After a morning at Myakka park, I was ready to get in the water!
Kayaking was on the schedule next. This would be my 2nd adventure on the 3rd day of my Gulf Coast trip. I was excited to experience what Sarasota Bay had to offer in the way of mangroves!
This time I would get to be physically distant by not socially distant. My friend was coming in from Orlando to join me on this adventure. We indulged in much-needed friend time while remaining responsible outdoors and with masks.
The mangroves in Sarasota Bay turned out to be the best I’ve ever experienced! We had an amazing time exploring them and having some wonderful laughs as friends.
I love it when travel activities fall into my lap unexpectedly. By sheer circumstance, I stumbled across Rainbow Springs State Park. This park has some of the most gorgeous crystal clear, aqua blue water I’ve ever seen!
Only a 2 minute drive from my Airbnb, I decided to spend my morning exploring the park. I thought I might check it out by kayak but the chilly air of the morning and a tight schedule led me to hiking the park instead.
I had no idea I’d end up enjoying this park as much as I did. Sometimes the best travel moments happen without prior planning!
I thought I might stop posting since I am all out of travel content. Then I thought about how everyone is going through the same thing right now. Every traveler is stuck at home. So how are we getting through this life without travel?
In this post, I share some of the little adventures I take locally around Miami. I take my kayak out. I go for walks through an absolutely stunning Jungle forest. I cook from home. Sometimes I meet up with a friend for a socially distant hang out. Other times, I just hop online for some family bonding time inside a virtual, post-apocalyptic video game world.
Here’s a look at two parks I’ve explored as I’ve been staying local during 5 months of quarantine!
Sometimes we just need to get away! Taking care of your mental health is so important especially when locked down in quarantine during a global pandemic. I decided to do just that for my birthday a few weeks ago—and it was so wonderful!
I decided to spend my quarantine birthday in a tiny house North of Miami. I took a short drive there from my South Florida residence so I could try out this living experience for a few days.
I was also interested in checking out a nearby wildlife reserve. I had my inflatable kayak with me. I was ready to spot some manatees and view the blue glow of bioluminescent plankton in the water at night.
I managed to experience all of this and so much more during my tiny house stay in July. Read on for the full story!
Society has changed drastically in only a few short weeks. We all now need to reduce our contact with other people in order to “flatten the curve,” or lessen the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In this moment, I am focused on protecting my mental health and encouraging others to do the same. We can do this by eating healthy, going for walks, or socializing with friends and family over WhatsApp video. These are some of the things I have been doing recently to stay centered and healthy.
But I also realized early on that this situation is completely conducive to my solo travel lifestyle. Solo adventuring is not canceled! Nature is not canceled! And kayaking with manatees is definitely not canceled! In this post, I tell my story about hitting the water less than 2 weeks ago to socialize with manatees instead of people.
I am incredibly grateful for my friend, Dasha, who visited me immediately after I moved to Miami. She flew in from Denver and, as always, was ready to explore and go on adventures with me. So of course we had to take advantage of my proximity to the Florida Keys!
I visited the Florida Keys back in the summer of 2016 when my then-New Zealand boyfriend, Jono, and I traveled there via New Orleans. We had a great time exploring the food, kayaking the mangroves, and checking out beaches in the area. Dasha and I sort of mirrored this experience with a little slice of each of these experiences.
We kayaked a new section of the mangroves, revisited a beach I wanted to spend more time at, and ate a heaping pile of seafood! We did all this in about a half-day experience after a late start to our trip. All in all, I can't believe that day-trips to the Florida Keys are part of my life now! So awesome!
Who knew tracking down manatees in a mangrove maze would be so mind-blowing? (I promise that's the only bit of alliteration in this post)
One day in the Florida Keys, Jono and I decided to kayak the mangroves around Islamorada. Two maps were handed to us and we were off. Confident in both our navigational abilities and physical abilities to take us around, we did not anticipate the amount of effort we were about to put into this trip.
In the end, we learned that when other people lay out a path for us, it's not always the clearest one to follow!
