The ULTIMATE Florida Keys Travel Guide @Adventures of Mom, Dad, Girl, and a Little White Dog

www.atravelpath.com

 

00:00 Introduction

01:45 Why are the Florida Keys so Special to You?

02:22 Who Should Go to the Florida Keys?

03:40 How Long Should Someone Spend in the Florida Keys?

04:40 What is the Best Time of Year to Visit the Florida Keys?

06:50 The 7-Mile Bridge Drive

07:30 Kid and Pet Friendly Activities

08:34 Flying into the Florida Keys

10:15 Campgrounds in the Florida Keys

13:40 Duval Street

15:20 Nightlife in the Florida Keys

17:00 Dog Friendly Beaches

18:45 Favorite Restaurants and Key Lime Pie

22:40 In & Around the Florida Keys

31:13 Two Complaints about the Florida Keys

32:43 What is One Thing You Can’t Leave the Florida Keys without Doing?

 

Laure and Jason on Social:

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This was the ULTIMATE guide for visiting the Florida Keys! Jason and Laura did a fantastic job explain everything to do, from dining, snorkeling, museums, camping, things to watch out for, and much more. We feel like we have three weeks’ worth of activities all planned out! Hope you enjoy!

 

Links

Blog Resources:

https://atravelpath.com/road-trip-with-kids/

 

Key West Calendar of Events

 

Catamaran from Fort Myers:

Key West Express

 

State Park Campgrounds

Bahia Honda

Curry Hammock

John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park

 

Dog Friendly Beaches

Sombrero Beach

Anne’s Beach

 

Key Lime Pie

Publix

Key Lime Pie Bakery in Key West

 

Key West

Fort Zachary Taylor State Park

Garbo’s Grill Airstream Restaurant

Sloppy Joes Bar

Key West Cemetery

Mallory Square

Hemingway House

Key West Lighthouse

Southern Most Point

 

Key Largo

The Fish House

Mangrove Tunnel Kayak

 

Islamorada

Divers Museum

Hurricane Monument

Robbie’s of Islamorada (restaurant and tarpon feeding)

 

Around the Keys

Robert Is Here Fruit Stand

Everglades National Park

Big Cypress National Preserve

Dry Tortugas National Park

 

Paws for a Cause Old 7-mile bridge fundraiser

Modern Marvels Episode: Overseas Highway

 

*All content from atravelpath.com, including but not limited to The Travel Path Podcast and social media platforms, is designed to share general information. We are not experts and the information is not designed to serve as legal, financial, or tax advice. Always do your own research and due diligence before making a decision.

 

 

