End of the road

It was windy yesterday, our last day in the Everglades. So instead of kayaking on open water, we returned to the channel. It was less crowded on our second trip, and we saw several manatees. One swam beneath our kayaks and surfaced to take a breath. That was thrilling! Unfortunately, it moved too quickly to take a photo. We also saw a few more American Crocodiles, which was also exciting considering that they are a vulnerable species. Afterwards, we again followed the wisdom of the animals and rested during the heat of the day.

Today, we made the drive along the Overseas Highway to reach the Florida Keys, the furthest point on our journey. Neither of us has visited the Florida Keys before, and they are just as beautiful as we imagined, with blue seas of the Caribbean on our left and blue seas of the Gulf on our right. Getting there, however, was not half the fun. First, the approach to the keys is extremely congested, and we spent nearly an hour completely stopped in traffic. There were no accidents to cause such congestion; it seemed purely caused by poor traffic engineering. While we were stopped, we passed the time by listening to our friend Craig on the latest episode of the Radiolab podcast. Second, as we drove along the keys, there were plenty of things to see and do, but none of the places where we tried to stop had RV parking. Never mind that we saw many other RVs along the drive. But it inspired us to return someday with a car instead of an RV.

While we were driving, Phillipa texted Amy that she and her husband Victor were discussing whether we would drive to Key West. Victor said that we couldn’t drive an electric vehicle to Key West, but Phillipa watched our map and saw that, indeed, we were driving to Key West! Technically, we’re at Bluewater Key Resort on the Saddlebunch Keys, about 15 miles from Key West. This was the nicest RV resort we could find in the area, and it is absolutely gorgeous. We have ample room for our car and trailer. A table with an umbrella. And a tiki hut! (Never mind that tiki huts are more of a Pacific thing…). With power, water, internet and plenty of sunshine, this will be a very nice place to call home this weekend. Especially since our son Ari texted us a photo of snow back home in Seattle.