As a last hurrah before the start of the school year, we shipped the dog off the the kennel, packed

As a last hurrah before the start of the school year, we shipped the dog off the the kennel, packed the entire house into a rental car and headed down the road for a long, long, long drive to the Florida Keys.  You guys, Florida is huge!  It took us about 5 and half hours to get to Key Largo and then another 2 hours to finally hit Key West.  Luckily, we broke the drive up by stopping a lot.
We spent three nights in Key Largo at the Key Largo Resort ..a place I had stayed before, but it was new to the kids. They loved it and so did I again.  While I was out working, the kids and Aaron explored the grounds, the pool and the pricey hotel restaurants.  At night, we went out to great local restaurants and hung out on the beach.  I have a whole post coming up all about the food in the Keys.  Stay tuned.
One day, we played tourist and went out on a glass bottom daytona florida hotels boat the Key Largo Princess .  We felt it would give us some time on the water and we had planned to rent our own boat the next day and wanted to kind of get a feel for things out on the ocean.
The boat took us out the the underwater part of John Pennecamp State Park which was about an hour ride from shore.  Once out there it cruised around a bit over the very shallow reef allowing us an up close view of the beauty.  The crew onboard made sure to point out all the cool wildlife as we were going over the reefs and we were able to see midnight parrotfish, lots of yellowtail snapper (which we ate for dinner later),  and some beautiful corals.  It was a nice ride and perfect for someone that would rather daytona florida hotels not swim with the fishes BUT I was so antsy to get in the water.  It just looked so clear, refreshing and inviting. I wish we would have signed up for a snorkel daytona florida hotels trip instead but there were so many boats in the water it might have been a bit scary. Actually, there were so many boats out there that it made us second guess renting our own boat the next day.  Too easy to get into trouble when there are so many boats/swimmers in the water.
We were happy to see a few dolphins following our boat and a few fish skimming the surface of the water. daytona florida hotels The ride was nice and would have been perfect for someone afraid of the water but wanting to catch a glimpse of the beautiful reefs.  Unfortunately, it just made me eager to jump in.
We did do some snorkeling from shore at the John Pennecamp State Park they had dropped some sinking ship memorabilia in the swimming area so we were able to snorkel around a huge ships anchor and lots of sunken cannons.  The water was a bit murky but it was still fun.