Makin’ Waves and Catchin’ Rays

Our last day in the Keys we rented a pontoon boat for the day. We rented ours from Pontoon George and I have mixed reviews about it. I mean, technically it was a boat that floated. It wasn’t anything fancy or even completely dependable… but it did the job of getting us around the islands. So, if price is your concern, go with Pontoon George – $300 for a full day rental for 7-10 people, and that’s the cheapest deal we found. But if we had to do it again, I might not go with the same company. I might splurge the extra bit for a nicer boat. You know, like one with a gas gauge… But, the boat did it’s job and we spent the day out exploring little islands all around Key Largo and we had an awesome time.

The first island we found had a little beach on it that we had seen on a map. It was pretty beat up, though. There was trash all over and we were nervous about the kids walking around on the sand because of broken glass. This was about 20 minutes after we got our questionable boat, so the day was off to a disappointing start.

Our next stop was a much cleaner beach just around the other side of the dirty beach. This one was a little smaller, but much cleaner and we dropped anchor and cranked up the music for about an hour here, spending time swimming, floating, and exploring a little bit. The kids pretended to be pirates claiming land and Danielle and I pretended to be moms who drank beer at 11:00 in the morning…

After a while, we started getting hungry and the little ham sandwiches we had thrown in the cooler that morning just didn’t seem to be doing the trick. We docked the boat at a little waterfront bar and grill called “Gilbert’s Resort,” and spent about an hour eating, getting fresh drinks, and letting the kids feed fish off the dock. It was a great little pitstop in the middle of the day. (For more information on where we ate in the Keys, check out this blog post.)

We spent the rest of the afternoon boating around, chasing green water. Anywhere the water was bright green and clear (which was pretty much everywhere) we would stop the boat and jump right in. It was a perfect, lazy day on the water and reminded me of when Chris and I were teenagers, taking out his Granddad’s pontoon for a day in the sun. Only this time, we got to see our kids playing in the water with us. Man, life is good.

Around 3:00 in the afternoon, we decided to see if we could find the canal that our rental house was on. We eventually found it and docked our boat at our boat ramp for a little bit while we all jumped in the pool to since off the saltwater. We floated around, refilled our coolers, and then headed back out to sea for the last few hours we had the boat.

By the time we brought the boat back to George, it was 5:00 in the afternoon and we had spent the entire day out on the water. We came home and showered before heading out to a sunset dinner that night at Lazy Days. It was the perfect ending to a really memorable trip with great friends, good food, and lots of sunshine. I don’t think it gets any better than that.

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To read about Day One of our Florida Keys trip, click here.

To read about Day Two of our Florida Keys trip, click here.

To read about Day Three of our Florida Keys trip, click here.

To read my restaurant reviews for our Florida Keys trip, click here.