Part of living in Cayman is wanting, from time to time, get off the island.  Its great to be able to drive at highway speeds, shop at Walmart/Macys/JCPenney/Bestbuy/etc and of course eat at McDonald’s!  Dont get me wrong, Cayman is great, but a trip abroad like this is nice.

First stop, the Everglades. We made two stops there. One for a (some what disappointing) walk and then to a place for a  “fan boat” ride and gator show/information session which was really interesting.

Here Julie was picked by the host to play with the baby crocs.

I got to hold an older one. We really enjoyed seeing/touching them. Beautiful creatures!

Here is the “fan boat”.  Goes quite fast and makes lots of noise.  Highly recommended 🙂

Crocs in a pond along the Tamiami trail that crosses the state (and everglades) from Miami to Naples on the gulf coast. There was one right near the side of the street that scared the $%^& out of us when s/he dove into the pond when we got close.

Our ride for the road trip ; a Chevy Impala. I was not thrilled when we got it, but it was a great highway cruiser and very comfortable.

Now in Naples. This place is very special to me. When I was a kid, my parents used to take my sister & I here for Christmas vacations. I remember fishing from the pier and have many great memories from this city. The picture below was from that pier ; we were lucky to see a family of dolphins the morning we were there.

Going North … now near Orlando. No, we did not go to Disney. We went … Orange picking! haha  In Canada, Julie & I and with our families would always go apple picking.  So we though that orange picking would be lots of fun.  Guess, what? I was great.  We even picked some limes, lemons and grapefruits.   Here we are in this lovely orange grove filling our large bag. We had so many that we had to make juice in the mornings at the hotels so not to waste any.

We even made a discovery : Kumquats!  They are like mini-oranges. The skin is sweet and the inside somewhat sour, but totally addictive. I had never even heard of these.

Now further up north, Atlanta! First stop, the Georgia aquarium. Built in 2005 with a 250$M donation by the founder of Home Depot, its the largest sea aquarium in the world.  It was amazing.  To give you an idea of how big the tanks are, look below.  There are some people sitting down in front of the 2ft thick acrylic window. Whale sharks (huge!!!), belugas and so many other fish, it was very impressive.

After the aquarium, off to the world of Coca-Cola. Very interesting for anyone (like myself …) who likes the stuff.  At the end of the tour and as seen below, there are 64 fountains of all the different coca-cola products around the world.  I sampled all of them of course. Some were great, but some were not even potable in my book!

Now to “The situation room”! The CNN tour is great for CNN junkies like myself. You get to see the studies and some behind the scenes stuff.  No pictures could be taken inside though. It was quite cold in Atlanta so we had to dress up.

One of our final stops on our way back to Miami : Daytona beach. I remembered that we could drive on the beach and Julie wanted to try it. It was high tide and no other cars were on the beach … its a rental car, so why not! 🙂   It was lots of fun. Probably get arrested for driving this on seven mile beach in Cayman.

In total 1654 miles (2661 km) and a great time!  Next post, the “massive” Christmas lights are up as they were last year.  Ill get some different pics and put them here probably this week-end.