Biscayne Boat Ride and Our Four Month Anniversary

We made reservations for Saturday, 11/26, to take the boat tour at Biscayne National Park. About 95% of the park is underwater and there is only one mile of paved road in the 173,000 acre park – so to see much of anything you need a boat!  Our Sea Eagle inflatable kayak just isn’t going to cut it on the open ocean, so we opted for the 3-hour boat tour on the Pelican Skipper, a 45-foot power catamaran. We left from the visitor center and motored across Biscayne Bay while a National Park Ranger provided information on the history, wildlife and ecosystems of the park. We saw lots of sea birds and mangroves, but no alligators here.

There was a (very) short walking trail near the visitors center with ocean on either side.

You can see the patterns of the coral in the "stonework". Very cool.

Motoring across Biscayne Bay on the Pelican Skipper.

The other Pelican Skipper! Lol.

The scenery was beautiful! We stopped at Boca Chita Key for about an hour. The history was really interesting. The whole key used to be privately owned by millionaire Mark Honeywell in the 1930s. He build the 65-foot ornamental lighthouse, a huge pavilion, and several other buildings on the key and threw some fabulous parties. The lighthouse was purely decorative and was never meant to guide ships, he would light it up and then shoot off a cannon to welcome visitors. Interesting to see how the one-percenters lived in the 1930’s! We got to climb the lighthouse, explore the grounds, and play on the beach before returning to the visitors center.

Boca Chita Key Lighthouse

Purely decorative, it was still beautiful!

Amazing views from the top.

You could see Miami in the distance.

Glass domed roof of the lighthouse.

Going down.

Red mangroves along the shoreline.

I made a new friend!

November 25th was our four-month anniversary on the road! Another month has sped by and we’re a third of the way through our year of travel! So far we’ve driven 7335 miles in the RV, pumped 882 gallons of diesel, stayed at 45 different places, visited 13 National Parks/Monuments, many state/local parks, Disney and Universal Studios, and hit 25 states.  Busy we has been. Lol.

The best part of the past month or so was having the kids visit. Great to see our babies and share some of the fun with them. We hit Florida the end of October and won’t be leaving the state until after the new year. Of course, we aren’t staying in just one place that whole time. Florida is a big state with lots of areas to explore. The landscape and wildlife here are so different from home – we find it fascinating, but feel no temptation to make any permanent move.

We’re headed to the Keys next and have one more National Park, Dry Tortugas, to visit and then all that’s on the schedule is beach time! Of course, we still plan to stay active but we’re really looking forward to adding beach combing and snorkeling to our exercise list! I’ve gained close to 10 pounds and Rog about half that since we started our trip. Hard not to indulge when there are so many yummy things to try. At least in the Keys we hope to find lots of fresh seafood, which shouldn’t be too hard on the waistline. On the other hand, given the heat, ice cream is going to be hard to resist. :)

When it’s 87˚ and sunny, it just doesn’t feel like the holidays. But Thanksgiving made me realize that Christmas is going to be hard. I missed doing my annual Black Friday shopping marathon with my brother Tim. Shopping on Amazon just isn’t as much fun! Lol. Anyway, we’ll see how it goes. This will be the first Christmas we haven’t been together as a family and I expect it will be hard on all of us. At least, I get Rog’s cooking! Lol. 

For now the adventure continues, so thanks for joining us!