Tom & Ali's Florida Trip Video - Chapter 1 - Dry Tortugas - (Also some picturesque photos of Dry Tortugas and some of its points of interest):

So here's the first installment of the long-anticipated video of our Florida trip. As the title states, this part of the video is footage from our boat trip out to, and tour of, Dry Tortugas and Fort Jefferson (which is on Dry Tortugas). A special thanks to Peter for all his help with editing this video, he did a spectacular job (he edits videos for his real job too, so he's really good)! Also, we put a few picturesque photos of Dry Tortugas and some of its points of interest that we found online as well as the one picture we had taken of ourselves below the video for your viewing pleasure. So, here you go and enjoy!

Be sure to pause the music at the bottom of the blog before starting the video.

Pictures of Dry Tortugas and some of its points of interest:

A shot of us at the main entrance of Fort Jefferson

Wide aerial shot of Dry Tortugas and the surrounding coral reefs

An aerial long-angle shot of the group of islands that make up Dry Tortugas

A shot from on top of the wall of Fort Jefferson facing the lighthouse and out towards the water

Shot of the beach we hung out on (as seen on the video) and snorkeled off of

Shot of fort Jefferson from the water

Wide shot of Loggerhead Key (part of the Dry Tortugas) from the water

Close-up shot of the lighthouse on Loggerhead Key

Our Trip to Florida

The long promised photos are now available... actually, after we looked at the photos there really weren't many of them. We will publish more photo and a video later, but here are a few of them:

We arrived at Fort Jefferson - a really cool place. Fort Jefferson takes up almost all of Key Dry Tortugas, and is a 2 hour boat ride from the civilization. Cuban refugees land on this island almost daily (although I was not fortunate enough to see a landing myself):



Alison looking sexy on Key Biscayne:



Both of us hanging out on the beach:



A picture of me (Tom) looking super tan, flexing all of my muscles and trying to look cool (and probably succeeding, probably):




~Glamour shot removed due to popular outrage~




The trip was great, and a great deal for us. We had a really fun time. Check out the slide show for additional photos.

Our Vacation

Well, no photos yet. But the trip was great. Besides having both of our flights cancelled, both ways, we managed to get there and back pretty much on schedule. Photos and a video to come!

This American Marriage

So I haven't yet posted any photos of us yet... that is soon to come. I'll be posting some photos of our wedding, our sugar gliders, and our life pretty soon here.

Anyway, over the last 3 years or so I've been listening to a radio program called "This American Life" - pretty much the coolest radio show ever made (check it out at http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Archive.aspx, you can listen to any past episode; let me know if you are interested and I'll direct you to some of my favorite episodes). If you ever have an hour to blow, or just want to have something interesting to listen to while cleaning, I for sure recommend it. But anyway, the host of that show is Ira Glass.

I was looking at Jeff and Heather's blog yesterday, and I decided to follow some of the links they had going to other people's blogs, thinking that I might recognize some of the people in the other blogs. I was surprised to find that Ashley Bullough is getting married on May 9th - congratulations to Ashley! However, I was even more surprised to find that she is secretly marrying Ira Glass, from This American Life! Although they claim his name is Cade (the name alone was an obvious alert to me, he should have chosen a more normal name like Chris or Ricky), he is obviously Ira Glass. I have posted Ira and "Cade"s photos on this blog.

Our Trip

So - we'll be off to Miami and the Keys this month. We are leaving on the 26th and coming back May 4th. You can all stop worrying about the sugar gliders - My mom Pam will be taking care of them. Anyway, we'll be spending the first part of our trip in the Keys, staying in Key west. We are actually going to be arriving on the day before they re-join the Union (they ritualistically break away from the US for a few days each year, declare war, then re-join and demand aid). So, pretty much the coolest building ever lies on the last key in the archipelago - it's called Fort Jefferson... it was a fort built on a super remote, super small island called "Dry Tortugas"--it's purpose was to fight pirates (I hope they don't try to fight me because I pirated the images used in this blog entry...) We have to take a 2 hr. boat ride, then we can snorkel, tour the building... stuff like that. Dr. Mudd (who was prosecuted as a conspirator to assassinate President Lincoln) spent some time there after it was converted into a prison... If I am sent to prison for disobeying copyright laws and posting these photos to our blog, then send me there please!! Anyway, we are both pretty excited.. I'll post the video when we are back.