Biscayne and the Keys

Biscayne NP

Biscayne National Park is almost entirely undersea, and since Ella is a bona fide landlubber, we spent our time exclusively on the hiking trails. This park is made for water sports – boating, swimming, and such – so to enjoy the park properly you should kayak, snorkel, or even better, scuba. Or take a chartered boat trip out to the Biscayne Bay and to nearby coral reefs. Since that wasn’t our fare, we enjoyed our hikes on a couple of trails, a few of which were really cool because they were lined with craggy and porous coral pieces, even though the vegetation was rather unremarkable. One of the trails, however, was on a boardwalk through a mangrove forest, and we had an opportunity to see what the mangroves are like at eye level. The long and leggy roots underwater are just as fascinating as the twisting, leafy branches in the open air.

It was really pretty neat, but there’s not much to see if you’re not underwater, so we headed on to the Keys after our hike. We completely bypassed the Dry Tortugas, another island designated as a National Park off the lowest end of the lower keys, which you can only get to by plane or boat, neither of which interested Ella. Next time!

The Keys

The Keys, while charming, were underwhelming, I’ll have to say. I was really expecting way more, which is the bane of expectations, isn’t it? I thought I would be overcome by the breathless beauty of idyllic tropical islands. The reality is the beaches were almost nonexistent, and the whole of Hwy 1 that runs 150 miles through to Key West felt like an extended strip mall. The vegetation is mostly just scrub all around, not nearly as beautiful as most of the trails in the state parks, the national seashore, or in the Everglades, or even on mainland Florida. The islands were beautiful, don’t get me wrong, but not comparable to other parts of Florida, a state which, in general, has amazing state parks and a plethora of them. I don’t mean a lot of state parks, I mean hundreds. I can’t even imagine how many. I was really hoping to find a list of state parks with the goal of getting to all of them. Lol. You could never do that in few weeks in Florida. There are just so many – and not just state parks but wildlife management areas, and refuges, and rehabilitation areas. It’s amazing. It makes me so proud of our nation’s commitment to wildlife preservation and conservation! But I digress.

Key Largo is not a particularly beautiful island, and apparently there was a demand for a beach that looks like what most of us expect the beaches in the Keys to look like. To appease tourists, there is a man-made beach at the very Southern end of the island, complete with sand and palm trees. It was cute and well populated with sunbathers, kayakers, and sailors of all types. It was 85-90 degrees, and the women were in bikinis. As Ella and I walked around the beach from pier to pier, we passed a man on his phone sitting at a park bench next to a tow service vehicle. As we walked on further, we passed a couple looking pensively towards the water. It took a few more moments to register what they were looking at. Their sailboat had run aground – the tow was obviously for them. There are numerous, numerous boat rental companies in the Keys. I have no idea if the couple were locals who owned this boat or if they were tourists who tried their luck at a Key Largo adventure by sailing a rental into unfamiliar waters. Either way, at least they could lament their misfortune from the vantage point of a beautiful, bona fide, sandy, palm beach! Ella’s commitment to staying on land was affirmed at this point.

There are so many smaller and larger keys along the way, and each one seems to have its own, unique environment. Long Pine Key has a deer refuge, but the key deer are everywhere. I drove around the island specifically looking for them, and ohmygosh, I found some! Driving through a neighborhood, I found four or five, maybe six, lounging on a front lawn. I guess the residents there are just super used to seeing them. There are signs everywhere that say drive slowly; the deer’s biggest enemy are cars, so I did drive very slowly. When I saw these deer, I pulled over onto somebody’s yard (sorry, person!), and I got out to take pictures. They were so small and cute! One started walking towards me and came right up to me. I put my hand out in a greeting, and it sniffed my hand, its little wet nose brushing my palm. My heart! It turned and went back to its little group, but they stayed right there in the yard, scared of nothing. They were really precious.

