Gwen + Justin Jan and Feb

A busy and surprisingly snowy start of the year with lots of work business for us both, and then a little Florida vacation for SCUBA diving and wildlife in the Everglades!

It was nice coming back home from New York and having a lot of snow on the ground! Since I moved to the DMV area in 2016, I think this has to be the snowiest year so far. The Virginia birds seemed confused, and they all flocked to our feeder, bringing dozens of birds at once into our backyard. Our heating bill probably went up a measurable amount because of me cracking the door open to take pictures of the little guys outside in the snow while staying warm and not scaring them off.

Some pictures from the backyard:

Dark-eyed Junco

Eastern Bluebird

Mourning Dove

Our first break from our busy back-to-work season was Gwen’s SCUBA class and my refresher class. I hadn’t dove in at least 8 years, and Gwen was urged by her friend Maddie to go on a trip! Gwen had a rough time in the pool. Her ‘dive partner’ was 12 and during the blind dive skill, the girl led Gwen straight into her brother, who flipper kicked Gwen right in the face. For me, it was nice to get back in the water, though 30 minutes in the public pool with a mask on just showed me how gross the bottom of these things are.

This was also a month with lots of back and forths to Maryland for book club, D&D, whiskey tasting at Sagamore, and seeing Hans Zimmer in concert. Hans was maybe the longest concert I’ve ever been to, a huge spectacle compared to any other orchestra concert we’ve been to. Also the only arena orchestra concert I’ve been to. He was wonderfully awkward on stage, and it really didn’t seem like anybody on stage knew what weird stories he was going to bring up. The confidence to just say whatever is on his mind in front of thousands of fans was also weirdly endearing. Of course, the music was great with full medleys from Dune, Pirates, Gladiator, and my favorite of his- Interstellar. The other people we went with didn’t like that they brought an aerial silks person during Interstellar, but I thought it was fun and space-y.

In January, we made trips to Patuxent and Occoquan for birding to try and get some nice pictures in the snow. Thrushes, white-throated sparrows, and of course ducks were in huge numbers. Occoquan NWF was a bit spooky though- once we were close to the nice blind they have there which lets you get closer to the Ospreys, we started hearing lots of gunfire from duck hunters. I hate this idea that hunting and conservation go hand-in-hand. They want wildlife conservation so there will always be animals to kill. I want wildlife conservation so the animals we share this planet with have space to live. Gladly, thousands and thousands of ducks- ring-necked, scaups, buffleheads, hooded mergansers, canvasbacks, and probably more, lined the other side of the bay, filling this neck of the Potomac with countless bobbing duck heads

duck town!

Cooking for this month’s theme was tastes better than it looks. One good was discovering the trove of meat replacements at 99 Ranch. Since they are focused towards the local Buddhist veg people, they are pretty cheap and also quite tasty. I made some Asian fusion bao buns that tasted great. On the bad side, I ran out of white sesame seeds, so I used black sesame seeds for a ramen broth which turned the color into dark sludge. Tasted great though! There were also ups and downs with the smoker my mom got me for Christmas. Smoked tofu adds so much richness that comes out later even after breading and baking. On the downside I really wanted to make Gwen a chili-less chili oil substitute and thought that smoked garlic would be a great base. I smoked two heads, dehydrated the cloves to get rid of any botulism, and ground them to a powder with some spices. Putting it in the oil on a low simmer and… everything burned when I went to say hi to Gwen when she got home. Sadness.

We’ve also been back into the swing of climbing at Vertical Rock now instead of Movement. While we are waiting for the new Movement gym in Fairfax to open (which will be 5 minutes away…) we are at this new gym with only bouldering near us. We’ve been a little slammed by both not having climbed as often as we usually do since our wedding planning and this gym being QUITE hard on the grading.

On to our trip! We met up with Maddie in Miami and headed to our AirBnB in Key Largo. We had some nice veg food on our way down, but disaster was immediately imminent.

The conditions on the water were going to be too rough for the charter we planned for Gwen’s training dives, so we were being pushed to the (in)famous Jule’s lagoon, a small cordoned off section of canal that houses an outrageously priced underwater hotel, where the main feature is that a SCUBA diver brings you pizza. The lagoon itself is green and very little visibility, and because of the conditions, there were lots of certification dives in the lagoon that day. Me and Maddie decided to come along just to get a dive in, and also so I could test the underwater case for my camera. The biggest issue is that I just could not see the viewfinder at all since it was so cloudy, but lemons into lemonade, it made for some very ~atmospheric~ lighting, and there were a good number of parrotfish swimming in the mangrove edges.

instant classic picture of Gwen

The lagoon should be sponsored by xbox with these colors

We did some walks around and got some good food around Key Largo to wind up the days. On day two, after Gwen finished her class in the morning, we called and saw that our dive on the big boat was still on despite the conditions. We rushed to see if the place we got the certification with could process the documents for Gwen quick enough. Nobody would answer the phone, and then the main guy was out on a boat, and we were panicking. Driving back to the big boat place, they told us a picture of the form would do. A call back to the secretary in the other office and a picture hitting Gwen’s phone later and we were so back- ready to get on the boat. After a quick visit to the bird rehab facility across the street of course.

