The Florida Keys

Key Largo

December 10-24, 2023

At last! We were on our way to our ultimate get-out-of-Michigan-for-winter destination… the Florida Keys! Our first stop for two weeks was John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park in Key Largo. We were lucky to get a two week booking at this state park (Emily was on the state park booking site exactly 11 months ago at 8am to snatch a spot) as the nightly rate to stay at one of the state parks is significantly less than any other campground in the Keys. The campground is in a quiet part of the park at the back with no through traffic and each site has full hookups. There was a mangrove swamp at the back of the site which was clearly a home for about ten-gzilllion biting sand flies (“no-see-ums” as the Americans call them) and which Abigail could not help herself but go and explore. She came back in one piece.

Unfortunately (or fortunately as turned out to be the case) Emily had to turn back around on the Tuesday and fly from Miami to Kalamazoo for work for the rest of the week. It turned out to be a good thing because it rained cats and dogs from Tuesday through Saturday, which meant that Justin was confined to the camper with two dogs and a cat, but didn’t have to also share the space with Emily. However, in true Justin style he made the most of it and took the initiative to resurface the campsite after the trailer began to stand in five inches of water. He had located the gravel pit at the back of the park and convinced the park rangers to bring him a load of it on the bob cat (handy-work in the photo above)!

It turns out that Florida is experiencing its fair share of the El Nino that has set in this year. We hadn’t encountered much wet weather on our journey so far, but this week at Key Largo was certainly heralding the arrival of a unusually rainy winter.

When Emily returned from Kalamazoo and the rain cleared over the weekend we started to explore the park a little more and took a swim at the “beach”. Justin even tried some snorkeling. Now – I’m not sure if our disappointment in the beach was because we are spoilt Australians who have grown up on the best beaches in the world and have unreasonably high expectations of what a beach should be, or whether our expectations of what the Florida Keys actually were was a little bit off. But there are no beaches here. There is an entrance to the water between the mangroves which is piled two feet high with sea grass.

A couple of notes on the sea grass: firstly, this part of the world is home to the manatee (sea cow), a cousin of the dugong in the southern hemisphere (they can be distinguished by their tail – a manatee has a paddle-shaped tail and the dugong has a fluke-shaped tail). So the sea grass here supports a habitat for these beautiful creatures which is one reason you can’t hate on the stinking piles of grass too much. Secondly, and more depressingly, the sea grass on the beach contained millions of little pieces of plastic. Not so much whole pieces of rubbish, but broken down plastic about the size of a coin which would be impossible to completely clean up due to its size. The type of waste that you hear of getting stuck up turtle noses and aggregated in the stomachs of birds, fish and other wildlife. As Emily’s mum put it – we, as a species, have really soiled the nest. Yes we have.

But once we got over the fact the beaches were not exactly as we had expected them to be, we started to appreciate the landscape for what it was. The water around the keys is exceptionally clear and hosts many fish, crabs and birds living in and around the mangroves.

This guy emerged from the mangrove swamp behind the campsite one afternoon with a crab flailing around helplessly in his beak. He proceeded to rip it limb from limb, crack open its shell and devour its insides in front of us. He was very adept at this with the entire massacre only lasting a few minutes. He is a juvenile yellow-crowned night heron.

We did take ourselves out to dinner for the first time since we had left Kalamazoo while we stayed here – to the Lazy Lobster Seafood restaurant across the road from the park. We had of course gotten takeaway food now and then prior to this, but we rarely leave the dogs unattended in the trailer. But seeing this restaurant was literally across the road we knew we wouldn’t be gone very long so decided to treat ourselves. The dogs were fine of course and likely they didn’t realize we had actually left the campsite. Anyway – we had been looking for some decent seafood since we hit the Atlantic coast in September and the Lazy Lobster definitely delivered! We recommend.

After a few more rainy days we caught a break in the weather for a bit of exploring down the Overseas Highway (US1).

Grassy Key

Dec 24 2023 – Jan 3 2024

On Christmas Eve we hooked up our mobile home and dragged it further down the Overseas Highway to Grassy Key RV Resort which is just north of Marathon about half way down the keys. Probably our favorite thing about the keys is the Overseas Highway – a marvel of American engineering that literally takes you over the ocean as it hops from island to island across the Florida Keys. A highly optimistic businessman Henry Flagler originally built a railway connecting the keys which was operational from 1912 – 1935. Whilst the railway ultimately failed due to damage sustained in the 1935 hurricane, the structure served as a base for the original automotive highway and has slowly been replaced and upgraded over the years. Driving this highway affords great views of the ocean and islands in the region and is simply impressive to think the original structure was built over one hundred years ago. America doesn’t do things in halves.

Grassy Key RV Resort is a small and immaculately maintained RV park with its own marina and social area overlooking the Gulf of Mexico. They open their bookings for the season at midnight on April 1 (which we stayed up to make the call and still only managed to get a ten night stay here). We found out there is a loyal group of returning customers who always get to book the next season at the end of their current stay which makes it hard for newbies to get in. Did I mention that you should definitely not come to the Florida Keys without a booking? We met people who did and relied on cancellations to hop around the parks when a spot opened up…. but if you don’t manage to get one, it’s a LONG drive back to the mainland!

