August 1, 2016

The Best of My Vacation Pictures

Martie Sound Off! Boca Raton, Key West, the tropics, tropical images, tropical pictures, vacation pictures 8 Comments

Lucky for you, the best of my vacation pictures this year are mostly tropical images.  I haven’t been somewhere as beautiful as the Florida Keys in a long time. This year’s collection of tropical pictures will wow you in comparison to last year’s stay-cation (although the making of the zip-line was pretty cool) and our Disneyworld trip from two years ago. As always, you can count on my narration of the pictures to be entertaining and laughable…I dare not disappoint!

You’d better enjoy this post, too, because coming soon is my tale of yet another theme park.  We surprised the girls with a one-day blow out of Universal Studios and Universal Islands of Adventure on the way home from the keys.  That is definitely a post for another day.  Let’s get on with the vacation pictures from the relaxing leg of our trip!

Vacation Pictures In Boca

We started our journey in Boca Raton, which is quite possibly the geriatric vacation spot.  Nothing wrong with that!  Coach and I are old souls, so we seemed to fit right in. We stopped off in a little bar for a cold beer after our 14 hour drive on day one, and were met with some of the best dressed, snazziest-looking 80-somethings I’ve ever seen! I’ve never been to a beach town so quiet and with as little traffic as Boca.

Here’s the gorgeous beach.

Here’s the strange part:  we pretty much had the place to ourselves.

We enjoyed cruising up and down A1A (beach front avenue!) and gazing at the multi-million dollar estates along the Atlantic Ocean. As it turns out, Boca is home, or a second home, to many celebrities and other well-to-do’s.  I didn’t snap any pictures, but just Google “Ocean Front Homes Boca Raton”.  If you enjoyed that old show “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” when you were young, you’ll have a field day with the results.  Coach and I Googled it, and my favorite was a $195 million, 36 bedroom, 42 bath home on a 15-acre estate.  I’m saving up.  I even created an account with one of the realtor websites, and came home to a message on my answering machine from a lady named Lori, hoping to make bank.  She obviously has no access to my bank, or she wouldn’t have wasted her time!

Here are some of the tropical pictures I took on our drives.

Vacation Pictures in the Florida Keys

We drove down Highway 1 through all the beautiful islands that lead up to Key West, and it was a pleasant drive.  Well, it was for me, since Coach was driving and I was sawing logs in the passenger seat.  I missed Key Largo altogether.  We arrived at the Aunties’ house, and that’s where the real vacation pictures began!

The Aunties’ home is amazing. They were kind enough to lend it to Coach and me for our honeymoon 17 years ago, and it is, of course, one of our favorite places on Earth! Here’s the view once you step out the back door.

I’m particularly fond of the inlaid gecko on the former “pool”, which is complete with a ladder covered in sea creatures and seaweed.  You couldn’t pay me to get in that water, and I’m so proud the Aunties have added a real pool since our honeymoon.

It’s funny how selective one can be, especially one who spends most of her time in creek water, eh?

Here are some of the reasons I wouldn’t swim in the “lagoon”, as Coach and I named it.

This is a cannonball jellyfish, which supposedly doesn’t sting.  I didn’t feel like testing that theory.  They’re really gorgeous creatures, which look like Tennessee’s Queen Ann’s Lace when they spread out those hangy-down things.

There are two fanned out in the above picture.  There’s also a fish.  Bonus points if you find them!

These are horseshoe crabs, and apparently they’re mating.  The big one is the female, and the male latches on until wifey can make it to shore to lay her eggs.  We spent a lot of time on Google!  I’m glad we did, though, since we called these stingrays for a couple of days.

This here, my friends, is an iguana.  He snuck up onto the patio hoping to snack on some of the Aunties’ flowers, and I accidentally ran him off with my  picture taking.

Meet Mr. Crab.  He was one of several who hung around in the rocks behind the house.  We had to fish him out of the real pool a time or two, but at least we could see him in there!

Sunset in the Keys

If you’ve heard anything at all about Key West, you have to have heard about the beautiful sunsets, best viewed on Mallory Dock at the end of Duval Street.  Here’s the problem: the cheapest fee for parking that we could find was $13 and a mile away from Mallory Dock.  Since we’ve already been there, done that (three different times), I found an almost-as-good spot…the parking lot at Baby’s Coffee on Sugarloaf.

Isn’t that something?

My cousin’s wife took this next one at Mallory Dock, since she and Cousin had cat-and-house duty the week before we did.

Pooh snapped this one at the Aunties’ house.

I think the sunset is one of the most glorious tropical images in the world, and definitely makes for some of my most treasured vacation pictures.

The Beach at Key West

Coach and I visited a beautiful (and free!) attraction right on the beach.  It’s called West Martello Tower, and it has been taken over by the Key West Garden Club. You can tour the whole thing and take tons of pictures, and they sure do appreciate your donations. Here are some highlights.

We walked out onto the pier to look at the gorgeous water and smell the beach air.

The day we had to pick up Pooh, Tigger and Auntie Anne at Key West’s tiny airport, we went into town early and walked along the beach.  We had to feel the sand between our toes one more time before we left.  This beach is actually man-made, as the shores of the Atlantic are pretty rocky and brown.  No matter.  It was gorgeous to us!  Stinky, though.

The clouds were kind of nice that day, since it subdued the ferocious heat and humidity.  It was the perfect ending to our trip.

This was a really long post, no?  Sorry about that…believe me, this is only a drop in the bucket compared to all the pictures I took!  That’s why it’s titled “The Best of My Vacation Pictures” and not “All of My Vacation Pictures”. You’re welcome.

Where did you go on vacation this year?

X,O,X,O,   Martie