As you can see we had a gorgeous site at Bahia Honda State park. We had been here twice before and didn't have such pleasant sites. Once we were inside with other campers along side and once we were on the Bay and could hear the cars going "clippity clop" all night over the bridge.
While sitting behind our site on the boat channel a neighbor passed and offered us some fish he had caught we immediately accepted but commented that we couldn't clean them. A few hours later he came to our site with a bag of cleaned local fish. He told us their names but we didn't write it down and don't remember but they made three great dinners.
The sunset at Bahia Honda is of course superb and the water between the new bridge and the abandoned East Coast Railway Bridge is a calm harbor for boats.
Bahia Honda is at mile 36. Mile 0 is Key West. We went to Key West the country's most southern spot is only 90 miles from Cuba.
We went to Mallory Square, The Little White House where Truman spent his vacations and for dinner at The Cafe Marquesa. The Cafe has a 26 for food rating from Zagat's. They are known for their "gourmet seafood" and The meal was terrific. I had a Hawaiian Fish don't remember the actual name but it was called "White Tuna". Dessert was pretty good but a little rich and the meal cost us more then the restaurant at the CIA (Culinary Institute of America). As good as it was it wasn't necessarily better then the CIA but it was up there.
While we were on the Key's, Debby took out a library card and I borrowed McCullah's book on Truman. Reading it was an eye opener for me . It's amazing how much of his agenda has been side tracked by the Republicans, much to the detriment of this country.
On the Key just below Bahia Honda is the Key Deer National Refuge and Blue Hole a well known fresh water pond and home to a few alligators.
Key deer are related to other deer but for some reason adults don't grow to the same size as deer on the mainland. That is an adult deer standing next to the rooster in the picture below.
From Bahia Honda we went North on the Oversea highway to Long Key State Park and stayed at Long Key for two weeks.
While there we visited and walked on the bridge to Pigeon Key. Even if you haven't been to Pigeon Key you may be familiar with this bridge. When the East Coast Railway went from Miami to Key West it stopped on Pigeon Key. The bridge was abandoned and replaced by the Seven Mile Bridge when the Overseas Highway was built. Last year I saw a commercial with a guy in a boat and a guy in a car looking at each other as they raced by each other. I think this commercial was filmed on the Pigeon Key Bridge. We left Long Key, stopped at the Key Largo library to return some books, stopped at Robert's for produce and a key lime pie and went to the Flamingo Campground in Everglades National Park. When the town of Flamingo, Florida which later became part of Everglades NP, was named there were flamingos present. Unfortunately there are no flamingos outside of zoos in the United States. Occasionally a few flamingos are spotted at Snake Bite a trail at the park but nobody is sure if these are wild flamingoes or escapees from a zoo or private park.