Today we got up and packed and then stopped by Danielle’s house to say goodbye to her, David, and our nieces and nephews before leaving town. Then we headed south to go to the Everglades. We got to the our turn and at the last minute decided we did not want to hike in 100 degree weather and actually would rather go snorkeling so we changed plans and continued to the Florida Keys. We stopped at the upper keys in John Pennekamp Coral Reef state park. We knew that the reef was about 3 miles away in the water and you can only get there by boat but their advertisements said that you could snorkel from land to a shipwreck. When we got out we noticed the beach was all rocks and very hard but we were trying to make it work. However the water was so murky you could hardly see a thing. We swam out to the buoy that said shipwreck and looked down. All we saw was a pile of rocks???? Joshua and I decided we had enough of that place and got back in the car and drove another hour and a half down the keys to Bahia Honda state park. There they had beautiful white sand beaches and soft coral beds that had many interesting sea life living in them. A much better snorkeling/keys experience. We would love to come back to the keys later and take a snorkeling tour to the reef but we enjoyed what we did for this trip. We left that beach and drove back up the keys and across the top border of the Everglades National Park. We kept seeing signs that said Panther crossing. Which shocked us. Joshua got out and took a picture of one with his phone, which made me nervous, I took my pics from the car. When we checked into the campground the ranger said they pretty much stay out of the campground and we would be real lucky if we saw one????? But he also said that last year about 500 feet away cubs had been born. So that was interesting. The more we camp in the central and southern states I am realizing why people do not tent camp and instead have RV’s. I defiantly did not need to make reservations at many of these places they are almost all empty. Between the bugs and heat it seems rather insane to sleep in a tent. Joshua handles the bugs better then I do. I get scared and also mosquitoes love my blood. I will get like 10 bites to his 1 and that is not exaggerating. Boohoo. But I handle the heat better. Joshua lasts about 5 min in the tent before he is sweating like crazy and ready for a hotel. Haha. Last night we settled for sitting in the car for about 20 min with the AC on and then grabbing our mats and sleeping bags and heading to the campground rec room to sleep in a screened room with fans. It was not very cool but the breeze felt good. We checked the weather last night and it was 77% humidity which according to weather.com it made it feel like it was 98 degrees at 9:30 when we were trying to sleep. Sheesh. We are hoping it is better tomorrow.
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