Manatees! They’re right there!

Laura Domela — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 20:29:21 +0000

We just went out for a walk on the beach.

Kinda ugly here, isn't it?

We walked a little bit the other way and there were three or four manatees playing in the water about 10 feet from the water line. So cool!

I'm standing this close, feet barely touching the water, and this is taken with my iPhone, so there are no long lens shenanigans going on.

I realize you can't really see them very well…but I wanted you to see just how close they were.

And one more shot of our nice campsite here:

Curry Hammock State Park (and Stone Crab Season Starts Today)

Laura Domela — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 18:53:00 +0000

We drove a whoppin' 20 minutes today from Long Key State Park to Curry Hammock State Park.

Right before I took this photo I saw a huge green sea turtle just RIGHT THERE swimming in the water. Super cool. We passed it before I realized what I was seeing and I didn't have time to snap a picture. But here's what they look like. It was a huge one, too…probably three feet long.

This is our new campsite (below). We'll only be here one night…we're heading down to Bahia Honda tomorrow for two nights (another grueling 20 minute drive with water on both sides…I'm already tired thinking about it…oh wait, I'm not).

So, see that picnic table right there? Well, the right side bench looked like a great place to stand to get a photo that had more of the water and beach in it, but as I stepped up onto the end of it, it quickly became clear that the bench was not attached to the supports below it, and the other side came flying up as I did a little dance to avoid being smacked in the head with a giant heavy board. Nice.

We drove into Marathon to get some lunch (and some stone crab claws!) at Keys Fisheries.

The view from lunch:

We had a lobster reuben, some scallops, and a side of conch fritters…all really good.

Today is the first day of stone crab season (lucky us) and we picked up some of these colossal-sized claws in the fish market for dinner. They're already cooked…all we need is a plastic bag and a hammer.

Last night at Long Key we met up with some readers (and new Airstream owners! Yay!) who live here in the Keys for dinner at our Airstream (Hi Debbie and Dan!). They asked questions about Airstream travel and in turn gave us some great tips for the rest of our visit to the Keys. Dan's an avid fisherman and they brought over a variety of fresh fish that we grilled up and had with a big salad and some wine for dinner last night. Great visit with really nice folks. They also left us some hogfish that Dan caught spearfishing so we'll cook that up tonight (with a side of crab, of course).

(p.s. Four bars of AT&T cell coverage on my iPhone…not on Kevin's cuz his went in the drink yesterday…and we're using our Verizon datacard on LTE still for work and it's fast and solid.)

Curry Hammock – Riveted

Manatees! They’re right there!

Curry Hammock State Park (and Stone Crab Season Starts Today)