The Keys may not be immersed in beauty above land, but it’s the action below water that is what they’re known for. When you’re in the Keys you must do the water sports. All of them. The water sports and the underwater wildlife are where it’s at. The Keys are created for scuba, for snorkeling, for boating, jet skiing, wind sailing, kayaking, etc. The coral reefs, the brightly colored fish, anemones, starfish, sea horses, and jellyfish all light up the underwater landscape. Of course, I didn’t do any of those with trusty Ella, so we traversed the few trails we could find. The John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park has glass bottom boat rides that I hoped Ella might be welcomed on, but they weren’t running the day we went. If you’re going to the Keys, you need to know it’s not really all that worth it to stay above ground. But if you want to see what’s below the water, I understand it’s teeming with wildlife.

Each of the keys has a little bit different feel, and there are so many of them! There’s even one called Saddle Bunches, which is an adorable name. It’s just a whole bunch of tiny mangrove islands, uninhabitable really, but connectors for the Hwy 1 bridge spans.

The Keys definitely have a beachy, island, laid back feel. It’s even more laid back than mainland beaches because there really isn’t much else going on. No high-rises and no multi-million-dollar-businesses. No high-stress lifestyles, so the vibe is cruise and care-free. There were a few more affluent keys, but the vibe was the same. If you’re not into water sports, the only thing left to do is eat and drink. I did my part. Fortunately, all the restaurants have outdoor seating, so Ella was welcome everywhere.

To space out my food and alcohol intake in a reasonable manner, I made a list of all the places I wanted to hit based on blogs and recommendations I had read online. Many people had gone before me and made lists of places one HAD to go and things one COULDN’T MISS, so I compiled a list of restaurants, bars, exhibits, and attractions that piqued my interest. Down there, businesses have regular street addresses but also are described by mile markers. Key West starts Hwy 1 at mile marker 0, and Key Largo goes into the 100s. The mile marker of the business tells you where it is along the route – very convenient.  So, I Googled the mile marker of all the places on my list and put them in order. Then I decided which ones I would stop at for breakfast, for lunch, for drinks, for supper, or for key lime pie. Since I spent three days driving back and forth to my home-base hotel in Homestead, I had three days to hit all my spots. It worked perfectly.

The first day I did Key Largo; the second day I did some more Key Largo down to Islamorada; and the third day I did just about everything below the Seven Mile Bridge and into Key West.

Marker 88 is a restaurant with an outside tiki bar. Ella and I stopped there to take in the sunset and have a spicy watermelon margarita, and we sat next to an almost-local who gave me tips on the best places to visit. He was from Miami but owns a place on Islamorada, so they come every weekend and boat and snorkel. He said this was the BEST place to get Key Lime Pie. (I obliged. It was good, but my favorite was at Mrs. Mac’s Kitchen.) Over the course of the night, I had the pleasure of sitting next to some very interesting folks, but the most notable was when a guy from Long Island, NY, sat next to me on my right, and we chatted each other up. About ten minutes later, a dude sits on my left and says he’s from NY; to be precise, he’s from Long Island. What are the chances?! They tawked in thei’ N’Yawk accents fa quite some time befaw I left them to thei’ reminiscences.

On the third day, we stopped at the Bahia Honda Beach and then Big Pine to see the key deer before heading down to Key West. Our first stop at the mouth of Key West was the botanical gardens, which had lovely trails through a vast variety of palm trees and shipwreck artifacts. Once in town, however, I was again a little underwhelmed. I was expecting this beautiful beachy experience, but it was really just a commercial, touristy beach town, not very different from so many others.

Key West has far more homes than the other islands, and most of them are really cute and quaint, painted in beach pastels with wraparound porches and porch swings. The island is loaded with restaurants and attractions that cater to tourists, and we headed to the aquarium, which was awesomely dog friendly. It also gave us a taste of all the underwater flora and fauna we had been missing! We walked around Mallory Square, the main gathering point at the Southernmost tip, with lots of shops and museums. It was not the strip mall feel I had become accustomed to and had much more of a beach town feel, and it had a pretty historical significance. Key West was explored by settlers in the 1500s, and in the 1800s was an entry to the US while still being treated as a foreign nation, called the Conch (Konk) Republic.

