Key Largo

John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park

We manage to score two nights at John Pennekamp. The State Parks in the Keys tend to get snapped up when the come available eleven months out. We are parked deep in the mangroves. The parks have amenities like great swim beaches, snorkel trips, kayaks, etc. If you are over 65 and a Floridian, camping is 1/2 price (about $16)...the RV parks are closer to $100 a night or more, so it's no mystery why the State Park campgrounds are hard to get into.

John Pennekamp even has a 30,000 gallon salt water aquarium. Off the swim beach some 130 feet is a Spanish Galleon shipwreck reproduction with rusted cannon and anchors.

We have dinner and drinks at a place in Key Largo called the Big Chill.

The sunset is just so-so, but the music and company are very fine..

The park operates a dive boat that goes out twice daily.

They rent kayaks and offer kayak tours.

The Christ of the Abyss is anchored in 25 feet of water in the park. It weighs about 600 pounds and is anchored to a nine ton concrete base. There are duplicate statues in Grenada and Italy. The original statue was placed in Italy near the spot where Dario Gonzatti, the first Italian to use SCUBA gear, died in 1947.

The Keys had spectacular coral formations in the early 1960s when we first came here to dive.. Unfortunately, most of the reefs have been loved to death by divers and snorkelers who trample and break the fragile Elkhorn and touch the other corals to introduce bacteria and disease .Often now you just see a gray coral boneyard like the one below which was once vibrant and beautiful..

The Conch Republic

 Grassy Key, Florida 

The Conch Republic celebrates Independence Day every April 23 as part of a week-long festival of activities involving numerous businesses in Key West. The organization — a "Sovereign State of Mind", seeks only to bring more "Humor, Warmth and Respect" to a world in sore need of all three.

You can usually find conch in grassy sea beds in warm tropical waters. A Cayman Islander taught me to cook them chemically by soaking them overnight in lemon juice. Conch fritters and conch chowder are widely available in Key West as is Key lime pie. In case you wondered "what's a conch fritter?" please see my blog.

In 1982, the US Border Patrol set up a checkpoint at the choke point on the north end of the Keys and began to randomly search motorists’ cars for drugs and illegal aliens. This is not an unusual tactic for the border patrol. If you drive in Texas, New Mexico or Arizona today you will be stopped and interrogated somewhere on a road north of the Mexican border and subjected to similar scrutiny.

Once, coming out of Laredo, Texas at night, I was directed off the interstate and stopped in front of a blinding searchlight. The uniformed officers questioned me about smuggling parrots and waved me on. As I pulled past the searchlight, I saw several officers with assault rifles pointed at me and I was very glad that for once I had no parrots.

When the Border Patrol tried the same tactic in the Keys in 1982, the citizens resented both the inconvenience to themselves and the impact on tourism. After their protests went unheeded, the mayor of Key West decided that if Key West was to be treated as a foreign country, then it might as well be one.

The city announced its independence from the United States of America on April 23, 1982 and declared itself to be the Conch Republic. The Mayor visited the Admiral in charge of the Key West Naval Air Station and broke a loaf of stale Cuban bread over his head. After that, Key West immediately ceased hostilities and applied for a billion dollars in foreign aid from its giant neighbor to the north.

The Conch Republic still sells passports to tourists. The 9/11 hijacker, Mohammed Atta, bought a set of these online in early 2001, demonstrating both an abysmal lack of understanding of the American culture and a missing sense of humor.

 The Republic later annexed the old abandoned “seven-mile bridge” after a boatload of Cubans landed on it a few years later. The Coast Guard sent them back to Cuba after stating that since the bridge was severed on both ends, the refugees had to be returned under the "wet feet/dry feet" policy. Under that policy, refugees who make it to dry land can stay. Those intercepted at sea are returned to their country of origin. The courts overturned that theory but the Cubans were already back in Cuba.

In a place where invasive species like iguanas abound, the most common of all, the chicken, draws a lot of ire. They crow at all hours of the day and night and they strut the streets like they own it. While they don’t get any special protections in the Keys, residents cannot shoot them, and cruelty laws are enforced. In case anyone is wondering—these are wild, feral chickens and don’t make a good dinner. The chickens don’t have many natural predators..they do eat anything you drop on the restaurant floor.

