OR That is NOT a jellyfish!

Mr. Hot Stuff was hoping to go swimming at the beach this morning, but the east winds were still blowing strongly and those blue jellyfish are actually Portuguese man-o’-war. 😳 Those are bad. I thank my Facebook friends for warning us about those. I never thought I’d crowd-source information for my personal safety while on vacation, but it’s definitely a thing in 2020!

So no beach swimming at North Miami Beach. We decided to jaunter over to a nearby little bay at Oleta River State Park and see if we could rent a kayak there, but upon arrival, found that it was too windy for them to rent, but we could rent bikes. Okay, well that sounded fun, too. So we paid the $6 entrance fee and went to rent the bikes, only to find out after filling out the liability waiver that we couldn’t rent bikes without close-toed shoes, and Mr. Hot Stuff was wearing open sandals. How deflating.

We did wander around the park a little and came across a seabird napping in one of the pavilions, a small butterfly garden trail with a few butterflies in spite of the wind, and a gorgeous little bay nicely sheltered from the choppier water. We also found a Brazilian peppercorn plant. That was cool.

I have been breathing so much better here than back in the cold, dry, Utah weather. Between the lower elevation, the humidity, and the medicine working, life is good.

We wended our way down to South Miami Beach area looking for for lunch at a Turkish restaurant. The whole area there is known for it’s art deco architecture (think Tomorrowland or Ayn Rand novels). It took us forever to find a place to park! Turns out this weekend is Art Deco Days and half the population of Miami shows up for it. Surprise!

The Turkish food was amazing and reminded us of our wonderful time in Turkey two summers ago. We definitely need to recreate some of that food at home.

We wandered through the street market and classic car show that we accidentally found. It’s funny how I’m the one who drools over cars (especially muscle cars), but Mr. Hot Stuff is the one who took the most car pictures.

After all this walking, I abruptly hit a point where my body let me know it was DONE. Fortunately it was only about a block away from the where we’d parked the car. When we got back to the hotel, I just fell asleep. The nap helped but I hope to have a good rejuvenating sleep tonight.

We found a wonderful little Columbian restaurant, MI COLUMBIA, near our hotel. When the proprietor told me that the meal I’d ordered required a little more time and passion to create, I wanted to move in next door and make her my best friend! It was all so delicious! And THEN we jaunted across the street and had some gelato. BLISS.

I’m posting the pictures from the Book of Mormon journal edition tonight. It’s the last for this week. I’m amazed at how much I got out of this week’s study. It’s like the deeper I dug, the more treasure I found! I will try to post at least a couple of times next week, covering 1 Nephi 11-15, but I don’t know how reliable my access to the internet will be. If I need to, I’ll have to catch up when we return. ❤️