Wednesday, February 16, 2022 - Today we drove to the newly opened "Old Seven" bridge (which actually is only 2 miles) we had lunch with a view then walked 1.5 miles on the bridge and turned back. This bridge had originally been a railroad bridge and was turned into a pedestrian bridge in the 80s and had recently been closed for several years for refurbishing. After our walk we took a tour of the Turtle Hospital.
It was a windy day out on the bridge!
Freshly painted 🚲
There were 61 sea turtles at the turtle hospital on the day we visited. Many like this turtle had been hurt by boats and others had tumors that needed to be removed.
The goal of the hospital is to rehab the sea turtles and release them but some have issues with buoyancy and can’t ever be released.
This turtle has weights glued to its shell to help with buoyancy issues
Thursday, February 17, 2022 - In the afternoon, we rode our bikes to Sombrero Beach (about 9 miles south of us). It was a much wider beach than the beach we have at Curry Hammock, and lots of people. It felt almost like a NJ beach! After a few hours at the beach we rode to Sparky's Landing which we had heard had 45 cent wings and peel and eat shrimp for happy hour...the perfect dinner. Then we hurried to get home before sunset, since we were on our bikes.
Sunrise over site 22
lunch while watching the kite surfers (another windy day)
Sombrero Beach
Sparky's Landing happy hour
We brought everything we needed for the beach...our beach chairs and beach umbrella. I could have used an orange slow moving vehicle sign on the back of the umbrella
The sun setting behind us as we rode our bikes back to Curry Hammock
Friday February 18, 2022 - We drove to Long Key State Park, which we had camped at in January 2017. This park was hit hard by Hurricane Irma in September 2017 and is not yet open for camping. They are open for day use, so we spent the day there. We did a trifecta while we were here. 1) 1.5 mile hike 2) 1.5 hour kayak and 3) 12 mile bike ride.
Good Morning
poached eggs on an english muffin for breakfast
Nice spot for a quick morning game with Mom and Cathy
The Golden Orb Trail (the mangroves here had been destroyed by Hurricane Irma
Nice spot for a rest
Rented kayaks at Long Key and explored the "lake" (not sure why it's called a lake as it has access to the ocean)
The water was so clear...we saw a few nurse sharks and lots of horseshoe crabs
Kayaked through the mangroves
the ranger told us to take a photo of any horseshoe crabs we found that were tagged and log it's location on a website. We reported this tag number (#379647) to the FWS.org/crabtag/ website.
After lunch we road our bikes over another bridge (just outside of Long Key State Park). This one was 2.2 miles long and spanned the Long Key Channel. It was part of the Key West Extension for the Florida East Coast Railroad constructed in 1907 by Henry Flagler. In 1982 a new bridge was built, so this bridge became obsolete, and was turned into a pedestrian bridge in 2001.
We grabbed a beer once we reached the other side
We were the only ones biking this bridge, but it was full of fishermen
Saturday February 19, 2022 - Today we stuck around Curry Hammock. It was a foggy start to the day, but after lunch it cleared up and was another beautiful warm sunny day. We went to our beach for a bit, then rented a kayak from the rangers' station (2 hrs for $22-what a deal) We kayaked around the curry hammock
Kayaking through the mangroves
It was on its way to low tide and we could see the bottom was covered with jelly fish of all sizes. When we would paddle it would stir them up.
Next we paddled out .3 miles from the shoreline there was a sandbar. That shows up during low tide. Since today was a sunny Saturday, the sandbar was easy to find as it was full of boaters out playing in the "beach"
it was so weird being so far from land but walking on the sand
sandbar, with boats in the distance
Tiny in the distance
