Family Fun in the Florida Keys

The kids loved swimming with the Dolphins at the Dolphin Research Center in Marathon. We enjoyed fantastic adventure dives on the Thunderbolt wreck and easy reef dives for juniors and beginners. Everyone enjoyed the excellent seafood, and the day trip to Key West was a fun shopping adventure.

Quick Tips:

For dolphins, definitely go to the Dolphin Research Center. The best snorkeling (in the US) is at Looe Key off Big Pine. Expect to spend a lot of money at the Hawk's Cay Resort, but you get what you pay for.

Best Way To Get Around:

You definitely need a car.

The resort has several large pools, each with a different theme. The kids played on the "pirate ship" with slides and water cannons. The quite adult pool gave the grown ups a break with poolside beverage service. The saltwater lagoon and the large family pool were big hits.

The resort offers extensive activities that will fill your vacation with adventure and luxury. We enjoyed kayaks for touring around the island. The Scuba Center offered first rate service to a variety of interesting dive sites. Many in our group also enjoyed parasailing and many other activities.

My wife and I enjoyed the tennis courts, which are very well maintained. We were able to walk onto a court whenever we wanted with no additional charges. The kids were happy at the pool while we enjoyed ourselves on the nearby courts.

We signed up for the meal plan that included free breakfast every morning. The extensive buffet satisfied the kids with French toast and pancakes, the hearty eaters with eggs Benedict and the standard breakfast fare, and the selection of fresh fruits and healthy foods kept the diet conscious happy too. I would, however, suggest eating lunch and dinner elsewhere.

The one downside of the resort was the cost. Plan on spending 40% of your room rate per day for expenses on the resort for diving, parasailing, and other activities. If you do not plan for this expense, you will miss out on a lot of the fun. The price tag definitely opened our eyes, but we did feel that we received reasonable value for the money we spent.

In short, the Hawk’s Cay Resort provided a top notch family vacation for a top notch price.

You would be very lucky to stumble on this unique restaurant on your own. Fortunately, friends of ours took us there some time ago, and we could not wait to go back.

The restaurant dining area sits on a patio that is located directly on the beach. We always buy light sticks at the nearby World Wide Sportsman and the children love to play games with them on the beach.

The menu offers a wide selection of delicious local seafood, and other entrees are available for land lovers. This restaurant serves the best seafood I have experienced in the Keys and the setting is truly ideal. The kids run and play on the beach with swarms of other children, and they stop by their table only briefly to wolf down their tasty fish fingers from the surprisingly reasonable children's menu. This restaurant is a must for family vacationers.

The Looe Key Reef offers probably the best snorkeling in the continental United States. The reef lies about three miles from Big Pine Key in a National Wildlife Preserve. No fishing or collecting is allowed in the reserve and the fish populations clearly show this.

I have been lucky enough to snorkel with kids in the Bahamas and throughout the Keys, and I have never seen anything like Looe Key. Channels about 20' deep run between reef structures that rise to within five feet of the surface. The center of the reef is quite shallow and it provides shelter from the waves for a calm snorkeling environment.

Huge schools of sergeant majors and yellowtail will swarm around you if you shake the shrimp out of the seaweed that floats by in the gentle current. We saw large grouper, nurse sharks, baracuda, queen angels, huge queen parrotfish, and a myriad of other reef species. Tarpon and permit cruised languidly through the channels that cut dramatically between the reef structures.

We did a lot of research for operators to take our party of 15 out to the reef, and Strike Zone Charters was clearly the best. They provided quality equipment on a clean safe boat with excellent safety procedures and a highly knowledgeable crew.

If you want to go snorkeling, definitely make the drive down to Big Pine Key. The reefs around Hawk's Cay are pretty, but they are not protected so you will not see as many interesting fish.

Everyone truly enjoyed the dolphin splash program at the Dolphin Research Center. With a modest cost of $75 per person, there is no better way to get in the water with live dolphins. The $75 ticket includes your all day admission to the park.

Here is the inside secret. Reservations for the program are available in advance, but they fill up several weeks in advance. But they reserve twelve spots for "walk in" customers. To get these, you have to arrive at about 8:20 in the morning. They will tell you they open at 8:30 and a large crowd shows up fast. If you get there at 8:20, you can get a spot with no advance reservation.

I would not recommend the program that lets you swim with the dolphins, because it is short, very highly structured, and more than twice as expensive.

Families can get great value because young children can go in the arms of an adult at no additional charge. Our three-year-old was moved by the experience.

After several days of fun in the ocean, we were all ready for a change of pace. We left the Hawk's Cay resort early for a day of shopping and fun in Key West. We drove down US 1 to the Southwest end of the island where a monument marks the Southern Most Point in the United States. It's easy to find; you just go south until you can go any farther.

After a quick family picture we walked down Duval Street which offers many interesting shops and galleries that you will never find in a mall. Go all the way to Kino Square and check out the Kino's sandal factory. For $8 a pair, you can get a cool pair of handmade leather flip flops that they have made in the same location for decades. We bought a pair for everyone in the family and they quickly become our favorite shoes.

Engage the locals who walk down the street with small exhibits. Our favorite was the "Key West Bird Dog", which was a colorful parrot perched on top of a large dog. Others include snakes, trained cats, and other bizarre sites. Tip a dollar or two and the kids will have a lot of fun.

Food and margaritas will lure you at just about every corner. In the middle of our afternoon, Mother Nature treated us to a sun shower that turned into a bright downpour. Nobody seemed to care much about getting wet. We ended our day on the sunset dock and watched a spectacular display over the water in a serene and interesting setting.

You will definitely enjoy a day of shopping and walking in Key West.