Danger is Our Middle Name

For all of you who know me, I'm not a huge nature person. I've only been camping once. I slept in the car. I don't go "hiking" or whatever they call it. Who knows what snakes or spiders are lurking around the corner preparing to pounce on me. No thanks. I choose life. BUT, for those of you who have been trying to Naturize me from the beginning, you will be very proud of me.

This weekend Zack and I drove to Vero Beach where my cousin Melissa and her fiance Ricky live. Meliss and I grew up being about an hour and 40 minutes away from each other, Philadelphia to Avalon. NOW, we both moved to Florida, and live an hour and 40 minutes from each other. Cool, right? SO anyways, we had an AWESOME weekend with them.

We woke up Saturday morning and started our day with a Panera Jalapeno & Chedder bagel breakfast sandwich. MMM! Then we decided to make a few stops before we hit the beach. WELL. You can only imagine what we saw. First, we saw like 4 or 5 pelicans dive bombing the water. THAT was cool. Those things have beaks like Pinocchio times a thousand. It's crazy. THEN, as we were driving over a bridge, over a little river, we TOTALLY saw our first Floridian alligator!! Jeesh. Talk about frightening. This thing was enormous and I swear I saw "Alli for lunch" written across his devilish eyes. Either that or "Alli for Munch".. My eyes are bad. Two minutes after that we walked a little upstream and saw MANATEES. What?? I know... A manatee and an alligator all within five minutes of each other?? It's true, friends and family. I cannot tell a lie. Google image those things, because they are just AWESOME.

The sun was getting high in the sky at this point so we decided to tear ourselves away from all the wildlife and get our butts to the beach. It was absolutely amazing. Sitting in the sun, watching the waves, feeling the breeze. Mmmmm, heaven. After taking a swim and seeing a man in a go-cart with helicopter blades fly over us (literally), we decided to take a stroll down to the pier. At the pier we saw a sea turtle (Libby you would have died) and even more manatees. They were SO CUTE, in an.. ugly sorta way.

Here's where it gets dangerous.... Vero Beach is known for having the most shark infested waters of Florida. And yes. Dang straight. I swam in it. Who's proud??? Okay, I may or may not have found that out at dinner time, after the swim. But hey, details shmetails. I feel like I could start my own show on the Discovery Channel or something. And THEN, on the drive home we saw a wild boar feasting on the side of the road. Icing on the cake I tell ya!

So anyways, I hope you all had a great weekend, and enjoy your Manic Monday!

Meliss and I on the beach