Sea Kayaking

Sunshine Key
The weather yesterday was beautiful with temps in the mid 7o’s.  The seas were calm, the water and sky was clear.  It looked to be a perfect day to kayak.
We walked over to the old bridge that is now used as a fishing or  walking bridge.  It runs along side the main bridge.  Here in the Keys they don’t destroy old bridges, they just use them for recreation.  To the right of this old bridge is the main bridge.

The view was beautiful.  Our campground can be seen from the bridge.

Right under the bridge there is a little beach area in the rv park that would make a great kayak launch point.
After we watched the sunrise, we decided to kayak this area later in the day.

We put the kayaks in here.


If you go right and under the bridge, you’re in the Atlantic ocean.  If you go left you are in the bay.
We went right.

The water was shallow and clear….and beautiful.


Notice the 3 little stars in front of my kayak?  I don’t know where they came from.  click on the picture to see them better.

We went offshore a bit looking for some rocky areas that may harbor some of the elusive Florida lobsters.  We never did find the right spot.
We stayed near shore and circled around the island.  The tide was coming in and pushing us right along, making for easy paddling.

We expected to see some tropical fish, but we didn’t see any fish at all until we got over to the other side, near the mangrove islands.



Mangrove islands get their start when a pod from a mangrove bush drops off and floats around until it finds a place to root.  Here is the start of a  brand new mangrove island.

This is what it will look like soon.

and then this.

Mangroves are very important because that’s where fish lay eggs and their young stay until they are old enough to be out in the ocean.
We finally saw the familiar American flag that’s at our campground.  We had to cross under the other side of the bridge to get back home.





I thought it was kind interesting looking underneath the bridge.

It reminded me of some ancient buildings.


This big guy was waiting for us when we came out.

Here we are back at the campground, on the other side.  The campground and marina take up the entire  island.  These are some sites on the water on the bayside.


Finally, we got back to our starting point.   We just had to load the kayaks and drive a block to our campsite.


It was a nice trip, even though we didn’t see many fish.
We went back home, had lunch, a short nap and then we decided to take a drive to Bahia Honda State Park.  Its only  about a mile down the highway.
We enjoyed a beautiful sunset over the water.   That’s a great day when you watch the sun rise and set over the ocean.
Now, to the untrained eye, it might look like the sunset is the same as the sunrise, you can only see the sun melt into the ocean in the evening.
These people were all heading to the best spot to watch the sun “melt” into the water.
There were a lot of tourists,  We saw Japanese and some people we thought were speaking Russian.


Are you ready for it?

There it goes.  It’s melting into the water.


Almost gone.  Another wonderful day in paradise.