After a brief hiatus, a vacation-from-vacation-from-vacation, if you will, we’re back and ready for more adventures in 2009. I wish my vocabulary expanded further than “awesome,” but you can’t really teach a 32 year old dog new tricks, can you? So here’s to more awesomeness in ‘09.

What have we been up to this year? Well, you can bet we’ve been doing a lot of awesome stuff with awesome people, eating awesome food, etc, etc. We left Key West on the second day of the year, fleeing a dirty cramped RV park but sad to leave the beautiful, relaxing beaches. All in all, I give Key West 6 out of 10 stars. I’ll definitely go back to the Keys, but I don’t know if I need to go to Key West again. I might instead go to Knights Key, where we stopped for lunch to visit our new friends Bill and Dawn. They paid $20/less per night and had an uncramped waterfront spot, close to the tiki bar, with pretty dang clean bathrooms. Dawn served us fresh baked bread, coffee and fruit, and sent us on our way with black eyed peas, rice and beans. Such wonderful peeps – I know we’ll meet up with them again!

We spent the night at John Pennecamp State Park on Key Largo, a place that’s supposed to have great snorkeling, but we were too cheap to pay $24 for equipment, which is probably a good thing because it was pretty dang cold. We’ll be back? Maybe? And from there we left for Miami.

We met Mary Thomas of Miami over Thanksgiving in St. Louis; she is the aunt of Ms Carrie Christensen. We weren’t sure if we’d contact her when we got to Miami, because we hate to be pains in the butt. Butt man, are we glad we did! Mary HOOKED us UP! We got to stay in her guest quarters behind her house, which means we got to hang out with Mary for 2 whole days. She’s fun, she’s nutty, she’s a great tour guide, and she made us looove Miami.

Mary lives in Coral Gables and gave us a full history of the area; it’s basically a development that was the brainchild of George Merrick almost 100 years ago (if only developments now had the style, class and thoughtfullness that Merrick had used!). Beautiful Spanish-style houses, wide streets, lots of nature, with some fun things thrown in to keep you grounded, like a little Chinatown, or a little block of Brittany. I don’t think we ever would have gone to Coral Gables had we not stayed with Mary, and now it’s one of my most favoritist places in Florida!

After we learned everything there is to know about Coral Gables, Mary introduced us to South Beach. Actually, when we first got to Mary’s, she had a dinner party to go to and suggested that Jacob and I hang out in South Beach for the night. South Beach? Isn’t that where Lindsay Lohan parties with people way cooler than her? Isn’t the bass there always booming and the blue laser lights always lasering? We instead spent the night in Coconut Grove. But when Mary brought us to South Beach the next day, we saw what we were missing. Sure, there was bass-a-booming, but the art deco hotels are so amazing. Wait – no – awesome! She brought us to two amazing art deco hotels; the Delano, which has been totally modernized on the inside, and the National, which is art deco through and through.

Ok, I have way too many pictures of these hotels, and for the most part they’re probably boring, unless you’re into boring things like architecture and landscapes. Ha! Anyway, Mary was such a great tour guide, and we’re so happy to have such a great new friend. I wish I could remember some of the snippets that characterize Mary. Like when we saw a No Parking sign and Mary pulled right in and parked and said “No parking? That means me!” The same thing happened a little later on with a one way street. Oh! I almost forgot the happy hour Mary brought us to – the one that broke our sobriety in 2009. We went to meet Mary’s friends, who were many things, but for the most part were: 1) A ship captain & artist, 2) A witty former New Englander married to the captain and 3) A mature psychologist-flirt-know it all-fun guy. I think that explains it? Anyway, Jim, Tina and Gordon were all amazing. Thanks for breaking our sobriety, Mary, and thanks for all the fun!

[caption id="attachment_1205" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="Close-up to see the intricate details of this exquisite ship. Like the beer holder."][/caption]

Now we’re taking another vacation, this time with the Wascaluses at their timeshare in Jensen Beach. I think we’ll be here for another week or so, and since it’s vacation, I don’t know how much more writing I’ll do….for now, I’m off to the pool!

If you wanna see more pics of Miami, you can check ‘em out here…