Because the resort is so small (and perhaps because we spent Christmas and New Year here) we found the other people staying here to be very sociable. The park also threw a little party on Christmas day which was fun and a good way to meet everyone else.

The first night we stayed here was definitely the best night for two reasons: (1) we had a manatee cow and her calf come into the marina and hang out with us for a few hours; and (2) we met Betty.

We got talking to Betty because Emily had mentioned that she had been carrying some Australian lamb chops around for the past four weeks with the intention of cooking them for Christmas. But none of the sites in the RV park had a fire ring and there were no common grills available for use. Betty very kindly offered for us to borrow her portable gas grill, so the next morning we met Doug (Betty’s husband) who came and brought the grill over to our site for us to use. So we got lamb chops for Christmas dinner and we also got chatting to Betty and Doug.

Betty (aka Emily’s ‘social director’ as Betty declared herself) was extremely kind in inviting us over, inviting us out to dinner, recommending activities and lending her paddle board for exploring in the mangroves. Needless to say we ate out a lot, had a lot of fun, and enjoyed listening to Betty and Doug’s stories of where they’d been (they lived on a boat for years and have done a lap of the eastern seaboard, Great Lakes, inland Midwest and back to Florida!).

Probably the best day out we had in the middle keys was walking over the old highway bridge from Marathon to Pidgeon Key. The footpath is on a three mile stretch of the old highway which follows the new seven mile bridge to Pidgeon Key. The water is so clear you can look down and see fish and sharks hanging out under the bridge. Unfortunately we arrived at Pidgeon Key after it closed (4pm!) so didn’t get to look around the island but got a good view of it from the bridge nonetheless.

Sugarloaf Key and Key West

Dec 3 – 14 2024

Our last ten days in the keys we were parked up at Sun Outdoors Sugarloaf Key – by far the most expensive RV park we had ever stayed in (and will ever stay in). It was impossible to get a booking right down in Key West so this is the closest we could find. The park itself was lovely (as it should have been for the price they were charging)! We particularly appreciated the coin-operated dog wash given Howard and Guinness had not had a bath since before we left Kalamazoo.

An interesting feature of Sugarloaf Key was that we were camping underneath a blimp – one that is tethered to the ground and apparently houses a radar for the navy to keep an eye on anyone entering the area by boat. There was a boat ramp not far from our campground which provided a good view of the blimp and also a good place to swim the dogs.

Key West is the very end of the Overseas Highway (or more correctly, the very beginning – it is home to Mile Marker 0) and was about 14 miles south of where we were parked up in Sugarloaf Key. It has the largest population of all the Florida Keys and is also a very popular holiday destination which means space is limited and everything comes with a premium price tag (although that is kind of the case all the way down the keys – we paid $28 USD – $41AUD – for two coffees and two croissants up near Grassy Key).

We spent the weekends down here exploring Key West with the dogs and Justin visited a few more times by himself during the week. There is a great bike path that ran from our campsite all the way into Key West that Justin took advantage of on the e-bike. He had a lot of fun riding around Key West and says it’s definitely the best way to see the town. The town itself is a mixture of historic houses, dive bars and restaurants, and the United State’s largest population of free range chickens :). We saw a couple of beaches that looked like they were good for a swim but the passing storms had washed in a lot of stingers so we weren’t keen to get in. The food and coffee is particularly good even if it comes with a price tag. We highly recommend the Pepperpot Island Cafe for a delicious Caribbean-influenced lunch – we went there twice.

For some reason it took us until the Florida Keys to realize we should invest in an annual pass for Florida’s state parks. In fact Betty suggested it and brought to our attention they had a special discount on which means we got it for about $70. Florida has state parks everywhere and they are hands down the best locations to camp, have lunch, or simply park for a couple of hours if you need to kill some time with an enormous trailer attached to your vehicle. And given we were going to be in Florida from mid-October to early-March, the annual pass would have been a good investment even for full price. Anyway, we gave it a work-out in Key West because of Fort Zachary Tailor Historic State Park which is on the westernmost tip of the island. It has a good beach, lovely picnic areas and a car park right on the water if you just want to hang out and watch the sun go down. Oh yes, and there is the fort which you can walk around (Justin does forts, Emily minds dogs).

Perhaps the nicest beach that we saw in the keys was at Bahia Honda State Park a bit north of Sugarloaf Key. The park itself is a beautiful spot to have a picnic and stretch your legs. It explains a bit of history about the overseas railway and has a great view of the new highway crossing between Spanish Harbor Key and Sunshine Key. The park also has a really really really nice campground for both tents and RVs but by the time Emily had cottoned onto that there was no way we were going to get a booking. But if you’re coming to the keys – this one should be at the top of your list for both affordability and a superb location.