If it's cold, migrate south

About a month ago, Rich and I traveled to beautiful Naples, Florida to visit some friends who had recently moved there. It was a great excuse to get away from the cold weather of central Pennsylvania, so we took full advantage and spent an entire week in the south.

The first day of the trip was one of the nicest days, so we spent it at the beach. We spent the day playing Frisbee and football and also just laying around to relax. Rich made it his project for the day to collect cool shells and decorate my arm with them. I, unknowingly, made it my project for the day to get as red as I possibly could. Thinking for some reason that the sun is far weaker in the winter, I made a conscious choice to only put sunscreen on my face. I soon learned what a horrible mistake I had made when my whole body turned red later that day. It is almost a month later and I'm just now finishing peeling.

The next couple of days were going to be a little bit on the chilly side, so we planned accordingly. We went for a long walk on the beach one of the days, stayed in to watch the inauguration another day and spent two of the days in the Everglades. Rich and I had both heard a little bit about the Everglades and were interested in checking it out. The first day, we did a 13 mile hike along side a swampy area that was absolutely filled with Alligators. We were literally walking around gators as we made our way down the path. We were all pretty calm about the whole thing until we witnessed one take off after something in the water. Those animals are deceivingly fast and active. At the end of the day we were pretty sure we must have seen at least 70 Alligators of all shapes and sizes.

On the second day in the Everglades, we decided to go Kayaking. We had found a little coffee shop that rented boats and decided to take a couple of them out for the afternoon. As it turned out, the guy who rented us the boats and got us all set up had been an employee of Outward Bound and knew some of the instructors Rich and I had. As we were getting on the water he made an Outward Bound appropriate joke about our life vests being "clipped and zipped".

The last two days were spent at the beach, including one day where we grilled ourselves a nice lunch. Rich had a great time playing Frisbee and getting in the freezing cold water. It was probably a good thing the trip was coming to an end though, because Rich's Frisbee arm was starting to get really sore. The day we left, we went for a walk in Fort Myers and had a nice seafood lunch and a tiny Brewery.

The whole week was filled with a lot of laughter and good times. We had several great home cooked meals on the balcony and we played a lot of cards. Rich and I also became pretty obsessed with the Leblanc's juicer and bought out the fruit stand to try our hand at making different juice combinations. I think our favorite ended up just being plain carrot juice. It was a really great time and we are thankfully to the Leblanc's for their wonderful hospitality.