The Florida Keys – Bahia Honda State Park

We enjoyed our one week in the keys so much last year that we were really looking forward to spending 5 weeks here this year. So far, we are not disappointed. We are camped at Bahia Honda State Park, consistently ranked as one of the best beaches in the US. The water is a warm 85 degrees with wonderful snorkeling 500 feet away from our trailer. You can see the nose of our silver truck in our campsite behind Dan and the water at the end of the row. We don’t have a view from our trailer, but we do have privacy. The only downside is the large numbers of ants that have invaded the trailer. We had to get out the ant spray and be really careful with food. The cat is enjoying chasing the ants. Small price to pay for a beautiful setting and a reasonably priced campsite in the keys.

The snorkeling is fantastic. We weren’t in more than 5 minutes before I was jumping up and yelling “shark, shark!” to Dan. A baby nurse shark about 3 to 4 feet long swam within two feet of me. Dan got to see it also, due to my loud yelling. It surprised me, I wasn’t expecting to see a shark that close and I certainly wasn’t expecting one to swim over and check me out. We also saw several Atlantic and Yellow Stingrays, lobsters, and lots of Parrotfish.

We have gone on five dives on Looe Key with a local dive shop. Since this is the slow season, we got a very good price for the keys. In fact, due to the low price, we finally got our Advanced Open Water Diver Certifications. We have always just been Open Water Divers before. Technically the difference between the two is how deep you can dive, but we have never dove anywhere that actually enforces this rule. Probably because we have always dove in other countries. Apparently, they do follow the requirements in the US and we would have been unable to dive below 60 feet here. Now, we are legal to dive up to 130 feet. We are going to dive some more while we are here, but have been waiting for the winds to die down. Dan has been busy working the last few days. The diving is not as good as Bonaire, but still worth doing. The quality and quantity of coral is much less, but the fish are good. Again, not as good as Bonaire, but still worthwhile. We saw a black tipped reef shark on our first dive and several stingrays. The parrotfish are wonderful and plentiful. I am enjoying having my own equipment for a change, and we are looking for another good deal to outfit Dan.
We are heading to Key West for the day tomorrow, and then planning on diving later in the week. It’s nice to be in shorts in November. We are really lucky we get to travel to such wonderful places.