Sorry for the late post!

Sunday March 4, 2012

We woke up in Orlando, FL ready for a 6 and 1/2 hour drive to Little Torch Key, FL. Our destination is a small place named Parmer’s Resort in the Lower Keys. The drive didn’t start out exactly as we planned. Aaron wanted to stop at a CVS to get some juice (he was feeling Vitamin-C deprived). Well, we ended up driving a little out of the way, stopping at a Walgreens, then getting on the Florida Turnpike…going north. We swear we got on the ramp going to Miami. So, there is a sign that’s wrong off of I-4 in Florida. To top it off, we wasted $2.50 in toll money.

Aside: If anyone was wondering about why we haven’t posted much about food, here’s the deal. We’ll start with our road trip snacks. We picked up some dried fruit at the Village Market on Geneva Road. So we had about two pounds of dried strawberries and a pound of tart cherries. We also stopped at Costco for about three bags of sweet potato chips. Then, we got a couple bags of dried pineapple from the Health Foods Market on Geneva Road. Finally, we packed about fifteen Larabars and Justine made a massive bag of trail mix, which consisted of almonds, blistered peanuts, cashews, and semi-sweet Ghiradelli chocolate chips.

We try to stop at Starbucks because we know that they have clean bathrooms and good snack packs. Also, they tend to be near gas stations where we can kill two birds with one stone.

Back to the Florida Turnpike, it was a non-eventful drive. We saw a ton of farms and were excited to see the grass-fed cows in the pastures. It’s also a cultural shock for us to see service plazas in the middle of the tollway. We did see a cool car being towed.

The only really exciting thing was that we stopped at a Starbucks at the end of the tollway (this is just before you get on Route 1 for the Keys). We were getting ready to leave when Justine spotted Vanilla Ice. She thinks it was his look-a-like, his doppleganger, if you will. But, Aaron was pretty sure it was him. He’s seen Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II enough to know when he sees Vanilla Ice.

We then left to go south on Route 1 and see the Keys. We couldn’t believe the views and the color of the water. This drive was definitely the best so far for sightseeing.

We ended up on Little Torch Key at our hotel. It’s a very nice place to stay. It’s not a Marriott or the Hyatt. But, it’s quaint and quiet, right on the water. We think the character fits us very well.

We unpacked and decided to drive to Key West, about thirty minutes south. It took us a while to find a parking spot and we ended up putting all of our change in the meter. To quote a local, “those meters are highway robbery.” A Quarter = Ten minutes, a dime = 4 minutes, and a nickel = 2 minutes.

A short walk and we were downtown, walking through little shops. We found some Key Lime Pie, then headed to a restaurant for dinner (that’s a normal order for us, dessert, dinner). We went to Blue Heaven, which was recommended by Justine’s co-worker, Susan. We loved it! Great atmosphere and very good food.

After walking around some more, we picked up some more slices of Key Lime Pie. Yes, that’s how we roll..dessert, then dinner, then more dessert. It’s not every day that we can have authentic Key Lime Pie in Key West.

After getting back to the hotel, we decided that we didn’t want to sleep in our two twin beds with extra springy mattresses. Instead, we spent the night in the van on our memory foam topper. This really enhanced the “road trip experience.”