Prime Key’s Real Estate and Sunshine Key Tour (part one)

 

Ohio Key, Florida  (high 81, low 73)  sunny and windy

 

One thing about being retired is that you adapt better than you did when you only had a few weeks vacation every year.  We had planned on taking he boat out yesterday, but the strong east wind changed our minds.

Al wasn’t feeling great yesterday, (he’s still trying to fight off my cold), so we decided to just drive around and see what we could find.  The Overseas Highway is such a beautiful drive that it’s always fun just to drive along it.

We would love to own some real estate here in the Keys, but as you can imagine, it is very expensive.   Very expensive!

Imagine our surprise, when we came upon this beautiful 3 bedroom bungalow right on the water! 

Wow….could we actually afford something like this?

We’re thinking it could be purchased pretty reasonably.

What do you think?

Notice the sweeping waterfront views?

 

 

Or how about this one bedroom fixer upper complete with mother in law suite?

(mother in law suite)

This is the first time I’ve seen this kind of thing here in the Keys.  There were a lot of boats like this near Palm Beach, Florida under the Blue Heron bridge, but this is the first of it I’ve seen here.  I hope they stop it.  Do you wonder where the black tank goes???

 

The next picture is a beautiful rig that we’ve seen at Sunshine Key the past two winters.   Beautiful rig, isn’t it?  He was pulling out yesterday.

Inside that huge trailer is a bright red corvette, a golf cart which matches the coach, a jet ski and a small boat!   The trailer is two tier with some sort of a lift to put the boat and jet ski on the upper deck and the corvette and golf cart on the lower deck.   It’s quite amazing.   He has California plates, so he’s a long way from home.

 

Later on in the day, we took a drive up to a Outdoor World AKA Pro Brass Shop.

I spotted this gorgeous tree outside.  It was literally silver.  I couldn’t decide if it was the natural color of the tree or if it had been spray painted.  It really looked like someone spray painted it silver.  Whatever it was, it was gorgeous against the beautiful blue sky.

 

On our “before sunset” happy hour walk around the park, we discovered this Southern Stingray feeding in the shallows.   She would swim a while, then bury herself in the sand stirring things up, I guess.

We used to see them a lot diving in the Bahamas.  You’d swim right over them before you’d even know they were there, because they’d be so camouflaged in the sand.

 

A smaller guy was following her around.

One thing I especially like about Sunshine Key Rv Resort is the fact that there are a lot of good places to walk.  It’s on it’s own separate island called Ohio Key.   There is a road, and fishing bridge leading onto the island, and another road and  fishing bridge leading off of the island.

We normally walk the fishing bridge leading onto the island, but it was windy and choppy there so we went to the other one.

It’s usually not as pretty, but last night was an exception.

We had to do a little crab rescue.  There was a crab walking around on the bridge.  He may have gotten brought up from a fisherman, but he didn’t belong there, so Al scooped him up and took him back under the bridge to release him.  We were afraid he’d be hurt if we just threw him over into the water.

 

Later on our walk, it was my turn to rescue a puppy.  This cute little guy was trying to bite his butt and got his leash all tangled around his legs. (hate when that happens)  I wasn’t too happy with a puppy being left alone like that and now I’ll be worrying about him.

I had to make sure he wasn’t aggressive first, and it soon became apparent he wasn’t going to bite me.

In fact, he kind of loved me (and vice versa).   He was so sweet and in immediately fell in love with him.

And, no, it wasn’t really that cold out.  I am just a wimp and it was breezy on the bridge.  No one else (except Al) was wearing a jacket.

 

Here is a short tour of the campground.   Some people say Sunshine Key is just a big parking lot, and that is true to some degree.  There are some trees, but mostly it is just a gravel parking lot.  It’s all about, location, location, location.

The sites are pretty big though, and we have room to park our rig, truck and boat on the site.

There are some park models which are owned by different people.

 

They own the buildings, not the land.  Some of these are rented out in the winter which probably just about pays the lot rent for the year.

 

There is a nice marina where you can launch your boat or keep it in the water.

 

Between the two fishing bridges and the size of the campground, you always have someplace interesting to walk and interesting things to see.

These flowers are from a trumpet plant.

There are some trailers for rent that are set up along one part of the water.  It looks like they replaced all the old trailers this year, with new ones.

A waterfront campsite.  Out of my budget!

 

The main streets in section A  are paved.

 

Another nicely set up park model.  There are a lot of tiki huts around.  Some have clear vinyl shades for a wind block.

This is a Buttonwood tree by our neighbors site.  Isn’t it interesting? 

This is our motor home with the glow from the yard lights in our neighbors trees.

We’re sitting here this morning watching the winds and trying to decide what the plan for today will be.  We’re hoping to go boating, but unless the wind dies down, we probably won’t.   We’ve become fair weather boaters, kayakers, snorkelers and divers in our old age.  If the weather isn’t just about perfect, we don’t go!