key west!

travis and i had been talking about taking a vacation for quite some time, but with the conocophillips/phillips 66 repositioning project, we hadn't been able to plan anything for well over a year.  darlene offered us the use of her home in key west, and we decided to take her up on it.  while we've been to florida a couple of times, we had never been to the keys.  

here we are flying into the keys on thursday.

i loved going for drives ... you're always taking the scenic route.  we're headed to the house  - this is our first glimpse of the island as we left the airport.

here we are checking out our new digs for the week ...

on friday we decided to head into the big island to do some exploring and learn a little bit more about where we would be vacationing for the week.

this was the first beach we stumbled upon.  about 1/2 a mile up the road there was a larger beach with sunbathers, places to rent umbrellas, and food stands.  i love that we stumbled upon this smaller beach at first and had a little piece of history to check out.

most of our evenings were spent watching the okc thunder in the nba finals.  sounds a little lame that we spent each night in while on vacation, but we loved it!  we needed nice down time and that certainly hit the spot.

on saturday, we captured a few more pictures of where we were staying.  this is our cozy little bedroom with a sunny bath attached and the luscious, welcoming entrance to the house (which leads right into the bedroom).

we headed into key west where it started to storm just a little bit.  the rain quickly cleared, and we found a place to park the car.  after driving down by the water and seeing a few of the boats, we headed to the hemingway house. 

we spent a lot of time exploring the grounds and gardens and then did a little exploring and shopping in town.
on the way back to the house we ran across a gorgeous rainbow.  we followed it all across the islands.

on sunday, we wanted to explore another beach we found on a different island, so we hopped in the car with the intent of finding a large beach umbrella and a few beach towels.  it ended up taking over an hour!  everywhere we went didn't carry beach umbrellas.  finally, several islands later, we found some in a walgreens.  you'll notice that the only pictures you'll see below are pictures of us driving around.  we never made it to the beach.  we got to the entrance and the car died.  yep, you heard me right -- it went kapoot.  we managed to get it pushed out of the way, and after waiting about 20 minutes, the car started again.  i had googled the problem and other owners of the car mentioned this happens sometimes and the car would likely restart.  we spent the rest of the afternoon going about 7 miles, watching the car die, waiting for 20 - 40 minutes and then it would restart. this lasted for several hours.  we finally made it about a mile from the house when it died for the last time (we called roadside assistance a couple of times, but each time we got them on the line, the car would restart).  once we were so close to the house, we decided to just push it home. there was a guy out cleaning his boat and a sweet lady stopped and asked him to help us, "that little girl is pushing that car -- can you help them?"  his response, "they seem to be doing okay."  i couldn't believe it!  we definitely weren't in oklahoma anymore.  we only made it part of the way and had to stop. poor travis.  i know he was doing the bulk of the work when it came to pushing.  finally, we got it home, called a cab, and headed into key west with just enough time to pick up a car from the airport before they closed. (we were literally the last pick-up of the day, and they were only open for another ten minutes when the shuttle arrived to pick us up). after we got the car, we found the closest papa johns, grabbed  a couple of pizzas and headed home to relax in front of the t.v. with a finals game after a long, hot day.

monday was probably one of my favorite days of the week.  we purchased an excursion that included a full day out on the water. we took a boat out well into the ocean.  our destination?  a fun playground at sea.  we were able to ride jet skis (my absolute favorite part of the trip.  i couldn't wipe the smile off my face), "rock climb" and slide into the ocean, and parasail.  i had also never been parasailing before, and that was such a great time as well.  i kept thinking i would get butterflies in my stomach like i do on roller coasters or even the ferris wheel, but i didn't.  it was completely relaxing the entire time.

the last part of the excursion for the day was snorkeling.  we went to a second destination for that.  the water was really choppy from all the wind, and floating out in it while trying to snorkel made me incredibly sea sick.  we headed back in to the boat, and i felt bad for making travis head back early.  turns out we didn't head back in as early as i thought.  we had just gotten aboard and started toweling off when they sounded the horn to call in the rest of the snorkelers.

travis's favorite part of the day was just being out on the water.  he would love nothing more than to live on a sailboat. 

our excursion also included a sunset cruise with an all-inclusive meal, but it was to be several hours later that day and we were both pretty tired from a day at sea.  we decided to take a rain check on the sunset cruise and just do it another night.  we grabbed a pretzel from a local with handmade pretzels, pretzel dogs, and their own sauces {yum}.  we walked around the dock for a while and then finally decided we were tired and wanted to head back to the house.

hanging out at home was rough, let me tell you ...

we called it a night kind of early and spent the evening reading.  and then travis got a little camera crazy and started taking silly pictures of me.  i love that we can have so much fun together doing absolutely nothing.

i didn't capture any photos with the camera on tuesday.  a couple of pictures above look like they have fog around the edges of them -- the humidity started causing condensation within the lens.  we packed the camera away somewhere nice and dry to avoid ruining our new camera.  we had planned to do a day at the beach (the one we didn't get to explore due to car trouble) and also take our sunset cruise ... but it ended up raining all day long, so we grabbed lunch at a local restaurant, explored a little more of key west in the pouring rain (in our cheapy ponchos), grabbed key lime pie, and then headed back to the house to watch movies.

we had to head back to oklahoma on wednesday.  here we are bidding adieu for the last time.  see you soon islands!  we had a great time!! 
 

thanks darlene, for letting us stay at your beautiful key west cottage. we couldn't have asked for a better time!  i can't wait to travel with my favorite guy again.   i love when we take trips together.

thanks for such a wonderful birthday, travis.  i love you!