Winter Break in Marathon Key, Hotel Tour and Sombrero Beach

Introduction

Our vacation to the Florida Keys was the best choice for our winter break! Living in Wisconsin just shouts “GET ME OUTTA HERE!” in the winter. We love Wisconsin winter activities, but once in a while, we need some warm sunshine and saltwater. The Florida Keys are the BEST choice we could have ever made as a family vacation and it will be hard not to come back year after year, so maybe we just will!

Day One in Marathon, Florida: Hotel, Beach, and Sunset in Marathon, Florida

We arrived in Marathon, Florida, for our winter break around 5 pm at night. Sunset was at 5:45 so we threw our stuff in our hotel and headed out to Sombrero Beach to watch the sunset. This was such a nice way to start our vacation in Marathon, Florida. The boys also put their suits on because you know I can’t hold those two back from a beach or a pool, even if we were just going to watch the sunset. They immediately ran into the waves, started digging in the sand, laughing and loving this vacation. A benefit of driving to Marathon, Florida is that we can pack our truck full of beach supplies that we couldn’t bring on an airplane. The boys had shovels and pails while I had my favorite beach chair, beach blanket and books. We were set for any beach or pool that came our way over the next week. The sunset was beautiful, really I was just speechless watching the deep orange sun sink into the Atlantic Ocean.

However, I was really surprised at how early the sunset, 5:45 pm, really?!?! I don’t know why I thought it wouldn’t set until 8 pm, maybe because of the summer weather I assumed it would set at summer sunset time, in Wisconsin, which is between 8 pm and 9 pm. This difference in time made me reevaluate our plans for the week. No longer would we be able to do water activities until 7/7:30, but that’s ok, I think we found a great alternative, which you can read about in the days to follow. After watching the amazing sunset we went back to our hotel The Hampton Inn, Marathon, Florida to unpack and figure out dinner. We really liked our hotel, it was clean, newly remodeled, had a free breakfast and a pool/tiki area.

We really liked The Hampton Inn and especially the pool and Tiki Bar! It was a great place to soak in the sun or play cards. Even though we liked our hotel I think next time I would try to find a locally owned resort/hotel, as a result of never being there before I opted for what I knew and felt comfortable with as a choice. Once I was there and saw all of the local choices and how nice they were for about the same price, I had wished I would have chosen a local resort. It’s on my list for next year, oh, but I am getting ahead of myself with my “Next Year” list.