leaving the tropics...

well its 7am and we are set to head out from miami and begin the epic journey back to ann arbor. i had typed up the following entry last night since we have limited access and i didnt feel like walking across the street to the sister hotel (where we 'pirate' the signal from) to get online. funny how the trip is over before i can really begin telling you all half the stories, but that's just how it goes. here's the entry from last night to hold you over:
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Well it is 12:55am on Thursday morning and we are getting ready to crash in preparation for the long journey back to ann arbor, starting around 7am this morning. Since our internet connection is inconsistent I’m typing this up ahead of time and will post it when we get home (or maybe sometime sooner).

This has definitely been a VERY eventful trip, and it will probably take a few entries to share all the stories…or at least most of them. Rest assured there will be plenty of pics as well!

Today damon and I made our way to Key Largo and were able to go snorkeling on a national park/wildlife refuge coral reef. Needless to say after last night’s crazy events I was not sure if we’d make it out there today, but we booked it down to key largo from Miami and I’m glad we made the effort…the snorkeling was amazing (even having already done so on the great barrier reef) and we saw a TON of fishes…you KNOW there had to be more fish stuff involved with this trip at some point. I took 27 pics (filled) on the underwater disposable camera, so I should hopefully have those developed and ready to share sometime soon (just reminds me how annoying regular film is, but then again I wasn’t about to put my digital in a plastic bag and try it out underwater).

We also made our way out to key west this evening and had some great seafood and visited the southernmost point (represented by a big bulkhead on the beach) of the United States. Key West is a pretty cool island, but it takes forever to get there since there is only one highway that connects all the islands/keys together (US 1).

Well that’s at least a brief summary for now…later this morning will require me to get plenty of rest and take in a lot of caffeine; more stories and pictures to come; hopefully we didn’t annoy a lot of you last night (Tuesday) when i called at least half the people we knew! Good night! <:><

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more to come when we are back in ann arbor!

here's a shot from just off the coral reef we visited yesterday...definitely an amazing time!