Our Trip: Part 2 (Florida!)

After our time in Boise, we flew directly to Florida, to visit Musty's family in Vero Beach. It was a really nice trip... even if I was eaten alive by bugs. I didn't take many food pics in Florida... nothing too interesting happened on that front. Basically I ate a lot of fruit and veggies. But I do have a few neat things to share.

First, a quick review of two of the many "bars" I ate on this trip. I went to a store over in San Jose, where I don't usually shop, and selected a bunch of new bars to experiment with on the trip. Pictured are my favorite and least favorite.

I'll start with the bad news. For me and my food sensibilities, Ruth's Tropical Flax Power was just way too flax-y. I took one bite and threw the rest out. I don't know about you, but I really can't handle that flax-y flavor. I like my flax disguised in something more flavorful.

However, I loved the ProBar, which I tried in 3 flavors. They have a good amount of fat, but also lots of protein and fiber, and the fat is mostly from nuts, so not too bad. I appreciated that most ingredients were organic, and also that the emphasis was on actual whole foods, not vitamins and additives and protein powders. Very tasty, hearty, nice texture with chewy bar and big chuncks of nuts... two thumbs up. I really liked all the ProBar flavors that I tried. I don't think they are available in Santa Cruz, but I would love to try them all out! Also, and these things shouldn't really be important to me but they are, gorgeous packaging on the ProBar!!!!! So beautiful.

Now, I know this is a food blog, but I will proceed to subject you to a few non-foodie FLA pics!

This year was the first time that we have ever been back to Florida during the sea turtle nesting season!!! I was SO EXCITED! This is the time of year when the sea turtles come to the beach, in the late late night/early early morning and lay their eggs. What you see here are the amazing tracks of a lady turtle who climbed up on shore (right) and then dug a hole and laid 100-130 turtle eggs and then climbed back down into the water (far left). Those are my tracks over on the right! I was over the moon with joy.

Isn't it beautiful that these creatures steal up in the middle of the night and lay their eggs? There are 3 types of turtles who lay their eggs int his part of Florida - the Green Turtles, Leatherback Turtles, and one other one I can't remember...

Here is one of the nests. We actually met the cool people who are in charge of roping off the nests and all that. They were super nice and talked to me all about turtles and even let me look down a hole and see some of the eggs in the ground! They told me that only 1 in a 1000 sea turtles will reach maturity because of pollution, people, and predators... and also that sea turtles don't lay eggs until they are 35-40 years old. That's a long time to wait! I hope some of these little guys make it!

While we were in Florida, we also took a boat trip into the Sebastian River with Musty's awesome friend Charley & his family. It's probably my favorite thing to do in Florida. We saw lots of manatees and the air bubbles left behind from aligators slinking away into the waters. And also we saw these beatiful water lillies.

I could have posted a million pictures from our boat ride... but I'll pick just one more. This is just one picture from the beautiful, wild, verdant scenery in the Sebastian River. Florida is so beautiful!