Tuesday October 27th 2020

Today was an almost perfect weather day for a change. It was mostly sunny all day. The temperature peaked in the high eighties with lots of humidity. Wind out of the east at 10mph or more kept feeling the humidity in check.

I spent some time today getting familiar with the middle keys. I drove up and down the overseas highway stopping here and there. My first observation is that the area is still recovering from hurricane Irma that hit the area hard in September of 2017. This state park has had major repairs since the hurricane as I understand the other two Long Key State Park and Bahia Honda have as well. The campground at Long Key state park is still closed for reconstruction. Outside the park in the Marathon area some buildings appear to be abandon since receiving major damage. Most of the roadside turnouts near the bridges that I wanted to stop at are closed or in disrepair.

I’m glad my campground is where it is. I only had to drive the motorhome over one fairly short causeway and bridge. Sitting high above the cement sidewalls along the road deck in the motorhome is not a comfortable feeling even if it does give you a good view. Throwing in a little cross wind and it would turn into a real white knuckle experience. Crossing the Seven Mile bridge outbound from Marathon would have been an even more challenging experience on my nerves. Today in my Honda it was interesting enough.

Some of things I was scouting for are parks or nature areas along the water. Usually, I can find directional signs for such places from the main road, but not today. The few brown park direction signs I saw were small and confusing. It wasn’t clear where I was supposed to turn or what I might see once I found the place. I did manage to turn around in one rather narrow private driveway in my wandering today. It’s time to do a little more research with Google Maps.

I also identified a few museums and attractions that might be interesting. The problem is I’m not sure how comfortable I am with visiting such places in these pandemic times. I need to figure out if they are open and what kind or restrictions they may have in place. I would prefer outdoor to indoor activities if I decide to visit. The other question is how busy the places might be. So far, I don’t think there are a high number of tourists in the area. Only a handful of RVs in this campground are from out of state.