2012 Tour of America
Day 139: R-e-l-a-x-i-n-g.
Today is our fourth full day at Long Key State Park and I finally feel like I am on island time. We have our routine down. Morning walks along the water, looking for treasures.
Today is our fourth full day at Long Key State Park and I finally feel like I am on island time. We have our routine down. Morning walks along the water, looking for treasures.
This morning we are taking one of these little ones to the doctor. Not the one with the apple skirt, not the one holding the ball but our cat Yoda. I suppose Yoda is not really a little one. At 10-years old in cat age, she is more like the oldest lady here.
Today we woke up to find an empty spot next to ours. This campground is so busy, especially this time of year, so I know it won’t be empty for more than a few more hours. I quickly snapped a picture of the least photographed side of the Airstream since it was feeling a little self-conscious.
Since we are planning on staying here at our walk-up site for as long as they will allow us, it might get pretty stale here on the blog in the coming days. But staleness is kind of what we have been hoping for. I have been looking forward to a couple of weeks of staying put. At $43 a night, this isn’t a cheap state park. But at the same time, since we are not driving anywhere and there aren’t too many restaurants tempting you to spend money at, it is a pretty affordable place to spend our days.
Our 5 nights at Bahia Honda have come to an end. I want to say that I am sad to leave but the truth is, we are kind of looking forward to leaving. Yes the view is spectacular and we have heard from so many people who said that this is the best state park for camping in the keys and we are in one of their few waterfront sites. The fact that we have had to run the AC non-stop for 5 straight days has really been a bummer.
Hold onto your seats everyone. Today we are going to see… nothing!! Yippee. Since our trip began over four months ago, almost every day has been go go go. It’s no one’s fault but our own. It’s hard to slow down when there are so many places to see. So today was our day to play catch up. Dan settled into his corner office and got down to business.
If we were planning on going to see Key West, then our best bet would be to go from the Bahia Honda campground since it is much closer than the other two state parks we also have reservations at over the next few weeks. It still feels a little weird to go to cities we already explored during our 2010 cross country trip so we are going to make a conscious effort on not repeating anything we saw last time around. Challenge… accepted!
The skeeters are pretty fierce in these parts of the keys. We have been trying to stay away from them by not spending much time outside which is a real shame. It is beautiful here. The biggest problem is that the air is so stagnant. There isn’t a breeze at all to blow the bugs away. Also since the sites are on ancient coral, asphalt and concrete instead of sand, water sort of just collects into pools and they make for a pretty ideal breeding ground for these pests.
During our only other time here at Bahia Honda, we didn’t actually get to stay at the campground. We drove through it and admired all of the waterfront sites like the one we are in now. It is absolutely stunning. We are backed all the way up against the water and if you are not standing up and close to the window, it feels like we are in a boat floating away.
Today we are saying good-bye to our friends and our courtesy parking spot in Boca Raton. Little Ethan likes to call Ava and Mila “his girls” and Luka gets the label “chubby baby”, which is so on the money. Haha.
We are back in Boca Raton visiting our old friend Paul. We have known Paul for almost 15 years. We met him when we were renting a house in Santa Barbara after we graduated college and needed a roommate. We have been friends ever since. He moved to Florida a few years ago and we make sure to pay him a visit when we are here.
Our four night stay at Fort Wilderness in Disney World has come to an end. We are all a little sad to go but our wallets can’t take this place for more than the 4 nights we have already spent here. The campground is pricey at $65 a night but what killed us more were the 2 day passes we bought for the Magic Kingdom for 4. Thankfully, little Luka was free. But I must say that this campground is well worth its price. There are so many people here but you hardly see anyone, rarely have to stand in lines and getting to the Magic Kingdom is just a short boat ride away.