April Vacation

This April we went to Daytona Beach, FL for our first vacation after our Honeymoon. We left on April 3rd and returned on the 8th. We stayed at a cute little hotel called the Bahama Breeze, it was so perfect.

View from our balcony

Each room in the hotel has one of these on the door.

looking down at the beach from our balcony

Our hotel from the beach

The archway leading out onto the boardwalk

On April 4th we decided just to spend the day relaxing on the beach with each other and that evening we went for a walk along the beach after eating at Crabby Joe's.

Baby seagull during our walk after dinner

The next day we waited out a small storm relaxing on our balcony overlooking the beach. After the storm passed we drove to Ponce Inlet to go see the lighthouse there and we climbed up 203 steps to the top, it is the tallest lighthouse in Florida.

The lighthouse

getting ready to walk up 203 steps

At the top of the lighthouse

April 6th we woke up and drove to Tampa, FL to see the Merchant Marines ship American Victory.

The main deck

Josh wanted to emphasize the size of the anchor, I am 5'1"

 

walking up to the ship

Josh in a gunner seat

After touring the American Victory we went to Big Cat Rescue, http://bigcatrescue.com/ . This is a very neat place to visit. The cats they have here are cats that were purchased as pets, and were either abandoned because their wild instincts took over once they were bigger or were seized due to mistreatment or owner arrest. None of the animals are touched by workers unless they are taken to the vet for medical treatment, so they have the animals perform distinct movements to check for any health problems that need to be addressed.
Some of the animals were treated so poorly that they cannot be part of the tour.

One of the first Tigers on the tour

This tiger was kept as a pet, and was found abandoned

This lioness cannot be with other lionesses, because the owner decided to have her spayed and no longer is accepted by the pride.

one of the many lynx that was actually given to a girl moving off to college but once the feline began habits that the wild animals do she gave the cat away

Caracal

Very sweet cougar, liked to pose for pictures

You can see this is a leopard

One of the other leopards at the facility

This is Jumanji, he is one that has been featured in magazines so he posed for us as we were leaving our tour.

After leaving Tampa, we went back to our hotel in Daytona and had dinner and went for a walk along the beach.

On the 7th we decided to have another beach day!!













Friday morning we packed up and hit the road after leaving Daytona we decided to stop in Jacksonville to go to the Zoo.

one of the many rainforest frogs

My favorite animal :)

The foal is about 5 months old, thought is was neat that they include the babies in the exhibits

Black Rino

Reminded both of us about Swiss family Robinson

You could get really close to the giraffes

leopard

These moneys were so cute

they were all relaxing

Really neat that the gorilla got this close to the glass

Altogether we had a great time on this trip and are getting ready to plan our next vacation together!