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.
