Thursday, January 23, 2003
We tried to get an early start, but packing up always takes about an hour and we stopped off at K-Mart for a blouse for Monika with Eeyore embroidered on it which delayed us some more. We finally left the Jupiter area around 9 and drove straight south on the Florida tollway to Homestead, where we stopped to fill up the truck and have lunch before continuing down to Long Key. The first key, Key Largo, was a 4-lane stretch of U.S. Highway 1 that was noticeably more commercialized than our last visit about 20 years ago. As the road narrowed to 2 lanes on the keys farther out, the commercialization correspondingly decreased. We arrived at the campground shortly after 1 p.m. and put up the tent in the nick of time as the cold front that had been following us came thru with sprinkles of rain and gusts of wind. Monika changed to a swimsuit and went out into the ocean that was right at our doorstep. The water slopes very gradually out so she couldn’t swim but was rather wading.

Then the wind really became cold and gusty so we both came in and changed back to normal clothes. The wind ultimately became gusty enough to pull the stakes from the ground, so I double-staked each of the perimeter points. The wind still tossed around the tent enough to work some of the stakes loose and I was worried about it blowing into the ocean so I backed up the truck to the tent and tied the poles to the tie loops on the tailgate I had made at home. That all seemed to be holding, so we took an hour to walk over to the nature trail in the park and take that loop.

The nature trail showed how rapidly the ecology changes as you move from the seashore into the inland environment. The trail started with a boardwalk that led across a small wetland area. There we saw some pinkish birds with funny beaks. We stopped immediately to take pictures and asked if anyone knew what they were. It turns out that they were roseate spoonbills, which is a rather rare bird—only 2 flocks in the U.S. according to our unnamed source. They had pinkish undersides but were not overall pink like the pink flamingo and had a very different type of spoon-shaped beak that they swished back and forth in the water to feed. Fun to watch. We continued on our way with Monika leading, but I saw that she was going to step on a rather large snake and yelled at her. She jumped and the snake was too cold to do anything but slither slowly away. I thought it was a very pretty snake and had her take some pictures of it as it left. It was the least she could do after making it move from the warm sand of the path.

We returned to the campsite to find the wind still beating at our tent. We carefully made a quick dinner and retreated into the tent for the evening. They say it will get into the 40s here tonight and may set a record if it dips below 42 degrees. In any case it will be another rather cold night, I expect, so we are once again using Mr. Heater. I must say I didn’t expect to have to use a tent heater in the Florida Keys!

As it turned out, the heat wasn’t the main problem that night, the wind was. The winds were about 25 mph gusting to 35 and the gusts just bent the tent almost in two. In fact, I couldn’t concentrate enough to write in the tent because the tent was beating in on my head at random moments. So we retreated into our sleeping bags, but the wind was tossing the tent around so much and making so much noise that it was hard to sleep. Whenever the wind died down, the traffic noise from Highway 1 took its place. All in all, it was not a restful night.