Key Largo, Florida

February 26 - 28, 2010


John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park

Key Largo, Florida



We arrived here in Key Largo at 12:15 and had to park in a lot until 2:00 waiting for our site to be vacated. Boy, that puts a crimp in your day! However, when finally checking in at 2:00, serendipity happened again (serendipity definition: gift for discovery: a natural gift for making pleasant, valuable, or useful discoveries by accident.) There at the ranger station window was Sue and Wayne and company, hoping to surprise us, and checking in to the park to take the Glass Bottom Boat Tour (more on that later).



First a bit about the Park here. It is quite popular, offering glass bottom boat, snorkeling and scuba tours as well as kayaking trails and a fully equiped marina with boat rentals. I had heard rumors back at Jolly Roger that the camping area here at John Pennekamp will be closing next year for renovations...much needed as far as I'm concerned. After checking in we found our site on a narrow dirt road with a large tree (with low branches very threatening to the top of the rig) on one side and a rock (that could really do some damage to the undercarriage of the rig) on the other. So it took about six "back and forths" before we got into our site (good thing Ken is soooo good at this). Then the front of the rig is almost in the road, so parking the car was a trick. Not really a welcoming park for the big rigs and we won't return here until the renovations are done.



After plugging in and hooking up, we hurried to the dock to join those midwesterners for a trip to the Molasses Coral Reef about five miles off the coast. Coral reefs are living underwater communities which provide food, shelter and breeding areas for many marine plants and animals.

Local legend suggests that Molasses is named for a barge from Jamaica that grounded here many years ago carrying a large cargo of molasses barrels...with that loss, the residents here on the Keys had to wait for the next shipment to ferment that molasses into their much-loved rum.

The glass bottom boat tours are the lazy man's snorkeling, but still worth it to see all this marine life in its natural state rather than in those many aquariums. We saw turtles, stingrays, barracudas and many, many fish!

After the tour, Phil and Don (no, not Everly) asked around (yes, the guys) for a good place to eat and we landed at Jimmy Johnson's Big Chill.

On Facebook, I had recently seen a picture of Sue's daughter, Andrea (who, by the way just got engaged ... yay, congratulations!) and when we saw Captain Morgan here, I knew we had to reciprocate with a picture of mom.

We enjoyed an evening cocktail at the outdoor bar at the Big Chill while watching the most spectacular sunset yet. The skies changed colors over and over and even after we had gone inside for dinner, the picture-takers kept leaving the dining room for "just one more".

We missed our short window to kayak Saturday so we spent our last day on the Keys checking out all those gift (i.e., junk) shops.

I neglected to include this picture in the last blog...one of our many sunset pictures. This one looks like someone up there is enjoying a game of tic-tac-toe!!

We are so blessed with family and like us, they have amazing friends. We've had a wonderful time here in the Keys with Sarah, Susan and Bob, Marilyn and Greg, Sue and Wayne, Don and Faye and Phil and Nancy. Thanks for the memories! Good-bye Florida Keys.