Fort Lauderdale: DAY 8

This morning the kids and I visited Gumbo Limbo, a Sea Turtle rescue and rehabilitation facility in Boca Raton. It was a beautiful and well-maintained place that had a very helpful and informative staff, the kids and I loved it! As always, be warned there are LOTS of pictures! :)

They had some really neat tanks set up for viewing. 

This tank was desinged to resemble a sunken ship reef. There were small sharks, stingrays, huge lobsters, and all sorts of marine life in them.

We also got to see baby sea turtles as well as a few of the turtles that were in the hospital temporarily until they are well enough to be released back into the wild.

The baby in the video was 7 months old, at his full grown weight he'll weigh 300 lbs!

This was at the seahorse display.

The below picture is for the few members of our family that I knew would get a kick out of this. The display was hanging in the bathroom (!!) and titled: The Scoop on Poop. I'll let you guess what the display is of...

They also had a beautiful boardwalk with a nature trail, butterfly garden, and observation deck.

There were hundreds of fiddler crabs scurrying around in the roots of the mangrove trees. 

Jackson was exhausted after all of the walking!

Afterwards we met Drew back at the hotel and decided to attempt the beach again. It was SOOO much better than when we went over the weekend. While it was a bit overcast and windy, it was actually nice because it wasn't as hot. The kids had a blast because there was a playground right on the beach. I may be a  bit partial, but I think our beach on the Gulf Coast is soo much nicer...nicer sand, no oil tankers in the background, cleaner, less seaweed...pretty much everything ;)

Look what we found! A sea turtle nest that had been roped off for protection. The kids thought it was really neat since we just learned all about them this morning and the rehabilitation facility. 

We even found a coconut. Although we opted not to bring it home because it smelled like sour milk!

Now we're all back at the hotel (except for Drew whose at work) and are getting ready for a good night sleep. Our "journey" will be ending soon as we plan on leaving Thursday morning. Good Night!