Posts Tagged With: Key Largo FL

The view from the Courtyard Key Largo FL

Key West, FL. April 8

Our adventures and experiences are almost uniformly positive. Sunday the 7th we had a negative experience. John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park offers a 2.5 hour glass bottom tour that transports you out to the coral reefs off the Keys. The reef and the fish are to be the highlights of the tour. For our 9:15 AM tour, they expected us there 1 to 1.5 hours early. We had to leave our motel in Florida City at 7:15 AM. Well, that much time might be necessary for an afternoon tour to fight your way through crowds. It was not necessary for the first tour of the day, even though there were ten cars in front of us when the park opened its gates at 8 AM.

On the glass bottom boat, traveling down the canals before the open seas

That was not the bad experience. The boat leaves the harbor and travels through canals or creeks surrounded by mangrove islands. Then it reaches the open ocean and the trouble began. Despite having taken several boat rides recently, this one made me nauseous. Sea Sickness had struck. Luckily I was able to sit down in the open air, look at my feet, and did not demonstrably and visibly demonstrate my sea sickness, if you get my drift.

Believe it or not, this was our best picture taken on the glass bottom boat

Inside the boat, there are four sets of glass windows four feet into the water. Chris was able to endure the boats motion and hot air inside the cabin for only so long before she took the safe option and joined me topside. We could hear the naturalist’s narration about the fish and the reefs from where we were sitting up above. But Chris noted that even when she was next to the glass windows, there was not all that much to see.

So our 2.5 hour boat ride was basically wasted. We had a few pretzels and water at a picnic table in the shade (the temps have been in the mid to high 80s most of the time we have been here). The park also has a visitor center with a small aquarium and an hour long video about the park, reefs, and the fish and animals that inhabit the reef area. The video was excellent, great videography, knowledgeable narration, comfortable chairs, air conditioning and no rocking sea motion. We watched the whole thing.

We checked in early to our lodging at the Courtyard in Key Largo and did what many people do on vacation. We jumped in the pool and relaxed. The pool water was not cold and the time was very relaxing. We are starting to change our mode of travel a bit to slow down, stay in one location for several days more frequently, drive less, and not spend all of the time visiting museums or hiking.

The African Queen chugging down the canal

Dinner was a flatbread ordered from a nearby bar/restaurant and eaten on our patio watching the ships along the canal, including the original African Queen used by Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn in the movie.

Monday morning we left Key Largo, destination Key West for four nights. Our main goal is to take, hold your breath, a day long boating excursion to Dry Tortugas National Park. (More about that when it happens, but I have already purchased my Dramamine.) Chris and I were here years ago for one night only, and did not make it to the National Park.

A secondary goal was to experience again the Overseas Highway, that scenic 113 mile road that connects the U.S. Mainland to Key West. The road has 42 bridges connecting 44 islands, the longest bridge is seven miles. Chris and I have a fond memory of the soaring bridges, the beautiful water/sky interface of various shades of blue, and a calm setting.

Today, a traveler does not even see much of the ocean until mile marker 80, about 30 miles into the trip. Gas stations, T-shirt shops, dive shops, restaurants, lodgings, etc. line the roadway with nary a break. And of course, at the Key West end are even more and larger lines of commercial establishments.

We were able to enjoy a little over half of the journey and enhanced it by stopping at Bahia Honda State Park on Bahia Honda Key. At Bahia Honda, we took a ranger (who was born in Hastings MN) talk about the history of the park and the construction of the Highway. Once again, Henry Flagler was the prime mover. Other blog posts have discussed the role of Flagler, immensely rich from work with John Rockefeller and Standard Oil, and his success in developing Florida’s east coast from St. Augustine to Miami, primarily through his Florida East Coast Railway.

In 1890, Key West was the largest city in Florida with a population of 18,000 people. It had a deep water port and with the opening of the Panama Canal, Flagler thought extending his rail line to Key West would prove to be a financial bonanza. Instead it was a bust. Eight long years, from 1905 to 1912, of construction were necessary before the trains began running. The bridge building process, along with hurricanes, mosquitoes, etc. proved a challenging endeavor. Eventually it was completed.

But hurricanes are unpredictable. In September 1935, a 200 mph hurricane hit the Keys. Hundreds of people died with a storm surge of 17 feet knocking out 40 miles of track. The bridges survived though. Rebuilding the rail line was ruled out due to the Great Depression and the lack of sufficient commercial traffic on the rail line. The State of Florida bought it for pennies, actually hundredths of a penny on the dollar of the construction cost. Eventually the old rail line and bridges made the foundation for the current U.S. 1, the Overseas Highway to Key West.

A view of the underpinnings of the old trestle bridge. Note the old water main to the lower right; all water consumed on the Keys is piped in from Miami.

Bahia Honda played an important role in the history of the rail line and the road. At Bahia Honda, the bridge had to stretch almost a mile across one of the deepest and fastest moving channels. Newly invented German concrete that cured in salt water was used but a hurricane in 1910 wiped out part of the work. When the highway was built, the trestle bridge here was too narrow to support two lanes of traffic. Extra supports had to be installed to allow for a sufficient width. Eventually a whole new bridge was installed east of the old one; time has taken its toll on the rail bridge. A few years go it was closed off to pedestrian traffic; we were only able to walk on a short section protruding out from Bahia Honda Key.

This had been part of the camp sites. Mangrove trees had sheltered the camp sites, lining the shore all the way from your right up to the ocean on your left. Now all are gone.

Our second Bahia Honda talk was a ride on a golf cart with another couple and two volunteer docents. The driver was new, still learning how to drive the cart, as evidenced by the herky-jerky stops and starts. This talk showcased the damage caused by Hurricane Irma in September 2017. The park is partially closed; camp sites and day use areas still not usable. The park is not alone, the local paper stated that the county has cleared 172 canals of hurricane debris with only a couple of hundred more to go.

Where the day use area had been; note the damage to asphalt.

The volunteers showed us where the day use area had been. Concrete and asphalt had been ripped up. Mangroves had provided protection and shelter for camp sites; today the mangroves are gone, the beach has been covered with sand, and new vegetation is starting to cover the new sand. Four picnic pavilions used to be here, Irma ripped away three so completely even the remnants were undiscoverable. The strongest part of any hurricane is usually the right-front quadrant, that is the part that hit Bahia Honda. Plans are being evaluated, bids sought, and hopes are that most destroyed areas of the park can be re-built by October 2020.

After Bahia Honda we continued down the Overseas Highway to Big Pine Key, looking for the elusive key deer. Key deer are direct descendants of white-tailed deer, but having been cut off from the mainland, the shortage of drinking water and good browsing habitat has resulted in a deer species weighing less than 90 pounds and about two to two and a half feet high. We stopped at the visitor center for the National Key Deer Refuge and the volunteers indicated where our best luck would be to spot them. We tried the locations but no luck. Of course since it was the middle of the day, most of them were probably resting in shade. We may try again on our way to Miami Friday morning.

For the next four nights we are at a Fairfield Hotel in Key West, about four miles east of downtown Key West. Again the pool water temperature was relaxingly warm and refreshing.

View of the old trestle bridge from Flagler’s Overseas Railway to Key West

Ed and Chris. April 8