"once in a while, you get shown the light. In the strangest of places, if you look at it right"
Woke up Wednesday morning, chugged my quart of water and took a shower while the crew slept. Wandered over to the Starbucks at Capt Pips to get caffeine for the ladies and myself. Made my way back to the room and started the post about the day before. That's when my phone started blowing up. A bunch of texts from fam & friends telling us how lucky we were for leaving when we did. All air traffic was at a standstill that morning. Once everyone woke we threw on the tv and watched all the talking heads tell us about the debacle. Whilst that was on we consumed our coffees, packed our gear and stuffed it all in the spacious convertible mustang. Made our way over to Porky's BBQ for breakfast.
So, here's the deal with Porky's BBQ. Skip it. Without major details, it wasn't the best. There's no need to put out yelp or google review about it. All I'll say is if you're in the Keys, find somewhere else.
That being said, post breakfast we made our way to the Dolphin Research Center in Grassy Key. We had booked a dolphin encounter for the missus, Andie & the Cannonball. Someone had to be on picture duty so I stayed on land to film and watch. We arrived about a hour before the encounter and were able to take some time to enjoy the facility. If you are down in the Keys and have any interest, I would highly highly recommend it. There were tortoise, sea lions, birds on top of the dolphins. We chatted with the staff. It really was a great time. The 3 who did the dolphin encounter were enamored with the experience, and it was a blast for me to watch it all unfold. The whole encounter was an hour long in the pool for the 3. Again I would highly recommend it.
Post dolphin, we jumped back into the car and boogied to our final destination. The Galleon Resort in Key West. None of us had ever done the drive like I said in the previous post, so this was pretty awesome. Lotta loud music off the playlist I had been building for the months during planning. Was able to check off the 7 mile bridge on my list of to-do. Made it to the Galleon, dropped the 3 off and went to dump the rental & grab provisions.
Back to the room w/ the essentials. Had a decompression drink and we started our walk. Made our way from the hotel to Duval. Talk about going back 20+ years in time!!! Hard to explain the time warp I felt. We stopped at a few shops but started the adventure at Capt Tony's. Obligatory tourist stop. Got the ladies the cup to bring home. The Cannonball and I worked on our foosball skills and decided we'd take a stroll and see what else was going on while the ladies were working on the punches.
Made our way back and we all moseyed on down the street. The hunger of the day was setting in so we hit Fogarty's for dinner. Started w/ some conch fritters & peel and eat shrimp. Our mains were:a blackened shrimp wrap, the shrimp & bacon sandwich and a couple dolphin sandwiches. Everything was great.The Cannonball couldn't stop raving about his shrimp & bacon sandwich, I don't blame him, it was as good as it looked. Post dinner we made our way back to the resort to just chill for the night after a long day. Spent the evening in the pool & hot tub.
