Theater of the Sea (Islamorada)

We had chartered a snorkeling excursion with KeyZ Charters for our Wednesday morning in the Florida Keys, but unfortunately the weather was too windy for snorkeling that day. I was not surprised when Captain Samantha called to tell me the charter would need to be canceled. Although we had been looking forward to snorkeling in the Islamorada area (Alligator Reef and Alligator Lighthouse and Cheeca Rocks), it was obvious that snorkeling would not be very satisfying on that morning. I appreciated Captain Samantha recognizing that and proactively refunding the charter. Even though we did not get to participate in this excursion, I'd recommend KeyZ Charters to anyone interested in snorkeling in the Islamorada area.

Knowing that the weather was not ideal for snorkeling during most of the week we were in the Florida Keys, we had thought out some "Plan B" options to consider. For this day, we decided to visit the Theater of the Sea in Islamorada (the town in which we had rented a house for the week).

As soon as the cancelation of the Islamorada snorkeling charter was confirmed, we purchased tickets for Theater of the Sea online. The General Admission ticket, at the time of our visit, included access to five shows/ride that were offered in the same rotation that one could join at anytime. Seeing all five requires approximately 2 1/2 hours. The five shows/ride were the Fish and Reptile Tour, the Parrot Show, the Dolphin Show, the Sea Lion Show, and the Bottomless Boat Ride. I'll cover each of these briefly in the order in which we participated in them.

We did not arrive at the park when it opened, but the rotating schedule of shows allowed us to easily join the next show to start after our arrival.

The first show we saw was the Dolphin Show.

The dolphins were the stars, but the trainers were entertaining too.

The next show we watched was the Sea Lion Show.

Sea lions are always entertaining and these and their trainer did not disappoint.

The Bottomless Boat Ride is shorter than the shows, but provides a different perspective. The passengers all sit on narrow outside portions of the boat and the center of the boat does not have a bottom. This allows marine mammals to swim and jump in the middle of the boat (though the dolphins did most of their showing off jumping behind, in front of, and alongside the boat).

The Fish and Reptile Tour allowed us to see and hear about select turtles, sharks, rays, and crocodilians living at Theater of the Sea.

The Parrot Show showed off the intelligence and training of several highly entertaining birds.

These birds were beautiful and smart!

After participating in all five shows/rides, we had some time before our scheduled additional Animal Interaction that we had scheduled.

We spent some of that time walking through and looking at the lush vegetation.

We also looked at some of the exhibits such as the fish, turtle, and parrots.

We had purchased an additional Animal Interaction for which we were supposed to meet at the park's Lagoon Beach. We therefore snorkeled at this Lagoon Beach for our remaining time until our Animal Interaction start time.

Lagoon Beach offers a small sandy beach that allows for people to sit or walk in the water as though at a regular beach.

Fish food is available for sale and that food makes it easy to get the fish to come close to the people feeding them.

The beach activity was far greater than the snorkeling activity while we were there, which meant that the visibility in the water for snorkeling was reduced.

Our Animal Interaction session was the final one of the day and Lagoon Beach (which closes earlier than the rest of the park) closed while we were involved in that session. When we exited the session and walked by Lagoon Beach, the water visibility was fantastic because the beach-goers had left.

We had purchased the additional "Swim with the Rays" animal interaction, which was described this way, "Graceful, gentle and fascinating to watch… Experience the thrill of swimming with southern stingrays! Feed, touch, and swim with these docile, beautiful creatures. You will be able to interact with the stingrays in shallow water on a sandy beach. While snorkeling you will be able to observe many types of tropical fish – without going to the reef!"

Other Animal Interactions available at that time included "Swim with the Sharks", "Dolphin Interactions", "Sea Lion Interactions", "Meet the Sea Turtle", "Meet the Alligator", and "Meet the Parrots".

We were given a short introduction to how to feed the rays, which was made more entertaining by a bird trying to sneak some of the food we were going to feed the rays.

We sat in the water and allowed the rays (one of which was huge and heavy!) to come to us holding the food below the surface of the water so that the rays could glide over our hands and eat the food in our hands. As we moved further into the water, the rays could swim onto our laps.

After we had fed the rays, we were able to swim and snorkel alongside them. We also got to swim in and snorkel with the next-door nurse sharks. It was a unique and memorable experience for all of us and well worth the additional fees.

Theater of the Sea photography staff were present for the portion of the animal interaction in which we fed the rays and we purchased the photographs they took of our interactions with the rays. This was nice to have this availability of photographs because we were too busy feeding the rays and swimming and snorkeling with rays and then with sharks to remember to use the GoPro.

