Ben came to visit!

This past weekend, Ben came to visit! After flying halfway around the world from Myanmar last weekend, he decided to get on another plane 5 days later to come and see us. :)

We had a pretty low-key weekend and did lots of relaxing and just hanging out. On Saturday we went down to the Everglades and back down to Flamingo at the very bottom tip of Florida. After my bday trip through backcountry Everglades, I've been looking for an excuse to come back down and do the Florida Bay tour. So we took a little day trip as a combination celebration of the end of the schoolyear (!) and Ben being in town.

Florida Bay is part of the Everglades and makes up the body of water between the tip of mainland Florida and the Keys. We took a little hour and a half trip around the northern part of the bay and saw some gorgeous scenery, a couple manatees, and even some dolphins at the end!

Here are the pics, enjoy!

walking up to the edge of mainland Florida

looking out over beautiful Florida Bay

Flamingo Marina

We saw a couple manatees on our way out of the marina!

An osprey tearing apart a fish.

The water here was so shallow that this egret was only knee-deep, walking across the bay.

A dolphin hunting... he was swirling and darting and splashing all around after a fish or something.

Please excuse my hair, it was very windy.

haha they look like two little boys, so cute

this little guy popped his head up out of the water at the perfect time :)

The rains started moving in as we were heading back to the marina and we made it out just in time!

After the tour, we made our way back out of the Everglades through the rain. In the town of Florida City/Homestead, which is basically the very last point of civilization before you get to the Everglades, there is this huge fruit stand called Robert is Here. It stands at the very last intersection you get to when following Hwy 9336 to the entrance of Everglades National Park. We have passed it a few times and there's always been a ton of people there. Apparently they are famous for their Key Lime milkshake, which Ben wanted to try. So we stopped and got out to look around and I'm so glad we did! It was really cool and there were all kinds of exotic and tropical fruits there that I've never seen before or even heard of. Ben was familiar with a lot of them from living in Thailand and Myanmar. Everything smelled SO GOOD. They had a guy there playing live music and he played some Buffett which made the experience all that much better. :) So we picked out some yummy fruits to take home and Ben got his milkshake. (Strawberry Key Lime, sooooooooo good.) I'm glad we stopped because now I will know to stop every single time I pass it again in my Everglades travels!
(Sorry for the iPhone pics.)

the cutest baby bananas!

I forget what these are. Ask Ben!

dragon fruit... we ate most of it before we remembered to take a picture. The brightest piece of food we've ever eaten... doesn't taste nearly as sweet as it looks but still good.

After Robert is Here we headed to downtown Miami for a late lunch/early dinner. We ate at an area called Bayside, which is right on a huge marina. After lunch we crossed the bridge over to Miami Beach area, and drove up A1A to look at all the pretty scenery and architecture and all the ridiculous Miami people. Sorry, no pics of any of that.

So that's it! We had a good weekend and Ben took off for NYC on Sunday morning. See you next year Ben!