A few weeks ago my husband and I were invited to go to a seafood festival in Everglades City, a little fishing village in the middle of nowhere in the Florida Everglades.
We arrived at our friend’s house half an hour late ( as usual ) with all the guys ( his friends) waiting for us ( oops). I was the only female in the group. My girlfriends were going to arrive a little later by car, while we took a leisurely 4 hour sail by boat.
Hubby was, of course, the last one out. He has this amazing ability to always be the late, regardless of how early he starts gettting ready and if there’s a group of girls waiting for him who took 2 hours to do their make up and hair. He’s still the one we always wait for.
We finally took off. The boat was rented by J., who I knew through a mutual friend, who happens to be my NYC best friend’s dad and lives in Naples ( small world, right?). I know it’s super complicated, but isn’t it fun how you meet people via the most random ways possible. It was docked at his amazingly gorgeous 8000 square foot house ( you’d faint if you heard the price ). As we were started sailing I couldn’t help it but took a picture of it.
The way to the gulf through the canals took only 5 minutes, but I have to say the beauty of that place always blows my mind regardless of how many time I’ve seen it. I keep trying to remind myself that I am still in the continental United States and not somewhere in the tropical waters of the Caribbean and that it’s (OMG!) where I live.
This little island right before the opening into the Gulf of Mexico is my favorite little secluded beach. The sand is so soft and it always has a layer of super hot watery sand that you can roll around in and pretend you’re getting a mud bath.
Of course, they let me steer the yacht. Ok, no, who am I kidding, it’d totally freak me out. That thing was huge. This was the interior cabin and for some reason it had some of the controls here, though the capital was upstairs in the main area where he does his “capitain-y” things. { sorry I know nothing about boating, so my vocabulary there is very limited}
After about 3 hours we finally reached the Ten Thousand Islands, an area of Everglades that is covered with little canals among mangrove trees that make up literally 10 thousand islands.
Everyone is the group was about 20-30 years older than us, since they were all buddies of my friend’s dad, but that never really bothered us, since in our business we mostly deal with people twice our age and usually find more common ground with them than some of the couples in their twenties.
The Everglades City area is really a trashy place, in my opinion, very rednecky, God’n'Guns type of town, but it was fun to visit for a day just to see all the odd people gathered for the festival.
Thankfully, one of the guys was the owner of a local resort so we spent most of our time at the clubhouse, by the pool and at restaurants.
The resort itself was really beautiful. It had this old Key West type of feel with a lot of white and tropical colors. It was a heaven for a photographer. I posted the photos of the resort on my photography blog, Selfie Magic, so go over to check them out. They will warm you up if you’re still dealing with cold temperatures.
CLICK HERE
As soon as we arrived the first thing the guys did is raid the bar, and I ran all over the place snapping pictures. I think I heard a few of them laughing at me “Does she ever stop taking pictures?”. They all loved the pictures though. They kept asking me if I’d post them on Facebook haha.
I really couldn’t stop taking pictures. The sun was in the right place for all the shots throughout the day and i just kept snapping. By the way, all the shots were taken with my 50mm lens, in manual. I love that thing and refuse to use anything else.
Eventually, we took a golf cart into town to look at what this whole Seafood festival was about. There were a ton of very bizarre people, lots of local arts and crafts.
A small fair with people actually riding those awful looking things. I never understood why one would want to go on a ride in a local fair. Seems lame and, honestly, unsafe.
When we finally found the food, I refused to eat anything since it was buffet style but most people were happily enjoying local fish. I would have loved to try it if I didn’t see all the workers handling the food out in the open with no gloves and such. Yikes! I know I might be a snob when it comes to food, but I’d rather not indulge my taste buds, than spend the night puking due to food poisoning.
When we were ready to go home, we realize someone took our golf cart, so we walked about 2-3 miles back to the resort, which was a nice small work out for the day.
When we arrived back, the other part of our group was still gone, so I took the time to do some self portraits in the beautiful settings of the resort.
Then the guys came back and demanded to be in the picture :)
We spent a few more minutes taking self portraits with hubby.
and as the sun was setting, we got ready to finally eat in a normal place with clean food :)
My two girlfriends finally arrived and took some pressure off of me being the only girl in the group. Trust me it’s tough when the attention of super roudy 50 year olds is on you.
