{"id":51,"date":"2019-03-08T03:22:15","date_gmt":"2019-03-08T03:22:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/our2019journey.com\/?p=51"},"modified":"2019-06-10T17:11:21","modified_gmt":"2019-06-10T17:11:21","slug":"week-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/our2019journey.com\/?p=51","title":{"rendered":"Week 4"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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\u2019t 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\u2019s phone on the Verizon network; luckily Gareth\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Everglades National Park entrance<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Misty wasn’t allowed on this trail for obvious reasons <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Baby Alligator<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Despite my efforts I still left the Everglades with dozens of bites<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Our campsite at night.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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We went kayaking for about an hour up a canal from the harbour. Our inflatable kayak can be seen in the photo rolled up. When we launched our kayak from this site we had just watched a 10ft (give or take) crocodile swim towards the docks and then went under water. Not exactly what I wanted to see before launching into the water but we went for it anyway.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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This is one of the few photos we took about mid-way through a guided canoe tour. They were out of canoes so we opted to use our inflatable kayak. This is the last we saw of the group before we fell way behind. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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This was taken after we had lost the group and were hoping to make it out of here. We were paddling in this shallow water at around 10ft\/minute for probably around 40 minutes. Forgot to bring water and it was scorching hot. We couldn’t get out either as there was about 2ft of sludgy plant material ..the paddle just sunk right in. Although its unheard of for an alligator to attack a boat I still couldn’t help feel nervous about being in an inflatable boat with nowhere to run. Not to mention we’ve heard about Burmese pythons in the everglades. We actually did come across a large alligator when we got into deeper water. It swam the other direction and went under water. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Damage to one of the trails in the Everglades (probably from the last hurricane)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Woodpecker<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Beautiful fauna in the Everglades<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The drive down to the Keys was pretty uneventful. We weren\u2019t particulary impressed with Key Largo and the \u2018upper keys\u2019 as there wasn\u2019t much of interest that you can see from the highway. I\u2019m 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\u2019d 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\u2019t 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!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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View of Sunset from the pool at Fiesta Key RV Resort<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From there we had originally planned to head straight to the Keys, but made a switch to head into Everglades … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":822,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/our2019journey.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/week4.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paRHnz-P","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/our2019journey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/our2019journey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/our2019journey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/our2019journey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/our2019journey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/our2019journey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":238,"href":"https:\/\/our2019journey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51\/revisions\/238"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/our2019journey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/our2019journey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/our2019journey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/our2019journey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}