Transcript from YouTube

hey Jason and Laura welcome back to the travel tips segment of the travel path podcast yes thank you for having us stat nice to talk again yes if you guys haven't heard we had episode 13 Jason lore and their daughter Alexis came on the show talking about their 75-day road trip they took with the three of them and their dog Polly um they talked about everything from the frustrations some of the hurdles and obstacles traveling with children so if you're looking to get into an extended road trip with kids definitely check that one out today travel tips we're talking about one destination they know best so Laura and Jason what are we talking about today the Florida Keys awesome I'm particularly excited about this because that is very high on my list where we're going to end up for a little while at some point this year but tell us why this is such a important special place for you guys I think just it's very versatile I feel like there's just there's a lot out there and there's a lot of availability and um it just it's a great it's a fun place you feel like you're on vacation it's one of those plac as you go and you're like okay I'm on vacation and you can drive there and you can drive there it's accessible I would say and uh you you feel like you are far far away from anything normal absolutely now obviously this is a great vacation destination if you want warm weather this is exactly where you should go but what would you say for someone who wants what type of experience who should go to the Florida Keys well and that's great because like it's be there's Beach there's a lot of water sports but there's tons of like history there as well that's super interesting if people are you know it's not our thing but people just like to go bar hopping I mean you can't beat Deval Street and Key West or fishing a lot of people go fishing is huge um but again she mentioned the history the beaches there's not a ton of beaches actually in the keys people might think oh there's beaches there's not a ton of beaches we'll mention we can mention some few of those that we like and but again it's there's a lot to offer for a lot of different types of people there and a very laid-back Vibe I think that's the biggest thing is you really do feel like you're on vacation when you go I mean just it is very laate back it's not for somebody who wants to climb mountains or anything like that there's not a lot of intense sports to do probably but um I guess snorkeling you know that that can work up a good a good workout but yeah it's definitely like that laidback I want to be on vacation Vibe perfect and sometimes you need that especially you know for us who are doing these extended road trips and you know Are Climbing like you said climbing mountains and just constantly on Trails sometimes it's nice to get that vacation in where you can actually just wind down reset relax get your vitamin D and fuel you a little bit more for those longer trips that we're going to take later to get that full Key West experience how long do you think someone should plan to take their trip there I know for us like we say we want to have at least five days there but you can actually do a day trip go down to Key West and come back you can spend months there it's again it's very versatile with timing is that you know there's tons of stuff to do down there or if you really ever like I only have one day or I only have one evening or two days still do it yeah it's uh just so people realize from Mainland Florida to Key West depending on traffic you're looking between two and three hour drive yeah which really isn't that bad especially if you just want to be able to go down and experience it for a day or a night and then you know head back into like you said the mainland I'm sure we'll talk about it later on but that two or three hour drive is probably worth it just for the keyan Pai alone right it is it definitely is the type of driving that you're going to do there is not like anything else that you can do either so it's it's worth it just to make the drive MH yeah very true what would you say is the best time of year to visit or what time the year do you guys like to go so I will say we have two opinions so this is this will be interesting so I love to snorkel and be in the water but I found that going in the winter for me I don't like being cold the water was so cold I couldn't even breathe in my snorkel mask properly because I kept getting salt water let's let's get this up straight though it's it's maybe cold by Florida standards it's not cold by Lake Michigan standards or anything in the Northeast 70 degrees it's 70 degrees is what the temperature is it's probably a little bit cooler in the winter time than you would might think that it is right so the water itself is 70 degrees on average um in the winter time and for me that's just too cold to I just I was shivering so much so um I now I've only been in the summer the fall and the winter I haven't been in the spring um but I actually really liked the fall even though it's hurricane season so I know you do need to watch the weather but for me the temperature was just perfect it was it about 90 degrees the water felt wonderful and because I love being in the water and Alexis agrees we both really liked the fall even though I miss the Fall colors you know that we have in New England and Michigan we have beautiful fall colors but I really liked going that to my year because of the temperature the summer is very very hot and I haven't been the spring so it could be the actually Springs the best time to go and we just don't know so we haven't been there in the spring so we were actually just there a few weeks ago and it was high 70s low 80s to me I don't think you can get more perfect than that right so if you're just going and not going in the water winter is probably the best time to go because the yeah it's perfect temperature and that's a few weeks ago just for context recording this right now end of January mid January so that's yeah beginning of January yeah yeah we were in Florida right around the same time you were and I you couldn't have paid me to go snorkeling in that