February 14, 2025 - Bohia Honda, Florida Keys

We were up early this morning to catch an early bus to Key West.  We packed our small chairs into our backpacks and rode our bikes to the entrance of Bohia Honda.  Our routine is we put the bikes behind the Bohia Honda State Park sign where they can't be seen.  

It was funny because a Bohia Honda employee yelled across the road asking us if those were our bikes.  We told him yes, and he didn't seem to care.

We caught the bus, sat down, and realized it was FREEZING COLD in the bus!  What the heck.  We went from 75 degrees to -0 (or so it felt) in seconds.  It took about 1 hour to get to the Keys.  

Since we kind of forgot to eat breakfast, we began the search for coffee.  We ended up at the Galleon Marina walking the docks, even though the sign said if we weren't dock guests, we should stay off of the docks.  We ran into a couple docking there who were loopers and chatted with them for a while.  

After escaping the dock without being "caught" we continued our search for coffee and pastries.  We found a mini bakery and grabbed coffee and a chocolate croissant.  A cruise ship must have just arrived because passengers were departing and filling the stores in the blink of an eye.

We walked many miles and visited a few city parks, beaches, stores, and even visited the Key West Garden Club that is in the West Martello Tower / Fort.  It was very peaceful and gave us respite from the heat.  

Along our route was the Southernmost Point Bouy.  There was a huge line of people waiting to take a selfie alongside the buoy.  Kip and I did a "drive by" picture, and I added a link so you can read more about it if you want to.

Then we walked back to where the cruise ship was anchored, got some homemade ice cream, and sat on a bench by the Key West Shipwreck Museum.  It looked like something we would like to go through, but we already determined we had to catch a bus in a half hour or so.  We did, however, have chats with the "mates" and "captain" outside of the Museum.

There are some really cool looking, big trees here.  

We caught the bus ("ice box") and made our way back to Bohia Honda.  The bus driver was, shall I say, a very aggressive braker!  Man, we just about flew out of our seats when he stopped at the bus stops.  When we got there, we grabbed our bikes and started back to the boat, but the tide was extremely low.  We ditched the bikes and went shelling for a while.  I found four small shells that were empty and three beauties (but they had critters in them, so I didn't keep them).

We picked up our free bag of ice and two beverages at the concession and went back to the boat, changed and went for a swim at the beach, showered off, and had spaghetti, toast, and apples for dinner.  

We set up our chairs at the beach for the sunset.  We were giggling because a man and woman were taking pictures of a bag of potato chips, eating potato chips, potato chips in front of the potato chip bag, etc.  Not sure why, but...