We are back from our annual New England ski trip.  It was wonderful, but now we have no trips booked in the near future which makes my imagination go crazy with possibilities.  Our Iceland tickets will be booked before the end of the month, so in the meantime, I’m going to finish recapping Florida so I can look through beautiful beach pictures.

Round one of the trip was recapped here.  Like I said, we decided to each plan a full day of fun. After our kayaking trip with the Manatees, I was worried that my plan would be a bust, but we had a blast.
We drove about an hour south of Fort Meyers to Everglades City.  The drive was beautiful.  The section of Southern Florida that we were in was very remote and the landscape was very different from what we are used to up north.  We arrived at Jungle Erv’s Airboats ready for the first tour.

The weather had been pretty cold for Florida the last few weeks, so we didn’t see any Gators on the air boat tour, but cruising through the Mangroves was so much fun on the air boat.  We saw some other little creatures too.

After the tour, we walked around the area and saw lots of Alligators everywhere.  In the mud near the river, on the side of the road, plus we got to hold a baby.

After our Everglades experience, we drove to Naples and had an afternoon on the beach.  We drank sangria out of juice boxes, flipped through travel magazines, caked on sunscreen and enjoyed our surroundings.

Our final full day of the trip was our most relaxing.  We got up in the morning and headed to the beach and rented cruisers and biked around for a while.  We had lunch in the sun and then headed back for some pool time just when the rain rolled in.  We sat on our covered patio and plotted out our future adventures and finished the nights with snacks, sangria and the Golden Globes (and matching shirts obviously).

It was an amazing weekend with an amazing friend.  I would do it all again in a heartbeat.  Having each of us plan a day and surprising the other was a great way to shake things up and try some new experiences.  Hope you’re doing something warm and awesome today.

Until next time Sunshine State.