Wrapping Up the Keys

I know you will find it hard to believe, but I am at the end of telling the story of our lovely trip to the Florida Keys. I have a few odds & ends that I don't want to forget about that I'm putting all together here.

First, we always want to remember our lovely accomodations in the Kawama Yacht Club. (Or as Jason said it, "Ya-ka-tuh" Club.) We had some difficulties with the owner a couple of months before we left, and so we had a little trepidation about what we were going to find there.

It turned out that the townhouse was lovely. And it was decorated...very thoroughly. Here is a picture of the coffee table in the living room. If you're wondering why I took a picture of the coffee table, well, it was really in the way. And I was worried that we wouldn't get the right knick-knacks back in their right places if we moved it out of the way. There was also a letter on the fridge telling us all sorts of things like not to bleach the towels because it would make her (the owner) cry, and asking us not to steal the shell tic-tac-toe game from the coffee table.

Every surface that could be covered was. We had a hard time finding places to set any of our belongings. The other funny thing was that the walls were very thoroughly decorated as well. Both Ken & I had physical therapy exercises we were supposed to be doing that needed wall space. (Me for my tummy, him for his neck.) The first night that Ken tried to do his PT against the wall he hit a big metal star and knocked it right off the wall! I ended up on the floor in the kitchen doing my exercises because that was the only place with enough space for me.

The townhouse had a big lagoon in front of it that we had a great time swimming in. The owner had told us that we could snorkel in it and that there were parrotfish in it. This was true--there were big parrotfish--we could see them from the screened in porch where we loved to eat dinner. And technically we could snorkel in it, because you can put on a mask and a snorkel in any body of water. But it was certainly too murky to actually be able to see anything.

We had lots of fun in the lagoon, though, once we gave up on the snorkeling part.

The lagoon was also lovely every night at sunset, as was the harbor of the yacht club.

Here's another memory not to be forgotten: Ken praying to the stove.

Ok, he wasn't really praying to the stove--just trying to see how to work it. But it made me laugh anyway.

Some of the kids saw this iguana one day and came and got my camera to take a picture. I am not sure if I am happy or sad that I missed seeing it...Probably happy, since I'm not sure I really want to know that there are creatures that big alive in the wild!

On the day that we went to the alligator farm we stopped to eat at what must surely have been the nastiest-tasting Panda Express in the world. (Truly. If you're in Homestead, FL, and you see the Panda Express, don't be seduced by memories of good Panda Express food. Skip it. Drive right by and eat at the McDonalds. It was that bad.) Despite the bad food we had a good time, and were very entertained by a tropical downpour that started right as we were getting ready to leave.

Here we are hoping that the rain will stop a little so that we can run out to the cars!

We also have a last memory of the townhouse that involves water. The downstairs room of the townhouse was where our kids slept, and had a closet holding the washer & dryer. On the last night that we were there we had been running a lot of laundry to get everything clean before we left. The little kids were supposed to be asleep and we adults were playing some game upstairs, when all of a sudden someone came running up the narrow stairs yelling that there was water everywhere. We ran down to see what was the matter, and sure enough, water EVERYWHERE. We shut off the washer, grabbed towels, and started throwing them down on the floor. We used every towel that we could find. We were so baffled about where the water was coming from, but when we looked closer we saw that the hose from the washer went into a big pvc pipe, and it had been knocked out of the pipe. So we replaced the hose, finished mopping up all of the water, propped up the area rug in hopes that it would dry by the next morning, and started washing towels again. We were pretty frantic there for a few minutes. And we hoped the owner wouldn't notice that we had flooded her vacation home because that would most definitely have made her cry!

Here's a last happy picture of us playing Clue Master Detective. Mahon really wanted to play this before he & Cindy Lynn left and we were happy to oblige. When you play Clue Master Detective you need a book or magazine to hide your paper that you keep track of everything on. Fortunately the uber-decorated townhouse also had a big bin of magazines at the top of the stairs and we used those. The funny thing was that they were all deep-sea fishing magazines, so we got to look at pictures of really huge fish while we were playing. I know a lot more than I used to about deep-sea fishing now...

If you look at the picture there on the left is the star that Ken knocked off of the wall. Good thing it didn't break, that's all I can say. One of the kids broke a bowl and a small glass and when our deposit was returned to us the owner had kept $10 to cover the broken dishes. Who knows what a star would have cost!

Although there are a few more trip pictures to come later, this is the very last Florida picture from the toll-road exit. I thought it was clever and cute.