Fishing - Day 2

We went fishing with Kevin again on Jordan's birthday! How fun!! This time we fished over a reef for some grouper; it was the first day of grouper season, after all. And boy did they bite!

We caught one,

two,

three,

four,

and five grouper! All five of these are black grouper. The limit is one per person, so we could only keep two. When I caught my first grouper, (number 3 up there), we put it in the live bait well while Kevin checked the regulations about black grouper. During the time it was in the live bait well, it changed colors to adapt to its surroundings! (The well was all white). Pretty cool, huh?!

We saw a frigatebird. They have the largest wingspan to body weight ratio of any bird. They don't swim and can't walk well, but they can stay aloft for more than a week! 

Here are our first two keepers. Jordan also caught a red grouper, but it was an inch shy of being a keeper.

And here's the rest of the catch from the day. Kevin filleted our fish for us, and we took it with us!

I'm glad we spent two days fishing, and I'm glad we were able to fish on Jordan's birthday. And I'm very glad we caught plenty of grouper!

Sunset Cruise

One night we went on a sunset cruise through our resort. There were only about 10 people on the boat, (including 2 little 3-year old twin girls, who reminded me of Claire), so we had a nice, relaxing time.

We cruised into the main canal of the island, so we got to see some of the houses from the water side.

And then we went out to sea! The boat didn't really have any destination; we just went out until it was time to turn back around. Now that's fun!

The setting was so lovely.

The guys working on the boat told us that the people who live in this house go sword fishing a lot. - And look at all those swordfish bills! Amazing!

Key West

After fishing in the morning and resting in the afternoon, we drove out to Key West. How beautiful!!

We made it to the southernmost point  in the continental United States!

We got to Duval Street a little before 6pm, so we looked at a few galleries and shops, but most of the ones we wanted to look at closed at 6. So we just walked, looked in the windows, and peeked into the restaurants. We decided on a place and had some tapas for dinner. And I made a point to get a picture of myself with this Julia Street sign because I have one very similar to it from about 15 years ago when I was in the Keys with my family.

Florida Keys - Fishing Trip 1

Jordan and I went to the Florida Keys last week for a vacation!!! We celebrated the fact that Jordan graduated and that he has a job. It was wonderful. Claire stayed with Laura and Matt, so Jordan and I had time to ourselves.

On Monday morning, we went fishing with Kevin from Reel Adventures. It was fantastic!

Thankfully, the rain missed us, but we didn't miss the rainbow!

Shark on! Once a shark realizes he's hooked, he'll swim down, down, down - and fast! So you just have to wait until he settles down a little bit, and then you can start reeling him bak in. It took Jordan about 10 minutes.

And here he is! Look at that nurse shark!

After feeling how rough he was, we let him go. What a beauty!

Then it was my turn! I caught a shark, too!

I worked for about 10 minutes, and I saw him. - I saw the shark in the water. He was close to the boat, but then he finally snapped the line. Bummer!

We both caught amberjacks at the same time. They ate the bait we were using to try to catch tarpons. (No luck with the tarpons). And a little bit later, they became bait themselves...

This one was fun!

It's a barracuda!

Got it!

Here, the amberjacks and barracuda became more shark bait.

Carcasses in the water - you know sharks like blood, right?!

And we got one! This one is Jordan's. We weren't sure what kind of shark this was. Kevin named a long list of types of shark that it is NOT.

We were back by lunch, and THAT is the storm we missed. Thank goodness!

What an AWESOME way to start our vacation!!!!