kayaking, a massive storm rolled in. There was downpour rain, strong lightning, and thunder. Since the kayak tour was out in the middle of nowhere (with hardly an cell service) we tried to get ahold of the company to see if our tour was still happening. They said it was, so we continued out to our destination only to wait in the car for over and hour while they tried to wait out a storm that wasn’t going to pass on. So, after all that, our kayak tour was canceled and we drove back. While I’m sure the night kayaking for bioluminescence would have been really cool under normal conditions, I’m so glad we weren’t out on the water when that storm hit. It was a big storm that carried on for a couple hours, and Mark and I would not have wanted our family out on the water when it rolled through, so while it was a bummer that the storm came in on that night, at least we all were safe.
Our last full day in Florida was Tuesday, and we went go karting, swam at Grandma and Grandpa’s house, then we all went out to dinner at a fun taco place.
We flew back home the next day and were back at our house by early evening on Wednesday. We certainly made some fun family memories over the week, we got to visit with family, and we did some unique things I hope the girls will remember for a long time. They said they had such a fun week, and we were all glad that this summer we were finally able to make the trip.
