I love discovering new hobbies. Even more, I love finding little adventurous experiences not far from home. Both of these loves defined my day trip to the Florida Keys a couple of weeks ago.
Different from another time when I took a day trip to the Florida Keys, I finally went paddleboarding for the first time on this trip! With my experienced paddleboarding friend Meli, we rented paddleboards and explored mangroves and even a tiny island.
All in all, this was a perfect little getaway day trip and now I can’t wait to paddle board again!
I am incredibly grateful for my friend, Dasha, who visited me immediately after I moved to Miami. She flew in from Denver and, as always, was ready to explore and go on adventures with me. So of course we had to take advantage of my proximity to the Florida Keys!
I visited the Florida Keys back in the summer of 2016 when my then-New Zealand boyfriend, Jono, and I traveled there via New Orleans. We had a great time exploring the food, kayaking the mangroves, and checking out beaches in the area. Dasha and I sort of mirrored this experience with a little slice of each of these experiences.
We kayaked a new section of the mangroves, revisited a beach I wanted to spend more time at, and ate a heaping pile of seafood! We did all this in about a half-day experience after a late start to our trip. All in all, I can't believe that day-trips to the Florida Keys are part of my life now! So awesome!
Who knew tracking down manatees in a mangrove maze would be so mind-blowing? (I promise that's the only bit of alliteration in this post)
One day in the Florida Keys, Jono and I decided to kayak the mangroves around Islamorada. Two maps were handed to us and we were off. Confident in both our navigational abilities and physical abilities to take us around, we did not anticipate the amount of effort we were about to put into this trip.
In the end, we learned that when other people lay out a path for us, it's not always the clearest one to follow!
In travel or in life, there is a plus side to every failure. That is the lesson I learned from my failed attempts to see alligators with Jono while visiting the Florida Everglades.
This post has 4 failures describing why I did not get to see any alligators in southern Florida. Some of the reasons were beyond my control while others were absolutely my fault.
If your mission is to see alligators, make sure you do not do what I did and learn from my mistakes!
You can go snorkeling in the Florida Keys and have a great time—or you can royally mess up the experience. I did a bit of both. Along the way, I learned what to do and what not to do the hard way.
Follow my tips in this post and you won't make the same mistakes I did. You'll even learn a little trick I learned to get a really cheap boat ride turned snorkeling experience unlike any other!
I went to the Florida Keys to dive the shipwrecks. It's almost the entire reason I went, so it's a good thing I was able to visit 3 different wrecks during my stay.
Since Jono and I were only there for a week, we decided to concentrate our attention on one part of the over 100-mile archipelago. An important part of our planning was picking the optimal location to dive the most shipwrecks. This put us diving off of Key Largo, an excellent decision! But it also meant we missed 5 other shipwrecks found off the coast of the Keys.
This guide will help you decide which ones to see and which ones to skip.
Plans don't always work out—and sometimes that's okay! When the alternative is possibly getting electrocuted underwater, almost any alternative seems preferable.
When your plan goes awry, I find it's best to try to enjoy the moment for what it is because, sometimes, the unexpected can occur. You end up having an amazing time!
This is what happened on my 29th birthday this year. I traveled to the Florida Keys with Jono specifically to go diving. We were all set on the boat for our first dive when a massive storm hit. Instead of getting upset, I sat back, took in the excitement of the storm, and spotted the next best thing in the distance: A pod of dolphins heading straight for us!
Many people visit the Florida Keys each year in order to take advantage of its beaches. The many beach options up and down the over 100-mile Overseas Highway can get pretty overwhelming. That's why I've decided to map out where all the beaches are and help visitors decide which ones would be best to focus on.
For example, some Keys beaches are free and some charge a fee. You may need to balance the experience you'll get with the cost or even the time it will take to drive there.
Whatever the struggle, this post provides details on all the beaches, including my experiences with the ones I visited and a map to locate each one!
