Women – I don’t think I will ever understand them.
At home Karen is always wanting the heating turned up. But on holiday give her some air con controls and she always try to turn them down as low as possible. In the early hours of today I woke up freezing. Goodness knows what the temperature was set at coupled with the room fan on full meant there was a real chill factor being blown over me.
Anyhow, this morning we decided to go to Key Largo to visit the John Pennekamp State Park. It cost the 3 of us $9.50 between us to gain access to the park. We were planning to hire kayaks, but as I had never been in one before I decided to see if I could physically get in and out of one. With the restricted bend I have in my legs and my back problems I struggle sometimes with things like this. Not very gracefully I eventually eased myself and out. It also felt reasonably comfortable on my back.
So, we paid for 2 kayaks for 2 hours. Karen was planning to have a wander and find a coffee. We were then soon on the water. It was not however a pretty start. Although I had no problem balancing, I seemed to have no control on direction whatsoever. It was quite a tight manoeuvre to get out of the dock and I was pleased there was only Karen watching. After a few minutes, my brain got engaged with what was needed and I was able to head off in the right direction. After about 10 minutes I actually felt comfortable and started to really enjoy drifting along.
We followed a trail through the mangroves. It was very calm and peaceful. Of course Neil wanted to turn it into a race and a couple of times seemed to ram the side of my kayak for the fun of it.
After about 45 minutes I could start to feel my back starting to complain and I could feel muscles in my arms that I obviously don’t use to often despite my best gym efforts. All too soon we made our way back to the dock far more confidently than we left.
Karen was patiently waiting for us and despite not being able to find a coffee seemed quite relieved to see us back safely. We made up for it by taking her to a Starbucks drive through whilst on route to Publix to buy some lunch.
We decided to have some time back at the Pool before heading out to Anne’s Beach to go into the sea. This was about 20 miles away and again a favourite from previous visits. However when we arrived the entrance was closed as the beach, walkways, and structures had all been lost in Hurricane Irma the previous year. We stopped and looked at what was left in disbelief and kicking ourselves that we hadn’t checked before we set out. There had been so little other damage that we could see that it hadn’t crossed our minds to do so. So with our tail between our legs we set back for Ocean Pointe and went and sat by the sea there for a hour instead. The water didn’t look appealing enough though for us to want to go in.
After some debate we decided as it was a lovely clear day to go back to the Lorelei restaurant to eat and see the sunset again. This time the sunset was much better, but Karen didn’t enjoy her club sandwich and Neil was actually cold as for some reason where we sat was in a wind tunnel. There was also a really weird magician trying to do his act whilst everyone ate watching the sunset.
Once it was dark we returned back to the apartment and whilst I wrote the blog, Neil watched some baseball and Karen did some chores in preparation for moving day tomorrow.
