Hello again friends,
This May, we were once again supposed to be in the Bahamas. But for the 2nd year in a row Covid kept us out. So we were left wondering what do to. Do we take our chances traveling to Mexico? What about going back to Hawaii? How about giving Iceland a try? Turns out Covid played a part in keeping those destinations out of reasonable reach for us so we decided to stay in the lower 48 and go to the Florida Keys. I have never been there before and since the diving was supposed to be great the destination made absolute sense.
We packed the bags and our equipment and off we went. We flew into Fort Lauderdale, rented a car, drove across the State of Florida and stayed the night in Cape Coral. Cape Coral is a city that we have considered moving to and we wanted to check out the scene. You know…housing, community, and of course the dive scene. It checked all the boxes except one: the local diving wasn’t exactly what I was expecting. But that’s ok…after spending some time there and meeting and talking with some local people I believe that if we could find good jobs there we would make the move.
After, we drove down through Naples and hit the northern part of the Everglades before crossing the bridge and arriving in the Florida Keys. We ended up in Marathon, which is right in the approximate middle of the chain between Key Largo and Key West (link below). It was a good place to base out of and we were happy to be there. And I’m sorry I didn’t get any pictures of these areas before getting off the mainland, but if you ever driven the highway we were on you’d know there isn’t much to photograph along that route.
Unfortunately, the weather didn’t exactly cooperate with us the entire time we were there. The wind never stopped blowing and it got worse with each passing day. The result was that the water was so rough and churned up that half our diving was canceled out (an no chance to get in and snorkel and swim off the beaches). It was so rough that I even got seasick at one point. Yuck. But of those times that I did get out to dive I managed to get a few photographs that I’ll post separately.
The wind didn’t really stop us from getting out and doing a little exploring, however. We got to Key West and the southernmost point in the contiguous United States, the 7-Mile Bridge, some of No Name Key, Deer Key, Islamorada, The Bahia Honda Bridge (before and during sunset), and Crane Point Hammock.
Below are some of the non-diving pictures I took (those will be in another post). I hope that you enjoy them. As always, please don’t hesitate to comment.
Blessing,
Chris.
