Sunday, October 19, 2014
Today we arrived at John Pennakamp Coral Reef State Park near Key Largo. This is a really nice park with full hook-ups and a WiFi hot spot near the visitor center. Our site is on a concrete pad. Since it is a very popular campground our check-in was delayed as the previous tenants were still on site past the 1PM check out time. We finally got set up, but late in the day, so we visited the visitor center and their aquarium, which was pretty neat.
The Florida Keys are a string of islands (Keys) connected by US highway 1 that extends to Key West. The further down US 1 you go, the smaller the islands become and the more remote until reaching Key West. Key Largo is the largest, about 14 miles long and 7 miles wide.
The draw for us here is primarily two activities; the first is snorkeling the coral reef that lies about 5 miles off shore in the Atlantic Ocean and second, the Key of Islamorada, the fishing charter boat capital of the world.
Monday, October 20, 2014
Well as luck would have it, the weather has deteriorated since yesterday, with big rain overnight and wind. This morning it is overcast, but not raining, so we thought we would try the snorkeling this AM. We chose the 4 hour trip run by a Florida State Park Concessionaire, which visits 3 locations.
It was windy with a good two 2 foot waves, kind of a tough go, but the views were awesome. Check out the pictures below.
Brain Coral
Statue - Christ of the Abyss
The statue stands seven feet tall, made of bronze on a concrete base. It lies in 20 feet of water.
Its like swimming around in an aquarium. There are all kinds of coral and fish. Some coral is soft, some is hard. The fish are a rainbow of colors. This is a unique and unforgettable experience!
Tuesday, October 21, 2014
We wanted to do a charter boat fishing trip, however the cost was more than we cared to spend. We needed to find another party to split the charter cost. So the captain called and told us he had another party. We arrive at Whale Harbor in Islamorada, about 20 miles and 2 keys down from the campground and guess who the other party is?
Its our son Brad, who flew down here to fish with us as a surprise! Wow, this tops everything so far this trip and probably everything else we’ll do. Now, if that wasn’t enough, we caught 27 fish! Mostly Mahi-Mahi, with some others. Check this out!
As you can see, the charter was Sea Horse Charters, the captain was Captain Rick Rodriguez, the First Mate was Jeremy. These guys know where the fish are and how to catch them. As we hit schools, it would not be unusual to have three or four on at a time. By the end of the day our arms ached from reeling these guys in. They were all fierce fighters.
That’s Captain Rick cleaning fish. If you want to catch some fish, these are the guys to see. By the way, they told us it was the off-season. Really? When we got done we had about 75 pounds of fillets!
We cooked some up for dinner, man it doesn’t get better than that.
Wednesday, October 22, 2014
Much of the morning was spent repackaging the fish and buying a small fridge. With good packaging we managed to get them in the trailer’s freezer. Our current frozen food got transferred to the small fridge which will get emptied as we go. The trailer freezer will not get opened again until we get home.
Brad wanted to snorkel the Coral Reef, so he and Dan went out on the same tour we took on Monday. We really enjoyed our time with Brad, and look forward to some more fish dinners when we get home.
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