2013 Spring Break in Florida

Spring Break in Florida.  I remember those days fondly.  Of course it is totally different when you live there versus taking a vacation down to the Sunshine State.  It was good to get back home and visit my parents.  I had hoped to see some old friends also, but it appears life has moved on for many.

On day one we headed to Ft. Lauderdale beach.  We blended in nicely with most of the other pale white tourisst.   Christopher got to see first hand what a bunch of drunk college kids do on Spring Break - well at least during the day.

 Day two was spent at Oleta State Park.  We rented some bikes to ride the mountain bike trails there.  Carolynn and I rode there often when we lived down there.  The trails were fun, but the lower end bikes we rented sucked.  Christopher said he would rather ride the bull by my parents house than ride that bike again. We did not ride long nor very hard because of my wrist injury but despite the bikes we used it was fun to get out on the trails. 


After the ride we had lunch at a local Cuban restaurant.  It was very tasty.   Christopher ate so much that he could hardly paddle his SUP.  After awhile he finally got up to speed and we both headed out into the bay to explore leaving Carolynn to enjoy a peaceful afternoon on the beach.  It was a little windy but we both did well.  There are several small islands in the bay south of Oleta and we decided to head over to one.  It ended up being the same island that was used during an old adventure race that I did with my old friends Joel Leffler and Scott Hayford.  After exploring the island it was time to head back and return the SUP's.  On the way back a very cool thing happened to us.  We spotted a couple of large fins and at first I thought it was shark because they were in the news recently.  The fins ended up belonging to several Dolphins.  As we got closer they came right up to us.  It is not often you get within a few feet of Dolphins

The weather started to get a little cool down there so we headed out West to the Everglades for a little kayaking.  It had been about 6 or 7 years since Christopher went on this trip with us.  I always enjoy canoeing and/or kayaking in the Everglades.  We got to see about a dozen Alligators.  We got very close to several but Carolynn was afraid they would attack and kept us outside of harms way.

A couple of more beach days, a surprise visit by Christopher's girlfriend, a few runs and night bike rides and a very fun trip on some scooters closed out our vacation.  Carolynn did not want to leave and is currently looking for a place to live on the West Coast of Florida!