We got to Miami really late after seeing the manatees (sidenote Miami drivers are INSANE!) and drove to Biscayne National Park the next morning (we stayed in Homestead so it was maybe 20 minutes to the park? Super close!). This was the week after that HUGE cold front had gone through the country right before Christmas, which...had some major consequences. Remember how Congaree was all frozen and flooded?
Well, Biscayne was just barely above freezing. I exaggerate, I exaggerate, but the weather was about 15-20 degrees cooler than it normally is, which makes a really big difference when you've paid over 1k to book a snorkeling trip for the day.
We hung out around the visitor's center until it was time for our boat to leave, but there is honestly not much to do at Biscayne unless you are on a boat!
I had decided to just splurge on the snorkeling trip thinking that it was likely the only time we would visit Biscayne, and then when we got there they suggested that we also rent wetsuits because it was "a little chillier than usual." So we did (I'd purchased full wetsuits for the little boys months before our trip in what felt like an excess of caution).
When we were en route to the snorkel site, the captain casually mentioned that it was "pretty chilly" and that she would take a vote when we got back on the boat as to whether we wanted to go to the second snorkel site or whether we wanted to do an island visit. She also said that it was pretty choppy so instead of going to a coral reef as our first site and a shipwreck as our second, we would be going to an area with a lot of little baby fish. At this point I was starting to feel pretty annoyed about how much we'd spent on this one excusion.
And then we got into the water and it was like a full body ice bath. Just instant headache, shaking so hard--it was awful. It was almost bearable if you swam REALLY hard and got your heart rate up (and remember, I had been getting in a pool at 5 am when the air temperature was in the 50s...so yeah, this was really cold even for me). It was absolutely unbearable for Matthew, who started screaming and his whole body locked rigidly around my torso. Just screaming screaming screaming, Luke and Juliet and Nathan were shaking so hard and climbed out and back onto the boat almost immediately--Neil pried Matthew off me and took him back to the boat where Juliet said she'd watch him.
(Above is Abigail, below is Abigail, Neil, and Isaac's knee. My hands were shaking so hard that I kept pushing the wrong button on my phone--I ended up with a million 15-second videos that I thought were photos, hence the crappy quality of all of these.)
I think this is a dead squid but it was the most exciting thing I saw (not being sarcastic, I was really excited). Neil and Abigail saw an enormous crab but I missed that (I'd already turned to take Isaac back in to the boat bc he was super cold and I was worried about the other kids).
We were snorkeling along this stone beach; in the picture below you can see the bright vests we all had to wear so that boats wouldn't hit us (the rental gear guy said "remember all those insane Miami drivers I'm sure you saw? Out here they're on boats and even worse").
It really was beautiful though!
Swimming back to the boat with Isaac--snorkeling was so beautiful and fascinating but I was both really cold and really anxious about the kids on the boat, so I kept popping up and checking on them (they were all huddled on the sundeck trying to get warm).
Then the captain took a vote and poor Neil was the only one who wanted to keep snorkeling (I asked the boat captain how many people had taken the second snorkeling trip this week and she said zero, which again was so frustrating to me, at least tell us that before we board!) so we went to Boca Chita Key.
There was a very gorgeous old lighthouse there which had been built by the original owner when he wanted to signal to his friends in Miami to come over and party, but...he built it in the wrong place and they couldn't see it. Sounds like a genius.
Apparently, there used to be wild parties out there (including shooting off the cannon and bringing elephants over) but his wife died in an accident and then he quit partying. And now the park service owns it and people come to dock their boats there. (You can camp there, but it honestly doesn't look like a very fun place to camp.)
The perks of being with the park people--they have the keys for the lighthouse, so we got to explore it and check out the view from the top.
The marine biologist who was on our boat (she was narrating everything which I loved!) told us that she always checks out the view from the top of the lighthouse and has seen schools of stingrays swimming through this channel and various sharks, but no such luck the day we were there--she said it was too cold. :-( I KNOW RIGHT?!
Fortunately the kids loved the key, Nathan told me tonight as I was writing this that it's one of his favorite things we did. So I'm glad they enjoyed it so much!!
With about ten minutes to go before our boat left, we wandered over to the little swimming beach and saw this fun guy (thankfully washed up and not wrapped around someone's arm!).
The shells were AMAZING!!! I so wish we had more time here, this was the coolest thing I think we saw all day.
Just handfuls of coral everywhere.
Sometimes the whole "take nothing but photographs" thing is easier than others, I was so bummed to put this handful back but put it back we did!
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