water I touched and I was like absolutely not way too cold I was like walking way away from it yeah and well I made myself go in the water I'm like I know I'm like we're here in the Florida Keys and like I need to get in the water but I was like okay I'm in the water there are a couple people with West suits but yeah not many yeah most people just we in their swimsuits Yeah you mentioned that drive to the Florida Keys was a drive you can't get anywhere else what did you mean by that well especially the seven mile bridge that is a very unique Drive you're literally driving over the ocean the views are awesome especially if you're driving near Sunset but I will say up in between kargo and Marathon you may not really feel like you're in the keys you really have to get south of marathon Marathon to Key West where you really are going from one little island to the next Little Island going over all these different Bridges um I think there's over 100 different bridges in the keys that you drive over you get more of a water view more frequently South America okay oh that's a good point now you obviously are traveling with your daughter and your dog most of the time so is that completely accessible I know you said she likes to go snorkeling with you but how do it go with the dog and her when you're down there oh yeah it's actually great there's Key West itself is super dog friendly tons of restaurants um are dog friendly and even the stores at first we were having somebody weit outside with the dogs while the other two P went into the shops and I started noticing I don't see any signs saying no pets allowed on many of the stores and so we started taking the dogs in and everyone the people that worked there were like oh they're so cute so even the stores like so most places you can take your dog in Key West Key West kind of anything goes anyway yeah key again it's that laid-back Vibe where you're just like you know even the mannequins Alexis noticed the mannequins in the store she goes mom their hair is really messed up I'm like it's because anything goes in Key West it doesn't matter if the mannequin is crazy hair that's nice that very relaxed Vibe so transitioning a little bit to um you guys are going to Key West you're probably bringing your Airstream right yeah have you ever flown from home to Florida and we actually recently just looked into it because our we're coming up on our 20th anniversary which is the emerald anniversary so we wanted to kind of do something with Emerald Waters and we were looking into flying directly to Key West and from in in January from Michigan to Key West is about 700 a person so you can fly to Key West you can fly into Marathon um but marathon's even more expensive than Key West so what a lot of people would do is fly into Miami is pretty low cost to do and then drive to the keys but Key West does have a I think a pretty large airport by you know Island standards um there's quite a bit of traffic in and out so if you have the budget for it you can fly directly there just not in our budget right yeah well we want to save the uh funds for those uh excursions and experiences right now when you fly into Miami how far is that drive you're probably looking around three hours because you just never know what kind of traffic you're going to get um even from Miami uh even you know Highway One going down through the keys you never know what you're going to because it's one way in one way out we haven't experienced any horrible traffic there but I know people have right well sounds like whatever your budget is however you want to have your transportation there's a lot of different options yeah you can even take a boat we've never done this but the Key West Express Key West Express leaves from Fort Meers and I think it's aadar that takes you directly to qf well that's arriving in style yeah exactly and it was pretty low cost from what I remember it wasn't a horrible price yeah it was a reasonable cost for you know getting you down to Key West now obviously in Key West there's going to be a ton of different boutique hotels and you know Cottage options when you guys bring your camper what are some of your favorite campgrounds we love state parks just in general Across America and the Florida Keys especially because they're pretty pricey um any you know unless you're in a state park so bah Honda Isa very favorite place to stay they have about 40 campsites total so it's a small Campground and maybe 15 of them are Waterfront so those were are very very nice obviously and we were lucky enough to get a couple of those a couple times ago uh they have cabins there that you can rent they do have cabins and tent camping but if you know I want to make it known that anywhere other than the state parks and anywhere in the Florida Keys you're $200 a night for a campsite or more usually if if you can find anything wow now I have heard that um from some fellow campers that we've come across they said it's very hard to get into those campgrounds that you have to be way ahead of time with booking so how how have you guys experienced that how far Advanced are you looking for your for your campsites it's it is it's it's like you said it's pretty stressful because honestly I would get on at 8 o' the day of that they would open up I did that for a whole month did not get any key sites and I would look at um bahah Honda Curry Hammock and John Penny Camp there's three different state parks I would look at all three of them I start always with theah Honda I couldn't do it it was like over a month I tried so he again he just keeps looking for cancellations and that's how we got we were able to get for nights at bonda and two at John Penny Camp so you really just have to keep on the cancellations because it's very hard to get into people are always cancelling I don't care what the campground is even small campgrounds like I said are only 40 sites at Honda people are always changing in their plans and you will find a cancellation if you can if you stay at it and even if you can get there for you know two nights the staff there like the Rangers are very they're very easy to work with like you just let them know