Today was just a day for the books. It began early, around 7 am, and it is just wrapping up around 10:30 pm.
Our hotel breakfast was a little better this day -- we had waffles, eggs, donuts, and yogurt. My shirt was very wrinkled this morning so I turned on the shower to steam the wrinkles out. Ricky sent me on to go ahead and start making breakfast while he finished packing up our luggage. After about 10 minutes, I texted him and asked if he was okay. It was taking far longer than I thought it should have and I was getting concerned that he was either 1. Not okay and needed help or 2. Wasting time watching TV. :) He replied back with a text that simply told me "Had an emergency. Set off fire alarm." Upon seeing this, I busted out laughing and replied back with ????? He came into the breakfast room just a few short minutes later. He explained that the steamy shower made the room so incredibly hot that it set off the fire alarm. He said that it was extremely loud. He showed me how he was running around the room with a towel fanning the smoke detector and wiping the water from the floor. It took several minutes but the alarm did finally turn itself off. Ricky said he threw water in his hair and threw stuff into the shower so he could at least pretend that he was in a steamy hot shower that set the alarm off. Pure hilarity people! At least the fire truck didn't show up and at least the front office didn't show up at our door, right? Wrong my friend. Well, kind of wrong. The fire truck did not show up (seriously, how embarrassing would that be?!) but when I checked us out, the receptionist said "We got a fire alarm alert in your room this morning." My face turned 50 shades of red in a short 3 second time frame. What should I say? Should I deny knowing about it? Should I nod my head and tell the truth? Should I reply back in Spanish to say that I don't speak English? I decided to stick with my husband's story... Kind of. I told her that I was aware because my husband was running the shower while he finished packing and the steam must have set it off. She looked at me skeptically but said okay and got me checked out. I am just waiting for the charge on my credit card for this false alarm.
After we got all checked out, we headed out on the open road. No more tolls, whoohoo! We headed into the Florida Keys and we drove all the way to Key West. The drive was beautiful! There were gorgeous houses, trees, and water views. It took a while, but we finally arrived in Key West.
Upon entering Key West, we drove around to see the town. We took some pictures and hung out some in the city. They have a very interesting wild animal in the keys. Squirrels? Nope. Birds? Kind of. Seagulls like a normal beach? Well yes, but not what I was looking for. There are tons and tons of... Wild chickens! Yes, friends. Wild chickens. We saw several wild roosters (who had surprising manners by not crowing all day!), wild hens, and wild chicks. I immediately thought of our 2nd grade chicks! I teach 2nd grade and each year, we study the life cycle of a chicken. We begin this unit by incubating & hatching chickens. Check out the picture of the chicken crossing the road. Haha!!
One extremely, terrible, horrible, awful thing did happen. We were about to turn onto the rods to head to Higgs Beach and we saw a cute little chicken family walking across the street. They were stopped in the middle of the road and making a lot of noise. We looked over and realized that two of the babies has been run over! The poor mama hen was trying to drag her babies out of the road. It was heartbreaking. I don't know what happened with this family, but I do know that this was about the saddest thing I've ever seen.
We went to Higgs Beach next. This is a public beach access. We dropped off our towels/keys/glasses. We sprayed ourselves down with sunscreen, grabbed our snorkel gear, and we were off! We saw literally hundreds fish ind the ocean! There were gray fish, striped yellow fish, tropical tiny blue fish, long rainbow fish, sea urchins, and more. It was absolutely amazing. You just have no idea about the creatures you are literally swimming with every time you are in the ocean. Granted, we did have to go out in deeper water, but it still wasn't far from where everyone else was hanging out in the water. My goggles were a little too loose so my sweet husband wrapped his legs around the sea wall and tried to tighten them. This will be important information later. While we was doing that, I held on to the top of the sea wall. A few moments later, Ricky said "oh my gosh what happened to your hand?!" I looked down and there was a small gash and two little cuts on my left hand and also a small cut on my right hand. Dang! They are small, but the gash did produce some blood. No big deal, right?
After several hours, I told Ricky we should back to go back and get our waterproof camera so we could get some pictures of the beautiful fish. He did this (he left me in the water because he said I swam too slow... Whatever!) but by the time he came back, the sky was completely black. We quickly swam back to the sea wall, but the water was so incredibly choppy that we were swallowing a lot on the way. A storm was coming! The water was so cloudy that we were barely able to see, much less take a picture of the gorgeous fish. Bummer! We did get one blurry picture, whoohoo! You'll have to wait for pictures once I get home and can upload them from my waterproof camera. This is also a good time to mention that we won't be able to publish any blogs from our cruise ship while we are still on the cruise. Because of no internet/no cell service on the boat, I will be typing all the blogs daily (hopefully) but not publishing until we are back in 'Merica.
Once we snapped a few photos of the fish, we started to swim back to shore. About the time we reached the shore, the bottom fell out and whoosh! It started to pour down raining. We ran to the shower to rinse our feet (although now that seems silly!) and dashed to the car. We jumped in giggling. I've always said that the best time to get rained on is when you are already wet, right? Then you don't mind getting your hair wet. The only problem was that the ocean water was about 75 degrees and the rain was probably in the 60s. It was freezing!
After we made it to the car, we drove around to see the city a little more. It was a quick storm so after our sight seeing adventure, we headed back to the beach. Right before we left, I decided it would be a good idea to jump off the pier at the beach. Kids and adults had been jumping off all day so why not? I excitedly ran over to the pier and siked myself up. This was going to be fun and awesome! I could already feel the joy bubbling up. I was about to rock this pier! Then a disaster happened. I ran to the edge and prepared to jump. There was a small ledge to clear and apparently I did not do that. I felt the pain surge in my left big toe begin to spread to my whole foot. My jump now felt like it was in slow motion. All I could think about was the massive pain in my foot. I felt like my body flipped over but after I looked at the pictures, I realized that this wasn't true. I held my breath and I thought... Oh my gosh... I am going to drown. I am going to hit my head on the bottom of the ocean and I am going to drown. When I went below the surface of the water, I knew I was going to make it back to the top. I pushed myself off and torpedoed back to the surface. Gasping for breath, I searched the pier for Ricky. "Amy, Amy, oh my gosh are you okay? Are you okay? Amy, are you okay???" I picked my foot up and all I saw was blood. Was my toe still attached? Yes. Thank goodness. Where was all this blood coming from? I found the gash under my toe. Ouch. "Yes I am fine." I yelled up. The pain shot through my foot. All I could think was please, please, please don't let there be any hungry sharks in the water. Please don't let them mistake my bloody toe for a yummy meal. I don't want to be eaten by a creature that I love so much. I climbed out and made my way to the dock to stop the bleeding. My heart was pounding. Ricky ran over and said that I hit my foot so hard that it sounded like a hammer hitting the wood. He said he was afraid I had either broken my foot or that I was going to drown. Thank God it was not any worse.
On our way back to our hotel, we stopped for some shave ice. We were reminded of our Hawaiian honeymoon! It was deliciously tasty!
Remember when I talked about Ricky wrapping his legs around that sea wall? Tonight, he is all broken out where his legs touched those barnacles! What a mess. We are some accident prone people.
We will update again soon and hopefully we won't have any more accidents in our stories!
Au Revoir!
Amy & Ricky
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