Our last day was also the hottest day of our week and the perfect day for spending on the beach. So we did. It was lovely! We parked at the state park, rented a couple of beach chairs and an umbrella and spend the day swimming and laying in the sun.
When we were just sunburned enough, we went to a beachfront bar just down the road from our hotel for rum runners and sunset...
Then we went out for ice cream in Lauderdale-By-the-Sea...
Sunday was our lazy sunshine-y day. Turns out it also could have been called our Iguana Day.
It started out with swimming and lazing by the pool. And iguanas...
How did we know we weren't in the PNW anymore? The worst stouts we'd ever had (we tried two different breweries and both were awful) and iguanas in the trees at breweries...
Sometimes on vacation plans change. We slept in on Saturday morning for our lazy day on the beach to wake up to rain. It poured all night while we were sleeping and it was still coming down in the morning. That made the beach seem dramatically less appealing so we came up with a plan B.
Turns out Fort Lauderdale is only a bit over 4 hours from Key West. So we gassed up the rental car and headed south. All the way south...
The guy working the visitor information desk said it couldn't be done in one day but he doesn't know how much Leingangs can drive. :)
Before driving through the Keys, we stopped for a quick bite by the water in Key Largo.
Hugh Taylor Birch State Park was on our list of things to do, but I had no idea it was smack in the middle of town across the street from the Fort Lauderdale beaches. So we drove down the road to check it out on Friday morning. Birch was the attorney for John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, Company. He took his money and went to south Florida in the 1890s, buying up beachfront property for a reported $1 per acre. He died in 1946 and donated the land for the park to the state of Florida. It ran a train for tourists until 1985.
old train tracks
Now it is a popular place for walking, running, bicycling, fishing, roller blading and picnicking.
We got off at the Las Olas stop right at the historic Stranahan House. Las Olas is a famous shopping and dining distric and we enjoyed a few yummy treats before taking the taxi back to the car while checking out the Christmas lights along the way. Unfortunately, the pictures of the lights didn't really come out well..