Trapper Nelson

Loxahatchee River

 We spend three nights in Jonathan Dickinson State Park near Hobe Sound. The first night we get heavy hail, lightning and sideways blowing rain. An alarm on the refrigerator meant to detect excess heat while operating in propane mode gets wet and shuts down the refrigerator completely. I do a jumper wire around the alarm in the morning to restore normal operation.

We find a tennis court on US 1 near Hobe Sound. My tennis coach in England (who is also my blind spiritual advisor) sent me a message in a dream state to serve only to her back hand. I try that and run the score up to 4-2 my favor. She adopts the counter-strategy of moving me around the court to tire me out. The next four games are very long with lots of ad-in-and-outs. However, she wins 6-4 in the end.  I found more public courts on Key Largo to try again.

The park is notable for extensive dirt bike trails and the Loxahatchee River, one of two rivers in Florida  with a "wild and scenic" designation. Loxahatchee means "turtle river".

Trapper Nelson (Vincent Nostokovich) was born around 1909 and established a camp on the Loxahatchee in 1932. He sold hides and accumulated over 1,000 acres along the river by paying back taxes for pennies an acre. He ate gator, possum, coon and turtle as well as exotic fruits such as pineapple from his garden.

He was 6' 4" and weighed about 250. Socialites from Palm Beach would come up river on excursions to watch him wrestle his pet gator, Stumpy. Property values exploded in the 1960s and he was forced to borrow $100,000 to pay real estate taxes. He attempted to negotiate the sale of his land to developers for a million dollars, but was in great pain from stomach issues. He didn't trust doctors and was convinced that he had the cancer. He also self-catheterized to deal with prostate issues.

Trapper Nelson was found dead in his hammock with a wound from his shotgun in the stomach. He had been dead over a week. The death was ruled a suicide but there was much speculation about darker causes. The stomach seemed to some to be an odd place for a self-inflicted shotgun suicide. After his death in 1967, shrewd developers bought the property for $1,000,000 from his sister and immediately swapped the 1,000 acres of worthless swampland with the State of Florida for 300 acres of beachfront property in Hobe Sound.

The governor of Florida at that time was Claude Kirk, the first Republican since Reconstruction. After the publication of the photograph showing Mary Ann Vecchio of Florida kneeling over the body of Jeffrey Miller at the Kent State University shootings on May 4, 1970, Governor Kirk publicly labeled 14 year old Vecchio a dissident "communist".

Shake Down

Sebastian Inlet State Park

 The battery on the toad died twice as we towed it 115 miles east across the peninsula. You have to leave the key turned to "accessory" to keep the steering wheel from locking up. Also the "Brake Buddy" is a compressor that runs off the cigarette lighter and assists in braking  Theoretically you stop about 250 feet sooner at 60MPH with the assist. I'm sure it helped me keep from totalling out a bull moose and the RV one time.

 Anyway, the toad battery is 4 years old so we bought a new one this morning and also bought a device that will let me run the Brake Buddy from a second battery.

 The other problem is that the bolt on the big "slide- out" broke once again with the slide halfway out. We hit home depot and bought 5 more replacement bolts and then transferred as much luggage weight as possible out of that slide "basement" into a basement area not on a "slide-out."

Our travails pale in comparison to those of the Spanish expedition of 1715 which ran into a hurricane here while hauling gold and silver back to Spain in an armada of 12 ships. 1500 survivors set up camp here and sent to Saint Augustine and Havana for help.

Many of the ship wrecked Spaniards died here as they looked for salvage for 4 years until, at last, the whole thing was forgotten. 

The treasure was rediscovered and they began recovering it in the 20th Century using modern salvage techniques. The park has a museum full of pottery, jewelry, weapons, gold, silver, ship bells, cannon, anchors and crucifixes.Admission is only $2.

 One more night here after today and then we move south, toward the Keys, and spend the next three nights in the Jonathan Dickinson State Park.

Poster Child

Sun &Fun was purchased by Carefree, which in turn was acquired in short order p by the 25 billion dollar giant, Sun Communities. I'm flattered that someone put our beat up old RV on the Facebook page of one of the entities....at least that's what Mrs. Phred tells me....I don't do facebook...