The Florida Keys, Dry Tortugas National Park, & Everglades National Park

For the last half of January, our home base was Larry and Penny Thompson Memorial Park in Homestead. For $500/month with full hookups, you can just live at this Miami-Dade County Park for the entire winter season, for which there is a 5+ year waitlist. Usually, there is a 14-day stay limit at public parks so this is odd. Also, parks this affordable are usually not very nice, but this one was very nice. Most of the people there were from Quebec. We only got in on a last-minute cancellation after realizing our planned dry camping spot inside Everglades NP was a terrible idea due to the need for A/C. Our site was on the inside of a loop, therefore not great. But the sites on the outside of the loops were nice and spacious. By the time we left, we were considering adding our names to the waitlist.

We were in Pod 6, Site 19. The beautiful trails, as well as proximity to the Keys and National Parks, are why we liked this park so much.

Because we couldn’t ‘live’ in the Keys on this Florida winter trip, we took a 3-day vacation there.

Our first stop was to pick up some key lime pie at the Blonde Giraffe in Key Largo. We ate lunch and our pie and swam at Sombrero Beach in Marathon which is considered the middle of the Keys. And last, walked part of the 7-mile bridge, because we knew a lot more key lime pie was in our future.

We stayed at the Courtyard Waterfront hotel in “New Town” Key West and used our bikes to get to all the sights in “Old Town”.

After biking around a bit we went to Mallory Square to watch the sunset with all the other tourists that do this every night.

There’s a bar for everybody in Key West, including those obsessed with dogs like us! We got fish tacos from Garbo’s Grill and ate them at Hank’s Saloon, named in honor of a golden retriever. There was also a pup in the band, spot him in the photo on the right.

Even farther west than Key West, you will find the Dry Tortugas, a small group of keys that has one of the prettiest National Parks you may have never heard of. This remote park is accessed by seaplane or ferry. We took the more affordable ferry option. The downside is that because it’s a 70-mile trip, you are on the ferry for about 5 hours and only have 3.5 hours in the park. You can tent camp if you get a permit, which has us considering tent camping again.

We started with a self-guided tour of Fort Jefferson, a 19th-century fort that protected the deep shipping channel between the Strait of Florida and the Gulf of Mexico.

And spent the rest of our time swimming and snorkeling in the clearest prettiest water we’ve ever seen in the US.

We loved Dry Tortugas National Park and it is definitely on our return list.

Back in Key West that night we had dinner at the Cuban Coffee Queen (where we also ate breakfast twice) and went on our own key lime dessert tour which included key lime pie cheesecake, chocolate-dipped frozen key lime pie, and coconut key lime pie (our favorite!).

We spent our last day in the Keys on the beach in Bahia Honda State Park.

The next weekend was spent at Everglades National Park. On our first visit, we entered the park from the Homestead area. Near the entrance is a fruit stand called Robert is Here. This is a must-stop for a milkshake or smoothie made with their fresh fruit and also fruit to bring home. Because who doesn’t need to try fruit that tastes like chocolate pudding or pumpkin pie?

We drove the main park road to its end at Florida Bay, a shallow lagoon between the southern tip of the Florida peninsula and the Keys. The park calls this area Flamingo, which is very misleading because sadly there aren’t any flamingos. It’s a beautiful area though and has a campground with electric hookups that we’d consider in the future.

This is the only place in the world where crocodiles and alligators coexist which is pretty neat. We may have seen a crocodile in the water, but we don’t know if we can trust the source of this information nor do we have a good photo. You can also see manatees here but we didn’t.

We walked on a couple of the short trails along the road, including the popular Anhinga Trail at sunset.

Our second Everglades adventure was biking the 14-mile Shark Valley loop, which is typically experienced on a tram ride. We counted 18 alligators that we biked right next to, who couldn’t have cared less about us. On the second half of the ride, we battled a constant 20 mph headwind and barely made it out.

Next up is a 2-week stay on the gulf side of Florida at Fort Desoto in St. Petersburg!