hey we'd like to be here a little longer and just go into the ranger station every morning and check in with them if you only have two nights say hey were there any cancellations and we even um the one time we had one site for five nights but we really wanted a waterfront site because it was just it's so nice and we said for us it's worthwhile to move there for one night and go back to our site and they were actually able to find us a cancellation for a waterfront site we moved over there for the one night and we went back to our other site this that the Waterfront sites are just they're amazing oh like one of the best when you have that Waterfront site you you really don't want to go anywhere you just and bonda the other nice thing about that state park is you have like I love Sunrise I love Sunset and you have a Sunrise Beach and a Sunset Beach so in the mornings we would wake up we go see Sunrise you could do the walk around and then again the walks the beaches are not dog friendly on bajah Honda but you can still walk the whole Little Island there with your dogs so we would do our morning dog walk and um and loop around and yeah to me bah Honda is the best place to Camp so when you guys go just keep keep trying to get BAH Honda yeah it's worth it in terms of booking those campsites are you using websites those Campground websites or is there another website you're using for booking no this the Florida state parks website and we'll put links Below in the show notes for all the resources talked about in Today's Show Now obviously you know it's Key West so there's tons of restaurants there's a lot of bars like you've mentioned where you can hop in and out I'm sure it has a very Lively night life for um the bachelorette parties things like that but as far as families at times maybe not kid-friendly it was when we were there for around Halloween I can't remember the Fest is called but there's some sort of Fan Fest during Halloween where when you drive down dual Street people are not close and dval street is really the street that if you're worried about what your kids might see just don't go down dval street anywhere else is going to be normally okay so we turned onto dval Street and I didn't want to make a big reaction because then kids were gonna want to see everything so I'm like oh hey Alexis did you want to watch a show she's like yeah so we just gave her the iPad the headphones and we just and she she saw nothing well that's a good travel tip so as far as that is there anything else that maybe if you are a f traveling with you know small children that you should kind of avoid in the Key West area it's more just if there's a festival going on because like we walked down toal street just this last time and it was just F dur during the day it's okay you'll might see some things that you may not want your kids looking at and some of the windows but you might take the opportunity to distract them like Laura mentioned right when you see something just oh look at over here there's a chicken because there's tons of chicken CH are walking all over the place so there's always a way to distract them from seeing something you may not want them to see but during the day because everybody I think is sleeping still it's this a totally different vibe Walking Down the Wall Street but when the Sun goes down it changes yeah but again that's just the Wall Street right so the rest of the Key West is still very very kid-friendly for sure and like I said extremely dog friendly for sure awesome so what do you guys like to do at night when that sun goes down we're not really night lifers I'll admit we love to go see Sunset and then but the one night we were out a little bit later we went to Robbie's um to feed the tarpon and that was pretty fun too and then again I I'd read mixed reviews of dogs were allowed or not um but we brought our dogs and they let us go out on the decks to feed the tarpon but the Pelicans were just they were really aggressive bold it was hard to feed the tarpon you know and Alexis is trying to like you know shoe the Pelicans away and they're biting at her feet and everything ply wouldn't even bark at her no ply was hiding behind us we're like P do your job bark at them but one thing I would say about NTI and it never gets talked about the Nik at least not that I've heard is they have a a beautiful night sky yeah the stars there so if you're into you know you know nighttime photography or just stargazing especally at beah Honda it it was pretty nice pretty nice night sky so honestly like if you camp at bajah Honda you can really just stay there for your whole time because there's just there's so much even just right there like if you really just want to take a really late back you know vacation to the keys I mean yeah B Honda is where it's at well they have the snorkel tour there so you can you have an Excursion you can take right from the state park their their dive shop has a small restaurant in there they even sell key lime pie from there um so literally you you you have two or three different beaches there you can check out there's kayak rentals there so like Laura says there's a lot of opportunity just to stay put if you'd like to and it can help save money as well right but I wouldn't recommend that you got to at least go down to Key West you had mentioned there weren't a ton of beaches and going back to talking about the pet friendly activities and we're both frequenters of Honeymoon Island in Duneden which is a dog beach are there any dog friendly beaches in the keys yeah so in like I think it was the marathon area there's Sombrero Beach which is a really pretty nice Beach actually small but there's really pretty palm trees on the beach and yeah that's completely dog fry the dogs can go in the water there's a few others that we didn't go to there's one called an's Beach that's right off of the road that look kind of like a neat spot dogs are allowed there um um but one of our favorite beaches that dogs are kind of allowed at is the Fort Zachary Taylor State Park which is at the you know to of the Florida in Key West there dogs aren't allowed on the Sandy part of the beach are in the