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We were meeting Mark up at his house around 11 so we spent the morning cleaning up and getting ready for the long haul home.

Mark, Tracy, and their 2 boys, were great. Thank you for the hospitality. And always such a plus to experience things as a local.

The Florida Keys…now I get it…we were right…you need a boat. Well obviously not need, but you know what I mean. It’s an entirely different experience on a boat.

What a fun boat ride. Mark was zipping around a 30’+ Contender like it was a sports car in only a few feet of water avoiding/navigating coral reefs all around us. It was impressive as well entertaining.

The water is beautiful here. So warm, clear, tropical. We had fun sitting on the sand bar, playing catch, and yes even skin boarding on the sandbar as the tide went out. Isabella and I gave it a go and happy to report we did not make complete fools of ourselves.

What an epic day. Thanks again Mark, Tracy, Jacob, & Shane. We had so much fun. And a treat to have a locals day and see how it’s done.

We finished with a quick skate up the road, trying out Edwin’s kayak, and dip in the pool.

So we were planning on leaving today…until Mark offered to take us out on his boat on Saturday.

We never did make it Fort Zachary so I guess another day may be worth it…

We went to the office to extend our stay 1 more day. We knew this was coming…but we were informed today that no one can stay past Saturday unless you had a 28 day reservation. Key West wants all tourists/non locals off the island and no hotel, RV park etc… is allowed to do any short term rentals.

We rode bikes down to Fort Zachary State Park. I’m really happy we checked it out. It really is a pretty beach/park. And it located literally on the farthest spot, on the southwestern part of Key West, passed mile zero which we biked by.

The park is directly next to the Naval Air Station Key West – Truman Annex. They were doing beach and boat exercises crawling up the sand with automatic weapons 10’ away from the moms and babies playing on the beach. It was entertaining for a hot minute.

Here’s some more iguana 🦎 pics. Or tree chickens as the locals call them.

The word hammock was also used in the Everglades for the Mahogany Hammock. It also refers to a stand of trees often within a contrasting ecosystem.

Now for the bike ride back home. We started out right outside the state park on Hwy 1, mile 0, heading North.

From here we looked at how far we have till home. We’re basically calling the trip at this point. Everything is so uncertain…and for how long?? We’ve got a ways to go…

We rode all over key west. The girls wanted a day off. They were bummed the pretty city beach was closed. (The county beach was not nearly as nice) I wanted to go to Fort Zachary Taylor State Park which was still open and everyone on the island said it’s the nicest beach on the island. Also it’s located at mile 0 and the girls were not excited about riding bikes all the way there and back again.

We hung out camp and went in the pool. We’ve been hearing chlorine kills the virus so we are going with it. You can taste the chlorine on your lips so they’re definitely putting enough in.

A few of Edwin’s friends he goes fishing with each year live here in the Keys. His friend Mark picked us up for lunch and he took us civilians on a behind the scenes tour of the coast guard base showing us some the boats he was on. The best part was listening to him shoot the sh*t with some old colleagues about what’s going on. It was a pretty neat little tour of the island which we definitely would not have seen otherwise.

Nothing mobilizing as of yet, but we also heard they would be hearing something from the top down later on today.

We stopped for some really tasty sandwiches and went to the military housing beach to sit for a minute.

We got back and it was too late to go swimming in the ocean (because the state park closes at 5) but it meant we had a leisurely evening at the RV park.

Parts of Key West are definitely pretty, but I’m also realizing that a Key West is not for your average tourist. To enjoy the keys you want a lot of 💰 or have some sort of hookup. The island is dense with buildings and the access to the water is not easy. Even riding around the island yesterday and seeing fancy waterfront hotels and we’d look at the beach or really no beach…and be like really?! It’s waterfront yes, but not walk into the ocean and swim waterfront. (Which to me that means waterfront). Understanding if you come to the keys you want a fishing charter. Or scuba diving trips set up. You want to be on a boat. You need a boat down here. Well to play how you’d want to play.

