Florida Keys, Day 3

This was the day. The one day we came down here for. The one day we actually had anything "planned". The one day I'd been waiting for for months, now. We were going to the Dry Tortugas!!

Don't worry, I had never heard of them until recently, either. Maria has lived in Florida her whole life, and she learned about them from me. Look it up on Wikipedia. Try to find it on a map. Look 68 miles West of Key West. Only get there by boat or floatplane, yet has the largest masonry structure in the western hemisphere on it.

We took the trip with Sunny Days Catamarans, one of the tour companies. It was a well-done trip, providing food and drinks, and a fast way out there. Next time, we are definitely going to camp there for at least 3 days, if not a week or more. Even though it was very small, there was just too much to explore and do.

Key West is waaaaaaay back there, somewhere.



I went straight for the water. Didn't catch it on film, but I walked out to the cement ramp there and slipped. Fortunately my secret ninja training and catlike reflexes kicked in...and I landed flat on my back.





These are "Magnificent Frigatebirds" and just sat there riding the breeze the whole time, never flapping, never moving...



The inner courtyard of the Fort while on the very informative tour. After the tour, we got to wander pretty much where we pleased.


It was really expensive to bring water to the islands (they are called "Dry" Tortugas because there is no fresh water there). Being that they needed to bring water there for the workers building the place, they often chose to use seawater to mix the mortar instead of fresh water. That is why the walls all have this white coating on them in places. It's the salt bleeding out of the mortar.





I have a ton of pictures of the place. I could just post them all, or you could figure out where to sift through them on my photodumper site. But this is interesting: These boats here are called Chugs.



What they are is a mishmash of anything that can be found to make a boat or something like a boat. Then the boater buys a gps which already has the Dry Tortugas programmed into it. This is all done in Cuba, which isn't too far away. Then the Cuban refugees see if their chug can make it all the way to the Dry Tortugas.

Now why would they want to do that?? Well it's simple. While it may be further away than Key West, Key West Has an active Navy base and an active Coast Guard base. The current rules about Cuban refugees and the U.S. are that if they are able to set foot on American Soil, they are granted political asylum (because Cuba is run by a fucked-up commie dicktatorship and all that). If they are intercepted at sea, the Coast Guard sinks their boat, puts them on board their own ship, and deports them back to Cuba, where they will likely be imprisoned and tortured and all that fun shit that goes along with getting caught trying to defect from a fucked-up commie dicktatorship.

Anyway, the Dry Tortugas is American soil. But it is the most remote National Park we have, so all that is there are a handful of park rangers and some maintenance folk...not several active military bases. So the Rangers go running out (and they are VERY well-armed, by the way...Pirates do still exist, ya know...) and welcome the new American resident aliens ashore and make sure they aren't dying or anything. They get transported back to Key West to get their new ID's and stuff later.

They get 1200 of these landings in the Dry Tortugas every year. Not 1200 people...1200 boats. There weren't any on the day we were there, though there were 18 people made it there they day before.

Anyway, after the tour, we explored the fort a little bit, checking out each floor, and the different rooms and roof, and holes that went nowhere.









I've been to the edge...and there I stood lookin' down...



These next 3 show the areas we went snorkeling on the outside of the moat wall:







There was a good amount of sealife along the wall. I don't know if I got any good underwater shots, though. I had issue with my technology, so we'll see!





These were taken by Maria while she was standing on the wall, that's how clear the water is.









But we had to go back, eventually. Talked with a couple who had been camping there the past few days. They never even took their tent out, they just slept on the beach. They loved it.

We had 3-5 foot swells on the way back, and we ran over a floating rope that got caught in one of our props. The first mate had to go cut it off in the middle of nowhere. Other than that, it was a great ride back, and we ate at the first place that wasn't straight from Pirate John's guidebook, finally!

Florida Keys, Day 1

I'll start with a little bit of background history of the Keys. A guy named Henry Flagler built the Overseas railroad, all the way out to Key West (about 110 miles from the mainland). It operated from 1912 until a major Hurricane of 1935 wiped out sections of it, along with killing a lot of people. They then built the overseas highway, in many cases using sections of the old railway pilings. More recently, whole new sections of highway has been built, and you'll see the new one running alongside the old highway/railroad.

The Dry Tortugas are a set of keys 68 miles west of Key West. There is no road going there. You can only get there by boat or floatplane. I recommend looking it up online for a lot more information about it. (Here's a good start: Wiki on Dry Tortugas NP )

From 1826 to 1846, it was only used for placement of a lighthouse. Building began in 1846 of the enormous Fort Jefferson to be an advanced post to defend the Gulf of Mexico. It eventually became obsolete and was never quite completed. It is the largest masonry structure in the Western Hemishere, and made up of 16 million bricks. It became a National Park in 1992.