water but there's just this beautifully shaded palm tree Beach area that the dogs are allowed so like since Jason doesn't really want to be in the water anyway he would hang out with Polly in that beautiful Beach area shaded and Alexis and I would go in the water and you're really on the beach you you are I mean you you're sitting there looking at you know all the beautiful views that the beach offers and you're still sitting in sand but you may have a nice palm tree over the top of your head keeping you out of the sun right so yeah so it's and to us we feel like that was one of the most beautiful beaches we've ever seen it's one of the nicest beaches out there I think and it's nice too and then if you don't have your dog with you then um the fort Zachary Taylor is a very cool tour to take you can tour the whole Fort and there's just all these really cool little nooks and cranage I mean you could spend a couple hours over there just touring the fort they have historical reenactments sometimes so there just that was like one of our favorite places I think in in Q West was the for Zary Taylor State Park very cool history beaches nightlife dog friendly there's Little slice of everything for everybody cool good stuff transitioning a little bit and talking about food what are some of your favorite breakfast lunch spots or just spots you think you should definitely hit when you're in Key West or the keys area well we are huge key lime fans so we actually found Forbes Top 10 key lime pies we only made it through five of them because um some of them were just a little bit farther for us to drive and we didn't want to make the drive but each one was very very good um I will say Honestly though one of our favorite key lime pies is at Publix oh yeah really the grocery store the the grocery store wow but the one that we went to where was it the Key Lime Pie Bakery in Key West yes we feel according to our t bu is the best right and it said that it was the original key line place from like 1865 but of all the ones we've tried and that wasn't even on the top 10 list yeah some of those lists you wonder who put them together and but that one we really enjoyed it but you can't really get a bad piece of key pie anywhere in the keys um but surpr if you just in Florida you're not in the keys and you like key line pie just go to Publix pretty good Publix has a very good key line pie and then the other thing that's kind of neat too is that each place has her own take on key lime pie you know some will do whipped cream some do the mering some people drizzle it with raspberry chocolate covered um we actually found one we really liked um that was a coconut key lime pie that was probably one of our favorites as well so it's kind of neat so if you're a key lime pie lover just have at it from a restaurant standpoint in kargo we went to this restaurant called The Fish House for for dinner and it had a really nice you know being a sea type Vibe you know it felt like you're on a boat and uh they had really good food as well there and in Key West being airst streamers there's a restaurant called garos in Key West that has the food is cooked in an Airstream and it's all outside seating and they have live music there and then there's like a separate bar that's in like a old Cottage House that the drinks come out of there and the food comes out of the Airstream and really awesome Vibe and pretty reasonably priced for being in t West really good tacos yeah I got like the Fish Taco Trio I had the uh the burger I always from Burger man but uh those are two places that we can highly recommend and it was nice because it was super dog friendly because they had this big sign that says dogs preferred humans tolerated you always know that's going to be good you go in the bar and there was I think three golden retriever laying on the around in the bar by the bar area and yeah it was just yeah super dog friendly and then I know there's a whole list of restaurants that are dog friendly so and one we didn't eat at but we've heard good things about was Sloppy Joe's Sloppy Joe's Bar is a landmark a lot of celebrities are known to frequent that County chz just played a surprise concert there so that that's one that we could recommend there's there's just a lot of options for whatever your taste might be right and we haven't had a bad bad meal in in the Florida no robbes even robbes Robbie's where you feed the tarpon yeah and what was that uh Alam marada that's in Al marado so it's like halfway down the keys they have a good restaurant there we have their key lime pie um outdoor seating right on Waterfront so that's that's another place we'd recommend that place had a lot of neat stuff to check out other than just the restaurant again you can feed the tarpon the fish how was it five bucks for a right yeah for a bucket of fish or something very reasonably priced yeah so yeah I don't feel like can really go wrong because most of the food is you know fresh fish you know key lime pie can't go wrong with that well you guys are definitely making me hungry and now we have our nice list to follow when we get to uh the keys so if you haven't mentioned them already are there any nearby attractions that you want to mention well honestly the other thing too I know not this is not everybody's cup of tea but we went to the Key West Cemetery that was very interesting and very educational like in just the different kinds like the graves are all above um the ground because of the water level and just reading about some of the different people they had some really interesting gravestones like one was a big conch shell one was like a um a bookshelf with books on it of all her favorite books and I don't I I've always really enjoyed going to really old Cemetery like that I don't remember what the year what the year is on it but it's either somewhere in the 1800s I believe well Key West is Florida's first city right a lot of people don't know that but um cool places to check out is merer square uh oh yeah you definitely want to be there for Sunset that's a bucket listing we we just were able to do that this last trip there's three performers that perform right there