We were really excited to go visit Dry Tortugas National Park and snorkel, but unfortunately it’s temporary closed, so the ferry isn’t going out there right now and no private boat trips either.

Not that we don’t like the keys, but because everything is so expensive, and we don’t want to spend money at the moment anymore, and the uncertainty of the country we decided to cut our 4 night stay to 2, and we are heading out of the keys tomorrow.

Last night we got home late, and we never made the lobster. We definitely didn’t want to be an afterthought meal. Edwin made our surf & turf meal tonight. 🦞 🐄 What a great! And it was delicious. 😋

We picked up these beauties today. Couldn’t pass them up.

Daisy harassment I mean love continues. Oh and the girls finally tried on the Mickey Mouse ears we bought for Daisy at Disney. Daisy is getting together quite a collection of flair 🎩:)

We didn’t have a reservation for last night since we skipped it at Everglades. We ended up on the side of the road on Islamorada.

Back in New Orleans our Cajun swamp friend had told us you are allowed to park by the bridges to fish and you’re allowed to fish at any time so legally they can’t not let you park there at night.

It was not ideal but ok for a night. The tip was helpful.

You really need reservations for the keys. The three state parks were full. We were thinking there may he cancellations, and there were earlier in the day but we got here after 5pm.

The keys are a stretch of islands from the east coast of Florida near Miami stretching to the southwest for 120 miles. Each island is called a key. The first is Key Largo (thanks beach boys) and ends with Key West. In Key West you are closer to Cuba (90 miles) than the mainland.

We woke up in the morning to drive down to Key West to our reservation at an RV park, Boyd’s RV Park.

On our way we stopped on the side of the road this little fishmarket Edwin eyed. The girls fished out 2 lobsters 🦞 so we could have some of the fresh tasty food from the keys. Yummy. By the end of our purchase, Edwin and I had possibly procured a camping spot for a month down here if we wanted to wait it out down here. The owner Angel offered us to stay at one of her 2 properties for $1000/mo. Not bad since cheap RV spots down here are $150/night or $3500/month. Then she looked at Edwin and said, “you look handy, what do you do? “Everything except electrical.” “We might have work to get done, we can work out a deal.” Being down here for a month self quarantining…doesn’t sound half bad. We exchanged numbers and were off with 2 lobster tails.

We poked into the turtle Hospital. All tours were full for today and tomorrow so we made a reservation for Sunday just in case.

We couldn’t check into the RV park until 1pm and we were curious to check out Bahia Honda State Park because everyone has said it was really nice. We continued south and stopped for an hour for a swim.

A new update about state parks today… They are no longer taking any new reservations at state parks for camping. No camping past Saturday. Day use in the park closes at 5pm instead of at dusk.

7 Mile Bridge. It was among the longest bridges built when first built. There’s an annual 7 mile bridge run for 1500 participants each year. It is scheduled for this weekend. It is cancelled. Isabella, Vera, and I finally ate the somehow remaining cotton candy we bought at DisneyWorld. How do we still have cotton candy you ask? Well if you buy a Disney meal plan and haven’t used all your credits you buy random things the last minute that you can take home instead of leave the money on the card. Yes, it was stale. But it sure did taste good 🙂

We got to Boyd’s RV park. We found out we’re not actually on Key West but the key next to Key West. We are at mile marker 5. That’s how they measure it here in the keys, by what mile you are located. So we are 1 mile from Key West. Key West is 4 miles long and 1 mile wide, so it starts at mile 0 and ends at mile marker 4.

The girls weren’t happy at first that we told them we were going to explore the island by bike instead of hang out in the RV park. I know it’s not considered to be hot yet down here but it’s 80 and humid. It’s hot. Especially for a bike ride of at least 10 miles ahead of us.

But we got out and took the scenic way around on the south part of the island. It was really pretty. Was not really what I was expecting. I don’t know what I was expecting but I guess I was surprised that it is not a sandy island. It is really an island made of/from coral. With shorelines of mangroves. There are no natural sand beaches on the island. There are a few beaches on the island to which they truck sand in from Cuba or Puerto Rico. Thankfully we did take the long way around because there was quite a bit of traffic on the island. Lots of buildings, hotels, and houses all in very close quarters. I guess that makes sense since there’s only about 4.2 mi.² of Key West.

