Florida
First time: Summer, 1995Last time: Spring, 2025
The first time I was in Florida was for my honeymoon. When Susan and I got married we took a cruise to the Bahamas that left from Florida. To be honest, I was much more excited about traveling through the Bermuda Triangle than I was about hanging out in Miami for a day. Sadly, the only thing we did in Florida on that trip was visit a time share sales pitch (which is how we got the free cruise). When the salesman discovered we could barely afford the mobile home we were currently living in, he threw us out saving everyone a bunch of time.
In the spring of 2014 we drove from Oklahoma to the Florida Keys and spent an entire week in and around that area. We have since been back a few times and have seen and done many things in the great state of Florida!
We have stayed at several hotels and resorts in Florida and they are always wonderful. It's always hot but while sipping on adult beverages underneath a palm tree, you begin to forget about it.
I believe on that same trip in 2014 we took the kids to Disneyworld. It's hard to tell who is who in this picture!
One of our favorite things to do on road trips is stop at small tourist attractions, like this convenient store "live baby gators" which they did indeed have. We bought chips, snacks, and a taxidermized alligator head which I think is still on a shelf somewhere.
On a separate trip we took a different route that took us through multiple interesting places. I got to stop and take a picture in Gulf Breeze, which was a UFO hot spot for a while and the location of the infamous Ed Walters UFO pictures. That same day we cruised through Hollywood, Florida and had lunch at Rickey's. Rickey's is the family owned bar and grill owned by Billy Mitchell and his family, made famous in the King of Kong documentary. Billy was not there and the waitstaff grumbled they couldn't remember the last time they had seen him, when asked. The most disappointing thing is that the small arcade inside the bar contained neither a Donkey Kong not a Pac-Man machine, two games Billy Mitchell is known for playing. Instead there was a Jurassic Park pinball machine and a Ms. Pac-Man cabinet.
We last visited Florida as a family in 2021. Our budget for this vacation was quite different than the first time went and had to split a meal at Burger King. We stayed in a townhouse that came with a golf kart that we coul drive down to the beach. I got to visit Ron Jon's Surf Shop, a brand I'd been familiar with since my old skateboarding days.
One of my favorite Florida memories was visiting a dolphin rescue, where injured dolphins or captive ones that cannot survive in the wild go to retire. We got the entire experience and let me tell you, once you've stood in the water face to face with a dolphin, not only will you realize how intelligent they are, but you will never want to eat one again. I also said "so long and thanks for all the fish" all day long and the staff said they had never heard that. Just kidding, they hear it every day.
My family and I have been all over Florida, including visiting the buoy that marks the southernmost tip of the continental United States. Your two options here are to stand in a line for 45 minutes just to touch it, or drive by and take a picture out the window of your car. We chose option #2.
Oh, I almost forgot! Earlier this year my wife and I stopped in Miami for a day on our way home from our anniversary cruise. One thing on my bucket list was visiting Irisphoto and getting pictures of my eyes. There are only a few locations and they can turn your eyes into artwork although all I really wanted was the digital files, which they provided. My wife and I had both of our eyes photographed and she had them printed on metal somehow and they're hanging in a four-square in our living room.
Oh, and this time we went the entire city of Miami smelled like weed. Every outdoor mall, every street corner, every restaurant. I may still have a contact high and it's been five months.
Last edited: Spring, 2025