From there we had originally planned to head straight to the Keys, but made a switch to head into Everglades National Park first. Gareth figured there would be lots to see and do in the park; it turned out there wasn’t a whole lot. The trails were hard to get to and overgrown. The kayaking was OK but the constant threat of alligators was pretty nerve wracking. We were basically ready to leave after the second night but stayed on the four we booked. Getting work done was challenging due to no signal on Sandy’s phone on the Verizon network; luckily Gareth’s on AT&T worked but we started to run out of data allowance towards the end. Oh and the bugs! They were really bad, particulary the no-see-ums which seemed to be around constantly. We were pretty glad to get on our way and back en route to the Keys.
The drive down to the Keys was pretty uneventful. We weren’t particulary impressed with Key Largo and the ‘upper keys’ as there wasn’t much of interest that you can see from the highway. I’m sure the beaches at the various waterfront properties are nice but we had no way to know. The further south/west we got the more things improved. Just after Islamorada we finally got to see some of the epic views that we’d heard the Keys are famous for. Our first three nights was at the Encore owned Fiesta Key RV resort. We enjoyed our stay here, they had a nice restaurant down on the waterfront with a happy hour special in the evening, and a beautiful sunset. The pool was just OK, in need of a bit of an update but we did enjoy the hot tub, although found it frustrating they locked both up at sunset daily. It also wasn’t too far from Islamorada which made it easy to head there for groceries, and to partake in a snorkelling trip. There were only 5 people including us on board a giant boat! The crew was excellent and snorkelling not bad – we saw turtles, a nurse shark, morray eel, lobster, barracuda and tons of fish!
