February 19, 2024 - Bohia Honda State Park, Florida Keys

 Monday

Yesterday was kind of a wash out, and we bounced around pretty good in the boat last night, but today should be better (so the weatherman says).

Our neighbors are heading out today and are putting their small trawler on their trailer.  The problem is that the wind was gusting and blowing in a bad direction, so they asked us to help them.  We helped guide the boat on the trailer and went back to our boat.  

We are going to take the bus to Key West since it is only in the 60s.  We stopped at the marina to sign up for snorkeling on Thursday and to find out where to catch the 10:45 a.m. bus.  The bus is $1.00 a person and it took around an hour to get to Key West.    

We got off of the bus on Duval Street and started looking for food (since we forgot to eat breakfast).  We ended up at Two Friends.  I had fish tacos and Kip had a fish sandwich.  It was really good.  It was interesting that you had to dodge birds, chickens, and roosters running around in the outdoor part of the restaurant.   The people at the table next to us were from Bemidji (one guy had a Minnesota hat on, so we chatted with them).   Another guy went by us with a Minnesota Wild shirt on, so we chatted with them too (they were from Maple Grove).  Small world.

The houses are historic and lovely.  Many of them have balconies around the entire second level.  The streets were packed with people shopping, drinking, biking, riding scooters / motorcycles / golf cards, and selling their wares.  We also stopped at Kermit's Key Lime Pie shop (Kip had the key lime pie and I had the strawberry / key lime on a stick covered in chocolate).  YUM!

We walked to the Truman Waterfront Park.  It looks like it might have been a naval base area or gated community with similar houses and beautiful shrubberies at every turn.

We stopped and looked at the Coast Guard Cutter Ingham Maritime Museum.  The ship is 327' long!  We were going to take the tour, but they are closed on Mondays.

We began our walk to the bus stop and took this picture of the Mile 0 sign.   

At the bus stop, Kip took this video for your enjoyment, there are lots of chickens and roosters wondering around.

On the way back to Big Pine Key to do our grocery shopping, I saw this blimp in the sky.  Not sure why it was there.

From the bus we walked a few blocks to the Winn Dixie and noticed that there was a Bealls store there too!  Yippee!  I love that store.   We stopped in there for a while and bought pillows.  Then to Winn Dixie for groceries.  We had $150.00 of groceries and had to carry them back to the bus stop.  Kip carried most of them - I had four bags, plus we each had a backpack.  The bus was very late - it was due to arrive at 7:09 but it didn't show up until almost 7:30 p.m.  

We paid our $2.00 for the bus fare and went over the bridge back to Bahia Honda State Park.  We dropped our groceries off next to the State Park sign, and Kip went across the street to get our bikes.  We each took bags (making sure to keep the load even on both sides so we didn't end up in the trees) and made our way back to the boat.  

We had a fun day, but we are both tired.  Good thing we don't have anything planned for tomorrow, oh, except we have to find our dust pan and brush that we somehow lost somewhere in the boat.