Vacation - June 4, 2008

Well Katie and I got back from vacation last night. We left on Wednesday of last week, flying to Miami via Atlanta, then driving through the Florida Keys in a rental car to the Eden House on Key West. The Eden House is I guess more of a "traditional" hotel, in the sense that it's kind of built like a big old house. Check out some of the pictures at that link for a feel of what it looks like.

The hotel is located in sort of the residential side of Old Town, which is within about 5 blocks of the main drag (Duval St.), so we just walked everywhere we cared to go. It was pretty fun to just get up in the morning and then wander around to find a place to eat, wander back and hang out at the pool for a while before maybe deciding to wander out somewhere for lunch, hitting the happy hour around the pool from 4-5pm, then getting cleaned up and wandering out for dinner somewhere. We did a pretty good amount of walking, which was good, as it helped to combat all the wander-eating we did. The restaurant we ate at on the first night advertised "free pickles for pregnant women," which Katie happily took advantage of.

That's mostly what we did, with the exception of a snorkeling excursion on Saturday. Now for some pictures. If you want to look at the whole set, click on any of these and then you can page through them on picasaweb.

This is obviously the pool, viewed from close to where our room was, on the second floor of the main house. I've constructed a noodle raft for myself here.

There are random chickens and cats that live on the island, just walkin' around being chickens and cats. This one is hanging out next to our table at a little outdoor fish sandwich place.

Just hangin' out. Showing a little man-scaping while smoking a cigar, and snuggling up with my beautiful wife.

Visiting the southernmost point in the continental U.S. I've also been to the southernmost point in the whole country, which is in Hawaii.

For the drive back to Miami, the rental car company didn't have a compact car available for us, so I got to drive back in this convertible Mustang. Not bad, eh?

The return travel took a long time, as we got stuck in Chicago's O'Hare airport for most of the day this Tuesday, dealing with a canceled flight and a delay on the flight on which we were re-booked. We eventually did make it home at about 9:30pm after picking up a stinky Chewie at the breeder's house. It was very apparent that he had been outside playing with dogs all week!

Now it's Wednesday, and we're getting back into a routine. Chewie has had a bath, and I ran today for the first time in weeks, hoping I started soon enough to be ready for the 5K road race at the Miami University reunion weekend on the 14th. I ran the distance today, but was not too pleased with my time, so I have to bring that down in the next week and a half if I want to have any chance of hanging with Adam.

Hopefully we'll get another update in this weekend, perhaps with some pictures from the Villas at Timber Run early release party. Assuming we make it through the rest of this week!