Florida Keys

We visited John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park to take the boat and snorkel tour.

We had originally signed up for the afternoon tour, because that was all that was open. But we got there in the morning and asked about moving to an earlier tour, and they were able to move us to a morning tour leaving in a little while. That turned out to be good, as the wind picked up, we are not sure if the late afternoon tour we were originally on even went.

Lots of fish. There were three Barracuda at a cleaner fish station with their mouths open, and the cleaner fish were going over them.

The cleaner fish will even go into the Barracuda’s mouths to clean.

We also hiked the three short trails at the park.

The next day we drove to Key West to be there for an early departure to Dry Tortugas National Park.

We looked for the Key Deer in the Key Deer National Wildlife Refuge on the way, but it was near the middle of the day, so didn’t see them. We stopped at the Blue Hole Observation Platform and saw

After getting to Key West, there was time to see the Hemingway Home. This is the house he lived in with his second wife, Pauline. Pauline lived here after divorcing in 1940. The house has a number of cats that are descendants of a six toed cat that a sea captain gave to Hemingway. Not all of the cats there have six toes.

Key West has a number of chickens running around.

We went over to the water (about two blocks from our hotel) to watch the sunset.

After seeing Dry Tortugas we got up early the next morning to see if we could catch the Key Deer on the way back and were successful.