Florida Keys

The BIG Christmas present from Nana and Pop was a trip to the Florida Keys.  We are at Hawk’s Cave Resort in Duck Key, which is about 90 minutes from Miami and an hour away from Key West (the furthest key). This morning, we had a Dolphin Encounter Experience. Elliott was wary because we had read a book about how keeping dolphins in captivity isn’t good for them, especially since they usually swim 100 miles a day in the wild. However, we researched this particular location and saw that it was accredited and that the dolphins are in natural ocean water (the lagoon is connected to the ocean). Everyone loved it. Everyone was in the water. Pop and Jordan were supposed to do a younger-kids experience (aka no actual swimming with the dolphins), but Conor had trouble for some reason, yelling “I want Mommy,” so we did a last minute switch. It was fun to be with him, although hard to hold him when both he and I were in a life jacket. He liked playing with the dolphin’s ball and duck toy as much as the dolphin. Our dolphin’s name was Bala. Everyone else got to swim out and have two dolphins push on their feet to make them come out of the water… and to swim while holding onto two dolphins’ dorsal fin. We’ve also done other fun things – nice pool, played Zombie at the kids center, played in the sand, etc. The traffic was unusually bad to come out – it reminded us of the chokehold going into the Cape.