The Keys & The Everglades

If you have never been to the Florida Keys, you should start planning your trip now. This was our second trip and we still can't get enough. We spent two nights in the Keys and due to a lack of planning on my (Ben) part, we were not able to get a campground and decided to try our hand at car camping, which was much easier to do than expected. Honestly sleeping in the van allowed us much more freedom, we woke up each morning around 6 and got our day started. On our first morning we went to the southern most point in the contiguous U.S. and had breakfast at the Six Toed Cat, which is right next door the house Earnest Hemingway lived in during his years in the keys. There are almost 40 different dog friendly restaurants so we brought the dogs with us and the waitress brought us out a water bowl for the pups and they got attention from just about everyone that walked by. From breakfast we walked to the famous Mallory Square to take a few pictures and let the dogs get some rest while we figured out our next stop. We had seen the sunset from Mallory Square on our honeymoon and had read that the locals all watch it from Fort Zachary Taylor, an old navy base on the beach, so we decided to head over and watch the sun set from there. Fort Zach is one of the only actual beaches in Key west so there were a fair number of people laying out and swimming as well as a few families having cook outs. We wound up spending the rest of the day there and I was able to get a great time lapse of the sunset. We finished out night off with a pizza, very exotic I know, and found ourselves a nice spot to park the van for the night in the Truman Annex. The next morning we checked the weather and realized that is was supposed to rain that evening so we decided to go ahead and get a move on. From the keys we headed down Everglades National Park for two nights of actual tent camping in the Long Pine Key campground. It was only about a three hour drive from the keys up to our campsite so we had plenty of daylight to set everything up and make a fire. We somehow managed to get the best site in the campground that had the only direct access to the lake that bordered one side of the campgrounds, so we set up our chairs and enjoyed the sun set. There was some sort of artist meet up/performance that night as well and we were able to watch it from our spot on the lake as well. Unfortunately, the forecast we looked at didn't call for rain and I did not put the rainfly on our tent when we set up, so we were woken up as the rain first started to come down and rushed to put the rain fly up in the middle of the night. Luckily we got it on in time and didn't get too soaked, but we did manage to put it on upside down, and backwards. The next day we decided to take a drive to cool the dogs off and go check out a fruit stand that we saw on the way in called "Robert Is Here..." where they sell tons of locally grown fruit, I grabbed two of the biggest mangos I have ever seen and a handful of the juiciest pears, as well as fresh fruit milkshakes. I got a key lime shake and got Alexa a mango shake. It was like heaven in a cup and if you're ever in Miami or the everglades you should definitely make the trip. On our way to Robert's we saw two alligators sunning on the side of the road and stopped for a few pictures. We finished our night of with burgers and drinks around the campfire, and we fixed the rainfly since the forecast predicted rain... which never came. Yesterday we drove up to Tallahassee on our way to our next stop, New Orleans. It has officially been a full week for us on the road and the adventure is in full swing. Stay tuned!