Mallory Square was adorable with brick inlaid streets and shops with wrap-around porches and several little parks. It was fun to walk around, and the place was full of energy. We parked in a parking garage right at the beach at the Southernmost point, so that’s where we were regaled with the peaceful sunset with boats and palm trees as a natural backdrop.

We stopped at the Salty Frog at Mallory Square for supper, and a lady who could only eat half of the sirloin steak she ordered gave the rest to Ella. She said it would have gone to waste otherwise, so Ella got a half a steak and some leftover French fries from this dear sweet soul. Our server brought a bowl of water, and Ella was in heaven. A live musician was playing James Taylor tunes, and that was a really fun ending to a great Florida Keys week.

Most of the time it’s really fun to look around for areas to stay, to camp, and of course I have a preference for some place beautiful. I’m especially fond of state parks and stay in them as much as I can because there is almost always something to see and do. In the Keys, because it was their high season and the midst of Christmas and New Year’s, there were no camping spots available anywhere. I spent a lot more money in the Keys than I had anticipated because of the food and drink, but also because I stayed in a hotel. Hotels in the Keys were anywhere from $500-$2,000 per night because of the holidays, so I chose a little historic hotel in Homestead, on the mainland, where the room was $100 a night – budget for sure. It looked like it may have had a full clientele at one time, but those days were long past. As you walked in you were greeted by a large wooden staircase that wound upward, hinting that maybe it was a grand home for the town settlers a hundred-some-odd years ago. The carpet was thick, garnet-red, and accents of emerald-green accessorized the rooms. My room had a heavy, rose oil air freshener that hearkened back to a great aunt’s home during the holidays.  It was a dive hotel in a dive town, and the price was just right.

The fellow who checked me in handed me a key and made a point to say, “You’re the only one with a key to this room. Each room is keyed differently and has its own key, so you don’t have to worry about anyone else having a key.” Okay. I mean I wasn’t really worried about that, but now I just might be. And it was a real, true-to-life key, like back in the day. Actually, two keys – one for the outside of the building and one to my actual room.

That night while I’m asleep, at 1:30 in the morning, somebody opens my door with a key. I had pulled the bolt latch over, and I’m so glad I did. The door caught on the bolt latch with some force and woke Ella and me up. The perpetrator was all flustered and I heard him say, “Somebody’s in here, somebody is in 102,” and in my deepest, meanest voice, I said “HELLOOOO, Yes! Somebody is in 102!” trying to sound threatening. I heard him talking some more in the hallway. Then he went away – no apology, no explanation. My adrenaline was pumping pretty hard, and I was thinking how very thankful I was I secured the latch. I remember him saying, sort of muffled, “You told me there was nobody in this room,” so I had a couple of scenarios in my head. Either somebody who normally has this as a long-term rental was just coming back unexpectedly in the middle of the night, or maybe it was the Miami-based owner of the hotel who just needs a room for the night. I stayed awake for several hours, heart pumping, listening intently, but it didn’t seem like we were in any danger at all. It sounded like an honest mistake. There wasn’t anybody else in the hallway that I could hear. It sounded like he was alone, talking on the phone, trying to figure out why he was told that the room was empty. I also wanted to know why he was told the room was empty.

The guy went away as soon as he heard there was somebody in the room. It was obviously a mistake. I let it go. The next morning, while I was taking Ella for a walk, a workman stopped me and said, “Oh I’m so sorry! I want to apologize to you for what happened last night! We had an air conditioner leak, and the guy was supposed to get access through your room, but there was a mix up,” or something like that. So, apparently the perp was an on-call workman, bless his soul, probably awakened in the middle of the night and told to come do this job that nobody wanted to do and ended up busting in on a customer. It sure was quite the surprise for both me and Ella!

All-in-all, I was super happy to have this hotel room, so close and accessible to the Keys. Plus I got a nice warm shower and slept between sheets instead of in my roof top tent, which is pretty great. During the Keys’ high season, I felt like a thief, enjoying the modest, inexpensive digs, despite the shenanigans.