We were exited to spot our first iguanas 🦎 on the island. After the first few we starting seeing them all over. Quite a few as roadkill.

We stopped at the county beach for a quick swim. It’s a rocky shoreline with coral. We didn’t really swim, more so than quickly jump in and out just to cool down and continued riding. We made it down to the Southernmost Point.

Along with other city measures the buoy was tarped up. Sorry, didn’t stop us along with several other taking selfie’s with the tarped up buoy. At this point you’re closer to Cuba than you are to the mainland. Cuba is 90 miles south from here. They have a picture poster of the buoy back at the RV park so this is what it would’ve looked like if it wasn’t in a big blue tarp.

And chickens. 🐓 Everywhere. And chicks. 🐣 you almost feel like you’re on the Big Island in Hawaii when you see all the chickens around. we decided to make our 4 night stay in the RV park down to 2. (I’m feeling a little antsy about being down the keys where there’s only one road in and one road out.) Edwin did not like my idea of grabbing some of the little baby chicks and putting them in the shower for the drive home to Tahoe so we could raise chickens this spring and summer. Ha.

We woke up to this on the bus. A good omen we are hoping.

It’s about 8 am and it’s stinking hot already. I wore shorts yesterday which was apparently a mistake because I got eaten alive yesterday. Edwin and the girls have been getting bit all over Florida. I’ve managed to not, until now, and now the sympathy has kicked in. So we are all wearing pants today.

We are at the Flamingo campground which is in the southern portion of the Everglades along the ocean/gulf of Mexico/Atlantic, but is technically called the Florida Bay

We rode over to the visitor center which is currently being remodeled and is right next to the boat ramp.

I had read that you can see manatees in the Barbour so we went to check it out. Success! Yay! The sea cows. Because we hightailed it’s from Mississippi to DisneyWorld and then to Tampa we missed the manatees on the west coast so we were very excited to see them here. And they were very active. About 6 of them just hanging out in the harbor.

We have a few pics but like whale watching…it’s hard to grab a pic.

After watching them for awhile we went over to the visitor center to confront the inevitable. National Park visitor is officially closed. As of today. The ranger was nice enough to give the girls a junior ranger packet and preemptive badges which he literally placed on the ground outside the door.

Ok it’s happening. Don’t think we can avoid it anymore. What a bummer on a multitude of levels.

There is no WiFi down here in the park. Except by the victor center. Like the 4 sitting on stairs figuring out what’s next we too sat their using some WiFi to read the news of the day. By the time we left there were easily 20 people sitting along the curb on their phones.

We listened in on a woman sitting in her car next to the visitor center anxiously talking to what sounded like her husband asking if they think it’s safe to drive home cross country. Personally I’m thinking the same thing. Do we want to get on the road? Is California where we want to go? Should we stay in Florida somewhere? The keys? We are so far away from home. But home is the epicenter. But now it feels weird to be on the road…

Slightly deflated and not sure what we wanted to do, we went back to the manatees.

And then went back to the RV to eat cookies and pin up what would be our last junior ranger badge??

On the way back into the campground I asked the ranger at the office what is he hearing and got a few clarifications…

He said that there is no National Park Advisory rather Trump gave the responsibility to each park superintendent to make the decision best for them. Florida national parks are open as of now but they are closing all visitor centers, tours, and concessions. For the time being you can camp overnight as long as you have a reservation, but you cannot extend the reservation or make a new one. Also, everyone must be out of the campground ⛺️ by Saturday. I wished him luck and asked him if he thought he would be ok and he said he was one of the lucky ones because he is one of the 2 full time employees and they are keeping him to close up everything. The seasonal workers only had 2 weeks left on their contract, but most of them have seasonal summer jobs at other parks that will no longer be there. I asked him what he’s hearing about when they may open up. He said he was told nothing till middle of May…but even that is subject to change.

