Vacation in the Sun - Day One

There's just no hope for this, with school bearing down on me and no end in sight to the legal work, I'm just going to have to throw the pix up on-line and do a very brief explanation.
The day after Christmas we joined M's sister and family on Marco Island, Florida. We flew into Miami and rented a car. The rental was reserved and paid for in full ahead of time and yet when we arrived they didn't have a car for us (so they claimed) and kept trying to get us to pay for an upgrade. They tried to tell us that rentals aren't guaranteed unless you pay for them in full up front. When we proved we did pay in full up front, they had nothing to say. We need to file a complaint with the BBB.

So we drove west out of Miami, which by the way, has really confusing streets. There are streets, roads, avenues, blvds. with all the same names, and east, west, north, south in front of them. So say you're on 34St N and you need to get to 8th Blvd. W, you will see 34St, 34th Ave., 8th St., 8th Ave. all while trying to find 8th Blvd. Once we got lost and looped the area a couple of times we realized avenues ran north and south, streets ran east and west, and major thoroughfares in the middle of the city were the dividing lines between north and south, and east and west. It's actually a very logical system if you know that going into it, but if you have a crappy rental car map that only shows the names of roads every 20 blocks or so, you can't see the big picture how things are laid out. That said, we eventually found our way out of Miami and drove west through Everglades National Park to get to the Gulf side of the peninsula and Marco Island.

Marco Island is a resort community for people with lots of money. I felt really out of place there. We shared a condo rental with M's sister and family that was older and not like the fancier high rises in the middle of town, and it was facing the beach. It was very comfortable and we could just pop downstairs and go to the beach at any time. I'll show you pix of it later and impress you with the beautiful beach they had there.

First, I'll show you our deep sea fishing photos. The first day we were on Marco Island we went a few miles into the Gulf on a fishing boat to try our hands at fishing. We caught tons of beautiful and a few weird looking fish. I caught my obligatory one fish with the first line I dropped and that was enough for me. I spent the rest of the time taking pictures.

While we were fishing a mama dolphin began following our boat. Initially we were full of the oohs and aahhhs at seeing a dolphin. It was even more special when her baby joined her and we could see the baby nursing from her in the water. Then we quickly realized she was following the boat to get our fish. As soon as she saw a fish on any of our lines, she dove for the fish. Next it became an adventure in fishing to see if you could reel your line in quicker than the dolphin could steal your fish. Quite funny actually. So below are the pix leaving the harbor, catching bait fish in a net on the way out and some of the fish we caught. I also included a number of shots of the dolphins. The mama has the cut off top fin, probably from getting too close to a boat's motor, and the baby is next to her in a couple of shots. The final shots are of some of the birds in the harbor when we came back. Sorry I'm not putting comments next to each photo, just no time. The next post I'll show you the condo and the beach, plus the trip through the swamp.