Today was our sorta-weekly Adventure Day! We went to Dagny Johnson Key Largo Hammock Botanical State Park. I liked this park a lot more than I expected from the photos I saw online. And it was really empty, which was lovely and peaceful.

Parks generally make me feel very small, so I tend to wear my kiddy outfits when I go. I took my froggy backpack and wore one of my favorite shortalls, and an ODU print that I like a lot.

I brought one of my stuffies today too, Gumdrop. I managed to make him a bandana before we left the house. Sometime next week I’ll get him some pins for it so it’s not so plain.

We got Starbucks on the way, since it was quite a long ride to the sandwich place where we would have lunch in Downtown Miami. And I had one of my cute snack holders with strawberry and cream gummies that I bought at The Fresh Market.

I had a breakfast sandwich for lunch. It had chorizo and cilantro and lots of cheese. I couldn’t finish it, but it was great!

I was actually a bit upset when I realized where we’d be having lunch. The last time I ate at this place was some three years ago, during one of the worst times of my life, and the experience of that entire day, and the meal itself, was a really bad memory. I felt like I just did not want to be again at a place where I had been so deeply unhappy and trying not to cry through my meal back on that awful day.

But in the end, I’m glad we did eat here, because now the bad memory is pushed away by a much happier one, and I’m looking forward to eating there again. It’s a nice place other than the music being super loud all the time.

🌳 At The Park 🌳

Cars couldn’t go into this part at all. You just parked in the little available area at the entrance. There was a place to pay for entrance, you just left the money there, as there was no one to monitor who came or went.

There were a couple of bodies of water which were very pretty and calm.

Gumdrop had fun exploring some rock formations. He even did some cave exploring!

Just some random pretty pictures…

CW: SPIDER

We didn’t see much wildlife, other than lots of tiny lizards, a random snake, some orb weavers, a beautiful big butterfly, and a tree snail. Oh, and a wild chicken. I guess we did see some stuff. Here’s one of the spiders:

I was out of my mind excited to finally see a Florida tree snail in the wild!

Oh and wasps. WASPS EVERYWHERE. I’d never seen so many in one single park. It was a little scary. I spotted three nests I believe.

I tended to walk a bit ahead or behind, just taking pictures of things. Christopher had my umbrella to shield himself from the sun, and it made things extra colorful.

All the other random photos of Gumdrop enjoying nature:

This is a trail that we really wanted to explore. But it was closed due to debris, so we just stared from a distance… 😞

I will now take a brief intermission to show you Tomoyo’s attempt to contribute while I work on this post:

Moving on…

On the other side of the park there was a stone wall that looked like something out of a fairy tale. Like it would lead you to some secret garden. In the end I only took this couple of pictures.

It was very cool looking! After a couple of hours we headed home, passing first by Wawa for snacks and drinks. Then it was a lovely evening at home, just relaxing after our fun day out. I can’t wait for next time. I’ll never get tired of park outings!