The Bay Area is locked down. National parks getting locked down.

We have a reservation for tonight again in the Everglades, but part of think we want to move on. All of a sudden being in a campground with no reception of WiFi isn’t sitting well.

I’m at a loss with no visitor centers open…so here’s some info we got off Wikipedia…

Everglades National Park protects the southern 20% of the original Everglades in Florida. It is the 3rd largest national park after Death Valley and Yellowstone. It is the largest tropical wilderness in the U.S. and the largest wilderness east of the Mississippi.

Everglades protects wetlands and forests flowing out of Lake Okeechobee and into Florida Bay. It protects the largest mangrove ecosystem in the Western Hemisphere. It is also an important breeding ground for many tropical wading birds.

36 threatened or endangered species inhabit the park, including the manatee, American crocodile (which is also often seen in the harbor but we did not see it) and the panther.

Mangroves: it was one of first forays into ecology and conservation. I took an Oceanography class at Berkeley and I researched mangroves for my term paper.

Mangroves are small trees that are salt tolerant. They have a complex salt filtration and root system that allows them to live in coastal waters and helps them grow in salt immersed water and deal with constant wave action.

They are very important for a coastal wetland ecosystem. They provide shelter and breeding grounds for many species away from predators in the open water. They also prevent erosion on the coastlines from wave action.

Mangrove forests move carbon dioxide “from the atmosphere into long-term storage” in greater quantities than other forests, making them “among the planet’s best carbon scrubbers” according to a NASA-led study based on satellite data.

We figured we might as well go on a few of the recommended walks, get to reception, and re-evaluate.

We went on the Mahogany Hammock Trail. Less than a mile but it holds the largest mahogany tree in the U.S. Back in day all the old growth mahogany trees were harvested but this part of the park was inaccessible at the time so there is still one patch of old growth Mahogany.

They also said to be on lookout for 🦉 owls. And we were lucky. We had Daisy with us and the owl would NOT keep its 👀 off her. It was entertaining walking back and forth with Daisy and the owl really would just turn it’s head. It was very cool.

We then went on the Anhinga Trail. Which was beautiful. Another less than a mile walk on a boardwalk, it was spectacular scenery. Alligators, birds, turtles.

This was a beautiful boardwalk and even with the alligators, a very serene trail. The greenery was gorgeous. I’m glad we were able to make it to this trail because we were looking forward to an air boat tour as we hear the best way to see the Everglades is by boat not by foot. But no chance for that now.

The egrets were very cool. I think they were my favorite bird to watch. Many herons as well. And this trail is named after the Anhinga. A very cool looking bird that we saw sunning itself back and the Ding Darling Wildlife Refuge. Now we know why we saw it sunning itself a few days ago. The Anhinga is also known as a snakefish, it swims underwater to look for fish. It spears fish on its sharp bill as at swims and then flips it up and swallows them head first, whole. We saw the anhinga swim around in the marsh which was very cool. And it did look like a snake when it popped it’s head out of the water.

I’m happy we got to see so much wildlife because we had then decided not to go to Sharks Valley in the northern part of the Everglades. You can see lots of wildlife there but we decided against the hour and a half detour up there.

Even though my family wants me home they agree and think it might be wiser to stay out then make the jaunt cross country to the epicenter of it. Our house is rented out (thankfully), we could go to parents, Tahoe, or stay here.

We are deciding to head to forgoe our 2nd night of. Amping in the Everglades and we are heading down to the keys.

We did snap another Everglades pic on the way out.

Thanks Everglades. You were beautiful even if you were buggy and a little creepy. Glad Daisy made it out unharmed.

We returned to Sanibel Island to ride bikes to the wetlands. It was a nice/serene 4 mile ride through the wetlands and the mangroves. But hot!

The biggest threat to manatees are humans. They are often struck by boats. The ribs get severely injured when struck by a propeller. Below is Vera with 2 rib bones. The injured one below is more than double the size and weight of a healthy rib bone.

Everglades National Park. 33rd National Park.

