Day 58: Key West
Yup, as predicted, Nicholas gave us the opportunity to wake up extra early today with the time change. We tried having him rest in our bed, but ultimately after tossing and turning for a while, we sent him back to his bed with a Kindle to get us a few extra minutes of rest.
We switched campgrounds back to Bahia Honda today. For this drive, Nicholas rode with Rob in the RV, and Cooper rode with me in the car. I may have told Cooper that we could talk all he wanted if he rode with me, so he jumped at the chance. We are trying to take these small moments to give the boys a few minutes of space from each other during this trip, since the time apart is so rare.
When planning out the week, we realized last night that if we wanted to go to Key West, we needed to make today the day. It’s an hour Bahia Honda , so the timing wouldn’t work for a morning or afternoon adventure during the work/school week.
Our site wasn’t ready, so we left the motorhome in the marina parking lot, took off the bikes, and headed to Key West.
First on our list was to hit a couple of the tourist stops: the “Southernmost point in the US” buoy and the Mile 0 of US Highway 1. Apparently a lot of people stop at the buoy, since they had tape lines way down the sidewalk to keep people distanced. There was a line to take a picture, but it moved fast.
The boys and I then walked to mile marker 0, and Rob met us with the car. There was a tourist shop next to the marker, and it was the first time we have gone into a store like this on our trip. We masked up and the boys were excited to find a treasure to take home. It ended up being an hour+ event, as we had to drive to a new tourist shop with more options to find everyone what they needed. Rob and I got hats, and the boys got shirts and sunglasses.
Now we were all geared up and ready to hit the beach. The Fort Zachary Taylor State Park ended up being the perfect beach: beautiful turquoise water and lots of fish to see with our snorkels.
The beach surface here was different than I have ever seen before. The “rocks” were big and small pieces of white coral. Mixed in with these rocks were tons of dried sponges and some sea grass. It was really cool to see so many different kinds of sponges straight from the ocean (I wish I would have taken a picture to help remind me of the variety).
It was our first time snorkeling in deep water, and the boys showed me quickly that I also needed to wear a life jacket. I can swim okay on my own, but add a boy or two pulling down on me and I needed the floating help.
Snorkeling with Nicholas is so much fun. He loves to hold my hand as we snorkel, and we have even made up own own hand signals for when we find things or want the other person to look at something.
They even had a small snack shop where we treated ourselves to ice cream and beer to wrap up this stop.
As we were finishing up, it started to sprinkle. The black clouds showed it would likely get worse very soon, so we packed up and headed home.
On the drive home the car started acting up again. The radio display would turn off when we accelerated and then come back on again at a random time. At one point Rob turned the headlights on and that completely disengaged the transmission. Fortunately, he kept his cool and turning the headlights off had the transmission engaged again, all while we continued down the road.
We finally made it back to the campsite and got checked in. Rob tested the voltage at the battery with the engine running, and it looks like we aren’t getting power from the alternator (only ~12.5V with the engine running), so more investigating will need to happen. The other time we’ve had similar issues with the car, it also involved water, so perhaps something is going on there.
We returned to our RV in the parking lot to find all was well. It was the first time we have left it in the heat without being plugged in, and the thermometer inside said 100. We opened some vents and windows and started the generator to get the A/C going. Rob took the car to the site so if it didn’t start we wouldn’t be in the marina parking lot, and we all took full length showers since we were going to make a dump stop before parking. With the late night it was a “hot dogs on the stove” kind of dinner. We are here for five nights, so it was time to get settled in.