It was another great day in the Florida Keys despite our best-laid plans being foiled by the breezy weather.

Dolphin Research Center (Marathon)

We left a few days open during our planning for our first trip to the Florida Keys to allow for a potential chartering of a Looe Key snorkeling trip. The Looe Key snorkeling trip never occurred because the weather wasn't great for snorkeling that week, but this did allow us to visit the Dolphin Research Center.

An unsurprising benefit of the Dolphin Research Center is the proximity to dolphins.

The Dolphin Research Center provides photographs and names of the dolphins in the park and on their website.

General Admission at Dolphin Research Center includes access to the ground and various sessions and presentations that are held every 30 minutes.

In addition to General Admission, visitors can purchase small group "programs" to supplement their visit.

The additional programs that can be purchased include (at time of this writing): Dolphin Encounter, Family Dolphin Splash, Ultimate Trainer for the Day, VIP Experience, Researcher Experience, Play with the Dolphin, Meet the Dolphin, and Paint with a Dolphin. For those who want to connect with the dolphins remotely, a Zoom with a Dolphin program is offered.

We elected to pay the additional fee for the Meet the Dolphin program.

Because cameras are not allowed in this program's activity area, I did not participate so that I could take photographs of the other five in our party meeting the dolphins.

Nearly everything other than the admission area and theater at the Dolphin Research Center is outside.

Much of the research center facility is water, but there are interesting things to see on land at the research center.

We enjoyed several hours at Dolphin Research Center. It was a fun and interesting day.

On that day, while in Marathon, we were able to purchase a card for our digital camera at Walgreens and enjoy lunch at 7 Mile Grille.

Kayaking Mangroves at Robbie's of Islamorada

When we decided to take our first trip to the Florida Keys, the one person in our party of six who had been there before recommended kayaking through the mangroves. We did not prearrange that excursion, however, because we knew we'd be staying in Islamorada very close to Robbie's of Islamorada, from which we planned to rent kayaks. Fortunately, that plan worked out well.

For our group of six we rented four kayaks, two double kayaks and two single kayaks. Robbie's of Islamorada provides two different recommended kayak routes with one in the bay and one on the ocean side (Indian Key).

Because we intended to kayak through the mangroves, we opted for the bay route.

In some places, the mangrove tunnel got relatively tight.

In other places, it was more spread out.

There were curves to make it even more interesting.

In some locations the mangroves provided welcome shade.

After exiting the mangroves to reenter the bay, the vegetation and some kind of jellyfish under the water's surface are highly visible in the clear water.

It's a scenic route back to Robbie's.

Because we were staying in a rental house very close to Robbie's of Islamorada, we decided to head to the house to shower and eat dinner. Afterward, we were in the mood for some key lime pie, but the places we had planned to go for it were closed either for the evening or because of COVID-19. We decided to return to Robbie's of Islamorada to have some key lime pie at the Hungry Tarpon restaurant.

We enjoyed eating on the restaurant's patio near the bay and marina. Between the six of us, we ordered two slices of key lime pie, three slices of mango key lime pie, and a slice of cheesecake. Everyone happily enjoyed their dessert while sitting on the Hungry Tarpon's outdoor patio next to the marina.

We had read about and seen videos of the famous feeding of the tarpons at Robbie's of Islamorada before our trip. This well-known Florida Keys activity is located next to the Hungry Tarpon, so we tried that next. We purchased the bucket of smaller fish to feed the tarpons and went out onto the dock.

To feed the tarpons, one simply lies down or crouches down on the dock, holds the fish as bait above the water and the large tarpons jump out of the water and gobble up the offered fish.

There were numerous birds of the docks waiting to steal fish from the unsuspecting people. These birds would try to eat the bait fish out of the buckets people had and out of their hands if they weren't watching. We saw a bird steal one out of a kid's hand as the kid was getting ready to feed the tarpon.

The employees were pretty good about getting the birds to leave the dock, but they'd just go to the piering and then come back. When people in our party tried to shoo the birds away, the birds didn't seem to care.

I thought watching the birds' antics was almost as much fun as feading the tarpon.

Conclusion

Kayaking through the mangroves was everything we had hoped for and was a fun family activity. We also enjoyed Robbie's of Islamorada, eating key lime pie at the Hungry Tarpon, and feeding the tarpons (and sometime opportunistic birds).

One of the perks of lodging in Islamorada was the convenience of going to Robbie's of Islamorada during the week.