We keep trying to head south. And to less people. Away from all the Coronavirusness. As we drive in to the Everglades we see some trucks out on the side of the road snake hunting. I’m not sure what I have more anxiety about, Coronavirus or the pythons and alligators.

All of a sudden daisy is on a 1’ leash. 🐶

Another day in the sun, playing catch, finding shells, and bike riding. Self quarantining on the road…but we did go out and get an ice cream.

We are checking out tomorrow. We want to back to Sanibel Island and then down to the Everglades. And then down to the keys.

We are feeling the stress of the coronavirus, but not from the local community. Any anxiety I feel is coming from what I am hearing from my family at home. Right now we are thinking maybe park it out somewhere in Florida???

We spent the whole day on the beach. We were able to bring daisy out to the beach and she enjoyed the water. And Bessie. There is sandbar about 30’ out where it was more shallow and we could play catch.

Isabella found a cool shell on the beach last night so we knew we could find more. Vera found this giant whelk shell but it still had an animal inside so we threw it back. But as we were walking in the water we could find shells in the water. We spent quite a bit of our say shell collecting.

For a break from the sun we rode our bikes down the “strip”. Fort Myers has a bit of a trashy vibe but we were just happy to get a spot on a beach period.

Back to the beach for an evening swim.

Daisy photo shoot

Edwin and Vera went swimming whereas Isabella had fun harassing me 🙂

Today started out stressful. My brother called me in the middle of night to encourage/warn us to get supplies and find somewhere safe. That CA will be going into lockdown in the next 48 hours most likely…and the country is likely to follow suit. Nothing has been put out there, but he is hearing it from friends in law enforcement etc…

We are not sure what we should do. Do we go home? Continue? Find somewhere in Florida to be…??

I felt anxious this morning so Edwin and I went to Walmart this morning and stocked up the fridge as best we could.

We have a reservation for Red Coconut RV park which is on the beach at Fort Myers.

We decided to check out nearby Sanibel Island first.

We found out that there is a national wildlife refuge on the island as well as this is the spot for shell collecting.

We first checked out the wildlife refuge. It’s got quite a name. The J.N. “Ding” Darling National Wildlife Refuge. It is a 5200 acre refuge to protect the undeveloped mangrove ecosystems.

Jay Normand Darling nicknamed Ding Darling was a cartoonist. He was also a conservationist. He won 2 Pulitzer Prizes for his editorial cartoons. He then combined his two lives and began conservationist cartoons. “Darling criticized people who considered themselves conservationists but whose actions were limited to hanging a bird feeder and subscribing to an outdoors magazine. Darling said that true action was required in order to reverse the damage that had already occurred. Darling encouraged voting against political candidates who refused to help the environment.” He worked with FDR in 1934 and was instrumental in founding the National Wildlife Federation in 1936.

He also designed the first Federal Duck Stamp in August 1934. He did this to generate money for the restoration AND conservation of wetlands and wildlife. Money was to be put aside to purchase lands for restoration and conservation as well.

Thank you Ding Darling.

The 4 mile road through the wetlands is closed every Friday, today. We decided it worth a trip back and since we were paying for a beachfront rv spot at fort Myers we decided to head that way and enjoy the beach there instead of go shell collecting on Sanibel Island.

The 11 miles drive from Sanibel Island took over an hour.

I jumped out in traffic to buy a Coconut and we enjoyed the rest of the day on the beach. The RV park was great. We didn’t get a spot ON the beach, but we had a great spot.

What they say about the west coast of Florida is true. The sand is gorgeous. Super fine white sand. The water is warm. But a good amount of seaweed right at the beach that you gave to get through. Water not amazingly beautiful, but nothing to complain about either.

We stayed at the Fort de Soto campground last night.

I’m worried about camping luck is coming to an end. We were planning on getting to Florida a few weeks ago and now we are facing spring break without reservations. They let us stay in their emergency site.

Fort de Soto is one of the nicest beaches in Florida so we stayed put and didn’t move.

We swam in the Atlantic, played catch, read, and just enjoyed a day in the sun.