I only had heard of it about 2 months ago, checked out that site, and knew we had to go there someday. A couple weeks later, Maria's friend tells her that his buddy in Oregon heard about a trip his friend took to the Dry Tortugas, and is flying out to take a boat ride to the Dry Tortugas on the 30th of December. We immediately invited ourselves to join them. They were only going to be in the keys the night of the 29th (Saturday), camped at the KOA on Sugarloaf Key. We figured we'd just make a long weekend of it since Monday was New Year's eve...we'd be in Key West already...

I downloaded and printed a copy of a guide to Key West I'd seen on the ADVrider forum. Captain Ron and Pirate John put together a great guide of what to see and do while in the keys, starting from Mile marker 110 as you enter the Keys, all the way to Mile Marker 0 in Key West. The guide saved us a LOT of having to figure things out, learning about the Keys in various random places, and finding the best places to eat! We would have missed so much on this trip, had it not been for this guidebook! We saw so many things we otherwise never would have known about. You can find the guidebook at Bucaneer Publishing We did not get a chance to visit everything in the guide, but some changes have taken place, but mostly it is just as the guidebook says!!

We decided to drive down before first light on Friday, and that part was mostly uneventful. It was only my second time through Alligator Alley, but we were just going straight through. We didn't want to stop anywhere in or around Miami (another trip), as we knew there was so much to see in the Keys.

The guidebook said we needed to take Card Sound Rd onto Key Largo, and for good Mojo, we needed to stop at Alabama Jack's. Sounded good to us, and after a 300 mile drive first thing in the morning, we were hungry. We got there about a half-hour before they opened, but they opened for us, anyway. Weather was beautiful, and we sat on the rail, with the water under the floor. It could not have been a nicer way to start out trip to the Keys!





Ordered up the sampler platter: Conch Fritters, Grouper Fingers, Battered Shrimp, Steamed Shrimp, Crabcakes, and something else I forget.



They didn't have a current CA license plate, so I gave them the front CA plate off my truck to tack onto the wall. Hopefully helped with the Mojo!

Then a few yards down the road, pay the toll, and drive over the really tall and short bridge onto Key Largo!



Our first stop, again going by Pirate John's Guide, was the Florida Keys Wild Bird Sanctuary in Tavernier. The place was free (takes donations to help with the upkeep, of course), and rehabs birds that have been hurt or otherwise messed up. A lot of 1-winged Pelicans, for instance. Free to walk around and explore. We enjoyed it, and would not have even seen it had it not been for the Guidebook. First time I've seen a spoonbill in the wild, anywhere in Florida.









After checking out the premises, we had to stop at the giant Lobster, just because it's silly. Florida Lobsters don't have claws for some reason...but the guidebook said this place was a shopping center. It sure had been, but the owners of a Montessori School decided it would make a good location for their facility, and bought the property. Numerous signs telling people to stay out, and that it was a school. I made sure to trespass to take pictures and re-enact the one in the guide.





The next stop on the drive out into the Caribbean was at the Hurricane memorial. The hurricane I mentioned in the beginning killed a LOT of people down in the Keys. Somewhere around 700, though the numbers are not truly known, and differ, depending on who you ask. The memorial in the pictures below is in Islamorada, and you can learn more about it here: Hurricane Memorial Page. It was put up in 1937, I believe? A well-kept memorial on the National Register of Historic Places.







The water was getting nice.....



Next was one that my friend Charles had told me about, as well as being in Pirate John's book. Feeding the Giant Silver King Tarpon at Robbie's Boat rentals. ( Robbie's) Buy a bucket of fish, walk out and feed them to the Tarpon, try not to get bit by the Pelicans, who want the fish, too...

Really bizarre, but a must-see!















A quick stop at Anne's Beach to see how the water is (keeping in mind it is December 28th in this picture!)




We started seeing more sections of the old railway and highway in different places.









Another vacation idea:


Later on in the weekend, we'd be standing on the section of that bridge on the left:


When we got to Big Pine Key, we had to go extra slow, as the island is a Key Deer preserve. They are smaller deer that are super protected. $250 fine if caught feeding them, so I don't wanna know what the speeding fine is here...signs EVERYWHERE to slow down, deer x-ing, etc. Since they are so well protected, they are not afraid of people.





That is the same deer...he never ran away even when I pulled right up next to him. Just stood there. I was getting hungry, so it was a good thing the guidebook told us about the No-Name Pub on No-Name Key. We had good mojo from stopping at Alabama Jack's earlier, as we got the last seat available before the line started forming outside. By the time we left, the wait was 45 minutes to an hour. Food was great!

We were almost to Sugarloaf Key, where we were hoping we could camp. We only had a reservation at the KOA for the next night, and we were going to need to sleep for 4 nights in the Keys. We don't like to plan our trips out too much...takes a lot of the fun out of it, and worse comes to worse, we find a beach and stretch out! It turned out they had room, since we were only tent-camping. We set up camp, and made some tea before going to bed. I don't like KOA-style campgrounds, normally...but it was a last-minute trip, and all the State Parks were booked solid since it's the height of the season down here.