Ever since completing our “quest” in the Summer of 2023, I’ve been thinking about the purpose of this blog and had a couple of ideas… If the people who follow us are looking for ideas of “how” to put together an itinerary for visiting multiple states in a rather short period of time, we’ve covered that by writing 8 separate itineraries that detail how we typically went about doing that. We’ve also written 7 different articles that give travel tips, advice and opinions about traveling as a family as well. These articles have all been written because of questions we’ve gotten about these topics.
So where do we go from here? Do we get rid of the blog? Do we end the blog and just let it stay alive on the internet for new people who may come across it? Or do we adapt and change the purpose of the blog, the same way our travel goals have changed ever since completing our quest? I think we’re going to go with the latter…
Ever since finishing our family quest, my wife and I still travel each Summer, however, the purpose behind our trips has changed in a very major way. Our trips are now about US! We’re seeing and experiencing things that we want to see and experience, but without our two adult sons with us! Last Summer (2024) was the first time we traveled without our boys and it was definitely “weird!” We flew down to Florida and had an amazing “couples vacation”! We had an absolute blast traveling for the first time in over 20 years without our kids with us! However, we knew we’d feel bad for leaving them behind, so after a week, we flew the boys down to meet us and we spent the last few days of our trip at theme parks doing the things that they love! We admit it… we needed to wean ourselves off of traveling as a family and sort of work our way into simply traveling and doing things as a couple again. This was good for all 4 of us because wifey and I now have a much clearer vision of how we want to navigate life moving forward, and more importantly, our boys have a much greater appreciation of what they’ve experienced and understand the work they need to do to achieve their own personal goals and dreams.
With all of that said, I believe our posts moving forward (albeit less frequently) will be “deeper dives” into states that we’ve already visited, but now focused more on giving ideas of things you can do and experience without your kids with you! For example, this Summer (2025) my wife and I made a trip to Florida… again… but we had SOOO many new experiences that we NEVER would have thought to do with our kids with us! It was an amazing adventure for both of us! So here we go!
Our first trip this Summer was all about South Florida and the Florida Keys! This all came about because one of our (my wife and I) major goals is to visit all 63 US National Parks. Prior to this trip we had visited 30 of the 63 of them, however, Florida has 3 National Parks and one of them is only accessible through a ferry ride from Key West. So that one-single park (Dry Tortugas) was the impetus of our entire trip! Side note… We’ve wanted to revisit Key West for over 20 years now. We visited briefly on our honeymoon back in 2001. For our honeymoon we did a 4-day cruise from Miami that made a stop in Key West and Cozumel before returning to Miami, then we flew over to Nassau Bahamas for a week-long stay at their Sandals resort. Anyways, when setting up this trip, I had always heard of the iconic Florida Keys Scenic Highway that has the “7 Mile Bridge”, and I always thought that was pretty cool when seeing it in movies and in photos. I decided, rather than flying directly into Key West, why not just fly into Miami and then experience this drive about 3.5 hours further south to Key West?! So we did it! We then spent 4 days in Key West, and in doing that, we revisited many of the places we did on our honeymoon!
While in Key West, we first visited Dry Tortugas National Park and that was amazing! It was about a 2 and a half hour ferry ride on the Yankee Freedom from Key West and once we arrived, we had about 4 hours to explore the island. Most of what is considered to be part of the national park is Fort Jefferson. Fort Jefferson is a former U.S. military coastal fortress. It’s the largest brick masonry structure in the Americas, covering 16 acres and constructed of over 16 million bricks. The craziest part about this place is that it never ended up being used in battle! Anyways, there are some really good snorkeling spots as well right there outside of the fort, so we had plenty of time to do that as well before jumping back onto the ferry back to Key West. This was our 31st National Park visited!
The next day in Key West we knocked off an absolute lifetime bucket list item… SKYDIVING!!! Yes, we went through Skydive Key West and it left us with a memory that will NEVER BE FORGOTTEN! It was soooo different from what we both thought going into it (in a good way), and we’re both extremely happy that we finally did it! The instructors were fantastic and made us feel completely safe throughout the entire experience! If you want, you can check out my Facebook post and video about it HERE for full details. Fun Fact… when we got back home from this trip, we watched the movie “Drop Zone”… this was a 1994 film about Skydiving with Wesley Snipes starring in it… turns out much of this movie was actually filmed right here at this exact location!
After a couple more days in Key West, we drove the Florida Keys Scenic Highway back north to one of our timeshare locations in the Miami area and stayed there for a little over a week. Here’s a few images from some of the places we wined and dined in Key West…
While in Miami, here are some of our other adventures that may pique your interest…
- The Jungle Queen Riverboat Sightseeing Cruise of Fort Lauderdale
- On this 90-minute cruise, we saw some of the most amazing (and expensive) homes in all of Fort Lauderdale! Mostly big-time business owners and entrepreneurs. Afterwards we checked out the Riverwalk Fort Lauderdale and had dinner at Del Frisco’s Grille. This place was GREAT and honestly had the best chicken sandwich I’ve ever had! Our waitress (Jackie) was phenomenal as well!
- Everglades National Park
- Here, we went on an airboat tour of the Everglades Safari Park and got the chance to see some amazing wildlife! From the alligators, to the cranes, snakes and turtles… this place was yet another amazing treasure in our country that deserves to stay protected and funded! This was our 32nd National Park visited!
- Little Havana Food & Walking Tour
- This was a fantastic day as we learned a lot about Cuban culture in this part of Miami! Lots of delicious food & drink on this tour, including… empanadas… Cuban coffee… we saw how Cuban cigars are made… Cuban sandwiches, mojitos, pastelitos, mango smoothies and churros! I exercise all year so that I can enjoy things like this in the Summertime!
- Key Largo Mangrove Kayak Tunnel Adventure
- We wanted to spend a day in Key Largo and figured what better to do than go kayaking through the mangroves! We didn’t see any manatees, but it was still a lot of fun!
- Biscayne National Park
- We had a great time snorkeling here! Our guide (Nico) was very knowledgeable and took us to some prime locations! This was our 33rd National Park visited!
- Official Miami Millionaires Sightseeing Cruise
- Yes, we did another sightseeing cruise (of Miami this time), and saw the homes of many celebrities. After that we rented a yacht and spent just a little more time on the water before ending our trip on a relaxing note!
If you enjoy this blog and want to keep up with our future travels, give our Facebook page Quest for 50 States a follow! That will most likely be updated more frequently than this blog moving forward!
Quest for 50 states 