On the dive boat, it was a 30 minute ride out to the reef, and it wasn’t too bad en route. As we slowed down, though, the waves started to take over, rocking the boat what felt like a full 45 degrees from side to side. I was having a bit trouble getting my stuff on quickly when Gwen started getting… seasick. I try to help while hastily putting my wetsuit on- maybe a bit too hastily- and got ready to head into the water. We all got in ok, it just took me a while to get down since I didn’t have quite enough weight. Turning the camera on and: forgot to take off the lens cap - inside the case- off the camera. Not a problem that you can solve 30 feet underwater. The conditions were better underwater, and we got to see some of the reef, but halfway in, Gwen was getting too sick again and made her way up. The second dive Gwen stayed back while I went on a shallow dive, but I saw a nice stingray, and got to try out the camera on a real dive.

Lesson learned, don’t mess with bad conditions… I also learned, after taking off my wetsuit, that in the rush to get in the water and Gwen… feeling sick… the first time I left my phone in my pocket. RIP. We got some drinks to round out the night and packed up to go to Biscayne Bay National Park the next morning. Sailing was on the agenda, but the wind really died down overnight. The day ended up being really chill, sailing up to the Keys and hanging out, kayaking a bit and snorkeling a bit down there. In the words of our park guide, “Don’t worry about how long it’ll take to get across, we’re already there.”

End of the day we got some good veg Cuban food and brought Maddie back to the airport. On to the Everglades! Our first stop early in the morning was the Anhinga Trail, an absolutely stellar boardwalk teeming with their namesake anhingas, gators, warblers, herons, and egrets. One of the best photography spots I’ve been, and in the morning light, we got some really nice shots. It was one of those times that makes you feel like the activity of birds in the morning is a wonder of the world.

Anhinga

Great blue heron

Purple Gallinule

Blue-grey gnatcatcher

Next we made our way down to Flamingo Visitor Center to check in for canoeing. The booth is right underneath an active osprey nest with babies- great for us, probably annoying for them after the first day or two with how loud those guys are. The canoeing was an amazing trail another dozen miles up the road, through mangrove tunnels- the trees carving wonderful paths, and ankle deep water.

That night, we camped out in the park and I tried to figure out where would be a good spot for the next morning. I struck out choosing the coastal prairie trail. Even at first light, it ended up being a pretty dead without much to see, but at the beginning next to the waters of Florida Bay, there were hundreds of herons flying west towards the mud flats with the sun rising behind them. It’s low light times like this where I can see the appeal of those 5-figure Canon lenses which can make an image out of nothing. From there, it was kayaking to Mud Lake up the canal from Flamingo. It was a bit windier again today, and a major challenge was not smashing the MANY spider webs on either side of the canal. Once we got deeper in though, there were plenty of mangrove crabs, water snakes, and of course the tricolored and little blue herons that feed there. Once we were back at the marina, I spotted two manatees while I was waiting for Gwen to change. I enjoyed a good 15 minutes seeing them pop up every 3 minutes or so, a rusty blob slowly rising up until you see a couple of hairy nostrils and the hint of an eye, until a kid from a tour group saw him and brought two dozen people over. A giant crocodile was also floating around, and I took some video to see if anything would happen when they collided. Good for the manatee, the two passed like ships in the night, seemingly unbothered by each other. Our afternoon kayak to the bay was cancelled because of the wind, and I was a bit bummed to go on the guided boat tour, thinking it might be a bit too touristy, but it ended up being a total highlight! Dolphins popped up in the wake, tons of pelicans swarmed around, and thousands of herons dotted the horizon on the mudflats a few miles into the bay. They were far enough away that the heat shimmer makes their landscape look like an impressionist painting.

Another fun stop we had in the Everglades was in the north to Shark Valley where I have the pleasure of announcing to the world that Gwen has made a triumphant return to the sport of biking! The trail here is 7+7 miles there and back of flat, paved road bordering a canal teeming with gators. By the end of the day, we had counted well over 30, and the end of the trail pleases you with a wonderful tower overseeing the river of grass that makes up most of the Everglades. Some of the side trails were fun too- the one that was the most fun near the tower we could only get about a third of the way through though- a 12 foot long crocodile splayed himself out across the trail.

We spent some time in Big Cypress- the loop trail there had so many turn offs that each felt like perfect Natural History Museum perfect dioramas, and then went to Miami for a final day in the city. Fairchild botanical gardens and the Vizcaya museum plus some more great veg restaurants gave a nice reprieve from our adventure days. The gardens had a huge butterfly enclosure with so many fluttering critters- an absolutely perfect place to just sit and relax for an hour.

Then of course it was back to work. Nothing crazy for the rest of the month. I will say that I loved not having my phone. I waited as long as possible before it finally was too much to acknowledge how entrenched needing a phone is with calls to the doctor, my two factor authentications for work, music, and for me I definitely need Google maps to get around… I got the cheapest one in the store this time but I’m seriously considering parceling out to my e-ink tablet for the need-to-have smartphone things, maybe a Garmin for the car, and dare I say, an IPod.