Well, we dodged a week’s worth of rain deluge and got incredibly lucky with an awesome day for the Brawley Butterflies Indian Princess Tribe 2nd annual Virginia Creeper Trail Trip.

I only hope the girls had as much fun as the Dads .  Come along with us…

A quick break from the vacation videos (I have one or two more) to put up one from Allison’s 9th birthday party which we had last night.  Enjoy.

We left the island this morning . It was fun but time for the next adventure. We are going to brave the reported all-day lines at the new “Wizarding World of Harry Potter” at Universal Studios tomorrow. Then a long drive home on Friday.

Here’s one more video – one from the alligator farm. I’ll try to put together a few more over the next several days.

Happy Birthday Allison – 9 today! You can’t imagine how much I love you.

Allison chose “The Shark Hole” for our main activity today. A spot I found a few years ago where we can catch snapper but, also, some pretty good sized lemon sharks like to prowl along the edge of the flats. This was a 5 footer we caught in about 2 feet of water – quite a battle.

Michael got about a four footer and we landed one more as well. A very successful shark hunt.

We also got a good sized jack and a bunch of snapper.

Before all this, we went to The Hungry Tarpon for lunch and fed the giant fish at Robbies – again all Allison’s request for her birthday. A very happy day indeed.

Finally, this is allison’s barracuda she caught on the dock behind the house we are renting.

Back to my favorite dinner spot here – Lorelei on the beach for one last relaxing meal and sunset. This place – even more than the fishing – kind of defines Islamorada for me. It’s just a little piece of Heaven.

Tonight was something special too. Due to all the rain we had today, the whole sky lit on fire just after sunset. This picture has not been enhanced in any way. It’s taken with the small camera so it’s not the best resolution, but you get the idea. Really wish I’d brought the real camera tonight. This was one of those photographer’s moments and I missed it. Oh well, we have the memories…

Yesterday we took another break from all-day fishing and did the classic South Florida tourist activity – went to an alligator farm and rode an airboat through the Everglades. For a cheesy tourist attraction, it was actually quite entertaining.

The guy who did the alligator wrestling and feeding was a local college student who was very good and made the show fun.

That alligator is in no-way tame or docile. He really had to stay on his toes to keep from getting grabbed as the thing was constantly snapping and lurching at him.

Our air-boat ride was equally fun. We got a great driver who really played it up and did a great job soaking all of us with water while spinning 360s through the swamp. Great fun.

All in all a great time and something for the kids to file in the “National Lampoon Vacation” box (I have plenty in mine, including a trip to a place just like this one

Today we went for Dolphin of a different color – the fish. We actually ran into a few of the mammals too as you’ll see in the video but the real target was the fish.

We’ve been very lucky with pretty calm weather since we’ve been here but the wind is supposed to kick up and we hadn’t had any dolphin luck yet so we went out one last time today to try. Right after we got out to the deep water the wind started to rise which brought the seas up to about 3ft. Not really dangerous as my boat is 18′ long, but can be uncomfortable running with my flat-bottomed flats boat (not really designed for the ocean).

Since we were already out we were okay but we couldn’t run around much if we didn’t find fish quickly. Luckily, we hit a school about 30 seconds after we put the lines in the water and a couple hours and 25 fish later, we decided to go ahead and head in as the ocean was turning to whitecaps. That may be our last chance in the ocean this trip so I’m glad it was so successful.

Here is the video of the dolphin trip. Now we’re off to see if we can catch a late season tarpon…

On day three we decided to take a break from the full-day sun and visited the Dolphin Research Center – a place we first visited when Michael was only 2 1/2. This time, both kids got to go into the water with the dolphins and interact with them. I’ve attempted another video upload but I’m pretty sure the iPad is dumbing down the quality. Let me know if it’s tolerable.

Video is here.

Day two brought more calm weather so we went snorkeling at Alligator reef (a popular spot a few miles into the ocean) and then some fishing at our “Shark Hole”. Only one small shark but lots of snapper and even a needlefish or two.

I also think maybe I’ve figured out how to put up videos but I think the quality might be horrible.

Here is the first day video and here is the snorkeling. Please let me know if they work and if the quality is terrible or not.

Well, it doesn’t appear that I can get videos up with only my iPad connected to the web. Too bad cuz I got to try out my new little pocket video recorder today. Very handy for on the boat fishing as I can just reach into my pocket and its ready to go in seconds. It even goes underwater! I tried that a little bit while Michael was catching a fish today but plan to really try it out tomorrow snorkeling on the reef.

We tried for dolphin today but found none so we had lunch at one of our favorite spots on the water and then headed to the “snapper hole”. We got a variety of stuff there but nothing too terribly exciting. Tomorrow we will try dolphin again, snorkel on the reef and then see where we go from there.

(oops, it also appears that portrait pictures don’t work…)