Christmas Vacation--In Chunks

Since I'm back to being busy with school and work, I'm going to try and recount my trip in a few posts. Let's start, shall we?

Day 1, Saturday: We awoke very early to pack the van and hit the road. I'm pretty impressed with my boyfriend's family's new van, the Honda Odyssey. Unlike my van, it has a lot of trunk space, and we all fit with all the crap pretty nicely. I can fit in most any vehicle nicely, seeing as I sit like a pretzel, but that's beside the point. We drove and drove, hitting traffic only south of Hot-lanta (Atlanta). We stopped in Ocala (Florida) for the night after driving 15 1/2 hours (with meal breaks, driver switches/potty stops). A good first day of traveling, for sure!

Sadly, it was dark when we reached Florida, so no awesome pictures of us with the sign. Such is life.

Day 2, Sunday: Started out with DENSE fog. Quarter mile visibility, lame! We made it through, and were planning on stopping in Ft. Lauderdale to meet up with my boyfriend's dad at Sam's Club (we needed to stock up on food for 18 people!). Last minute, our plans changed, and we were headed to a Sam's Club in Miami. This is where the trip down turned ugly. Somehow, streets and avenues were transposed, and we found ourselves in Little Havana. I assure you, there is no Sam's Club in Little Havana. It took us a long time to figure out this mistake, but with the help of Walgreen's and my brother at home, we managed to find where we needed to be. It was a crappy few hours, but since that was the worst part of the whole vacation, I'm glad it happened early!Awesome building somewhere in Miami. It was interesting to see Miami and the very apparent different culture.

After stocking up on the supplies, we got on the road. At this point, we had a Tom-Tom navigation system (given to us by my boyfriend's aunt's nephew, co0nfused yet?), and the navigation lady was pretty fierce. We missed a turn, and she starts insisting we "turn around as soon as possible" and "make a u-turn now". We ignored her and ended up where we needed to be anyway. We stayed on roughly the middle key (Marathon Key) at the Indigo Reef Resort. It's a fairly new (less than a year) resort with "timeshare" type condos. We had 3 in a row, and it was very awesome. The first several days we pretty much had the whole place to ourselves...until after Christmas. Everyone showed up to the condos around the same time, and it was a relief to be able to shower and change out of my "road clothes". Dinner was had, wine and beer were drunk, and everyone hit the hay pretty early.

This trip was the first time I saw the ocean, and my one of my boyfriend's brothers was kind enough to have a photoshoot of my first time seeing the ocean. Coming up--the first time I touched the ocean.