Kayaking at Sunset in The Florida Keys

I really love kayaking, and canoeing…  When I was younger, my parents took my siblings and I on a camping trip with a bunch of friends and families from my brother's little league baseball team.  We went canoeing down the Peace River here in Florida, and we camped along its banks for a few nights.  I have great memories from that trip, especially because it was an awesome family vacation, one that we took while my father was still alive.  I was pretty enthusiastic about managing the canoe paddle, even when we were steering through rough waters full of lingering alligators!  So, many years later, it's no wonder that I fell in love with kayaking so easily.  I would love to go on another canoeing/camping trip, but for now I'll settle for kayaking through the waters of The Florida Keys whenever I visit my uncle.

The last time I took out his kayaks was with my brother.  In fact, it was that same day that my aunt wanted to come with us and we all got into a discussion about how nice it would be to have a third kayak (and ideally, perhaps more) so that we could go out in bigger groups.  Well, by the end of the night my aunt and uncle (who have a strong sibling competition going on) were already trolling Craigslist for kayak listings, arguing over who would pay for it.  My family is crazy, but they are pretty awesome. Anyway, flash forward a few months, I've been notified by my uncle that he finally picked up one of the kayaks that they hunted down.  My aunt likes to joke that it's her kayak, but we have yet to make the trip back down to The Keys to take it for a spin.  

All that is to say that the next kayaking adventure will include a party of three.  Back to the actual point of this post, which is the amazing sunset that my brother and I witnessed that day while making our way out to the ocean.  When we finally paddled around the last corner of the canal, the view took my breath away! Suffice it to say we stopped paddling at the mouth of the canal and just stared.  I'll admit, I got a bit emotional because all I could think of was my father and how much he would have loved to be with us at that very moment.  I know he was with us, just not physically.  I leave you with these beautiful photos that I cautiously took with my iPhone (I say cautiously because I am a notorious bull in a china shop, and clumsy, and I've already lost an iPhone to my pool).  But alas, the phone did not slip from my anxiety-ridden fingertips into the seemingly magnetic water surrounding me, so rejoice and enjoy…

P.S. I'll be resuming my travel posts this week.  Catch up on all those here!

Catherine

    

Beer?  Check!  Ready, set, go!

    

Don't mind me, I'm always fascinated by the sky...

Trying to make it out to the ocean before the sun sinks below the horizon...

Almost there...

Sigh…  Just in time!

The lightly rippled glassy surface of the ocean was hypnotizing!

At this point, one or two photos was not nearly enough...

No doubt, I was definitely longing for my good camera at that moment!

We sat in our kayaks for quite a while watching the sun go down and gazing around at the incredible sky, the stacked clouds, the flying pelicans and seagulls...

And then we spotted another kayaker passing by...

This was, by far, one of the most peaceful and emotional moments in nature that I have ever experienced in my life, and there have been many!

Watching the other kayaker paddle in from the open sea with the setting sun at his back was a pretty nice sight too...

And just like that, from one split second to the next, the sun was gone…

Luckily, the sun puts on a spectacular farewell gig that lasts long after its departure ;)

(All images in this post are the original photographs of the author of this blog. Do not copy or reuse any images on this site without written consent from www.InspireBohemia.com)