Skip to main content

Day 2 – Snorkeling and Birds

On Tuesday, we got up around 6:30 I could get ready, have breakfast, and be out the door by 7:50 AM to head over to the snorkeling place.   I was a little worried as it was raining early in the morning, but the rain stopped by 8:00 AM.    

Jim drove me to John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park and dropped me off at the snorkeling center.  He headed back to the hotel, as he doesn’t snorkel and I went on the trip by myself.  I checked in, picked up my snorkel (which you keep), mask, and fins and then waited to board the boat.  Side note, next time I’m spending the extra money and getting the dry snorkel instead of the semi-dry snorkel, so I don’t have to deal with sea water.  The boat trip out to the snorkel site was good, smooth.  They stopped at the place with the underwater Christ Redemer Statue, but the visibility was bad, so we had to go to a different location.  The location they chose was ok, but you could tell the reef wasn’t completely healthy.  Plus, after snorkeling the Great Barrier Reef in Australia and the snorkeling the Galapagos, the Floridia Keys were a bit lacking.    Don’t get me wrong, it was still a nice trip, just didn’t compare.  The funniest thing was the little girl, probably around 10 who asked the snorkeling guide if she was going to be eaten by a shark.  Valid concern.  He told her no, the reef sharks, if there are any out usually avoid people.   Overall, the trip was about 2.5 hours with an hour of snorkel time.  


Jim picked me up from the park after the trip and we grabbed some Arby’s for lunch.  I then took a quick shower to wash off the salt from the ocean before we headed out again.  Our first stop was to see Betsty the giant lobster. The we went to the bird conservation site where they rehabilitate sick and injured birds.  The birds at the conservatory are ones that could not be released to the wild because they are too injured to lead normal lives.   It was a nice little diversion.   From there we came back to the hotel and spent some time in and around the pool.  Plus, I had a slushy drink.   

We had dinner over at the “fancy” restaurant on the resort property, El Sol.  There they served me a deconstructed Ceaser Salad, while Jim got the lobster mac n’ cheese.  The food was good, a bit pricy but it is to be expected for a resort restaurant.   That concluded our day.

On Wednesday we head down to Key West for the day.  


Comments

  1. Terry and Carol5/15/2025 3:56 PM

    Nearly lost Carol when we snorkeled John Pennekamp about 50 years ago.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

2024 Year in Review and Looking Forward to 2025

This year felt a little off for me; I think it was because I was in a mental recovery mode.  I finished my graduate program in June and immediately went on a week-long vacation to Palm Springs.  I do not recommend Palm Springs in June; way too hot.  I didn’t realize it at the time, but the graduate program mentally and physically exhausted me, which I think showed in some of my creative work.  But being able to work with great people like Natalie Hanrion , Coralinx Cosplay , and Anastasia B kept me motivated.  While I didn’t attend as many Cosplay Photo Shoot events as in the past, the ones I did attend were helpful in keeping the creativity flowing.  I also took some time this year to reflect on a few things and will be making some changes for 2025. In 2024, I shot 6241 frames, which is a 30-percent decrease from last year.  I edited 3187 frames, which is a 40-percent decrease from 2023.  I think this year, I started focusing on being very min...
Post a Comment
Read more

First Session of 2025 - Queen of Hearts

My first official shoot of 2025 was with Lady Cels on January 4 th , to shoot her Queen of Hearts cosplay based off the NoFlutter Design. For this session, I used: Photography Equipment Props/Miscellaneous Cannon R6 24-105 mm Lens Transmitter/Trigger 2 Phottix Strobe 1 FJ400 Westcott Strobes 60-inch umbrella with sock 1 rectangular soft box 1 bell reflector grids 2 C-stands 1 Platypod Sandbags Backdrop stand Savage Primary Red Spyder Color Checker Card A-clamps   Gold ring wedding altar pieces Playing cards Flowers Styrofoam block Scotch tape     The set up The inspiration for this shoot was obviously the Queen of Hearts, but I took my set design cues from the original NoFlutter drawing.  I wanted to create something similar to the swirls used in the background of the image, so I started looking at wrought iron garden fences and ended up on gold we...
Post a Comment
Read more

Night Queen

On September 28th, I did a session with May.   This session’s theme was designed around a Halloween headpiece I made a couple of years ago but never got to shoot.   The vibe of the overall shoot was dark queen. For this session, I used: Photography Equipment Props/Miscellaneous Cannon R6 24-105 mm Lens Transmitter/Trigger 2 Phottix Strobe 2 rectangular soft boxes grids 2 C-stands Sandbags Backdrop stand Fuzzy grey backdrop Spyder Color Checker Card A-clamps 2 trilevel plant stands Fake candles Goblets Fake flowers Black fabric Silver fabric Large Styrofoam block Dowel Rods Skulls Fake moss Dry ice   The set up I tried to keep this setup simple in nature.  I started with the base of a fuzzy grey backdrop to which I added a “throne” made from a large Styrofoam block, some dowel rods, and a piece of black fabric.  To that I added two flower pot hol...
Post a Comment
Read more