there usually cruise ship import again it gives you that feeling that you are somewhere far away uh another cool place that we didn't go to that we want to may get to pretty soon as the dry to ugas National Park you have to take a a float plane out there or boat it's the only way to get there but that place is really awesome from what we've seen uh Hemingway houses there and so is the Key West Lighthouse there's a lot of different museums also in Key West for you know whatever your interests are you know there's there's just tons to do in Key like even just in Key West there's just tons to do awesome so you really could spend probably a couple weeks there and have just a bunch of different experience oh yeah and actually when I asked Alexis how long we needed to spend there she's like oh at least three weeks that was her that was her answer I'm convinced that you can spend as much time as you want in almost any place right because there's just there is so much it sounds like and it sounds like you guys just planned our entire 3-we trip down to the Key West and we'll definitely be listening to this podcast when we're making our trip down there cuz yeah this was really really informative yeah oh actually there's one more really cool thing that um you can take the you can actually walk or bike the old seven mile bridge to Pigeon key which you can only Access Pigeon Key by the old bridge now the interesting thing is dogs are allowed on the old bridge but they are not allowed on pigeon key except for one day a year there's sometime in January they do some Ser of a dog fundraiser so dogs are allowed on pigeon Key island but that looked like a really cool thing too it's like I think it's about two miles two miles of the old seven mile bridge like the original one that the train tracks were on um and just even the history of the Overseas Highway is really very interesting I think Modern Marvels Modern Marvels has a good episode about the Overseas Highway that I highly recommend anybody to check out if you're going to be headed down there because it's nice to know how it all came about and there is a hurricane Museum there as well because there was a huge hurricane in the 1930s killed a bunch of people and kind of impacted the Overseas Highway and there's I believe that museum is in is it Marathon or Isa marada I'm not sure which one but that that's there to check out as well the divers Museum divers Museum there's a lot there's a lot to do the list goes on and on yeah we could probably have a three-hour segment on what to do in in the keys the Florida Keys yeah we'll transition into the 321 countdown segment of the podcast the final three questions so what are three things to do around the Florida Keys area one thing we super duper recommend is the Robert Was Here Fruit Stand you heard that right Robert was here is the name it was called Robert was here for say I believe they've been operating for about 60 years it's in Homestead Florida it's just outside the Everglade so that's more of you're coming on the east side and they have just the most amazing variety of tropical and exotic fruits and not only that they have the best milkshake we have ever had hands down the best milkshake ever like I got um it's all made with fresh really fresh fruit um I got the coconut lime vanilla milkshake and Alexis is a huge fan of dragon fruit so she literally just got dragon fruit and ice in her smoothie um but the interesting thing too is that they have three turnovers as far as like different fruits so when we were down in October it was a whole different set of exotic fruit in January it was like a whole another set of exotic fruits it's kind of interesting we got to try these things called SEL and pomy and like all these really interesting C you know just very interesting names and very interesting flavors and then when I asked they said also June is another turnover so the big times are like summer winter and fall they have totally different fruits and you can actually just buy the fruit or you can put it into a smoothie or a milkshake but that is hands down a big recommendation and when we go because we're off we're Towing our Airstream either down or back from the keys there's RV parking there as well so don't feel like you can't go there if you're you're towing your rig right and not only that like we always just kind of stop get our fruit get our milkshakes and go but they have tons of stuff around there they have like a little petting zoo um they have different um like a I saw blacksmith little area so they've got a lot of things so it can be like a whole little stop if you want it to be couple other things though I mean you're right there at the Everglades National Park is literally right there and so is Big Cyprus just a little bit further north that's a really cool place if you want to see alligators there's tons of alligators all over the place you want to take an Al those uh swamp boat tours oh yeah you know those are right there check those out highly recommend doing that if you never done that before it's a really great experience so yeah basically is if you're coming down from the East side you know instead of taking the main Highway what's the road that 41 so 41 goes through the big Cyprus area and at every single little turn off that you can go on they have like a little Boardwalk you can see alligators like all over the place it's just it's really a cool kind of aspect of like getting down there and like we've talked about wanting to spend the night there we haven't yet but it's definitely a there's multiple there's multiple campgrounds along 41 between Naples and Homestead that you can you can spend time there if you'd like to and I highly would I highly recommend that like say we want to do that just for airb rides or if you want to hike Che ey alligators just a different vibe there oh yeah again it's a just that laid-back Vibe even in that at the national park there is super laidback and actually I talked to a lady at the visitor center I guess her and her husband don't sleep very well they said they were out kayaking at 2 the morning and they saw a cougar like just steering right Florida pan oh I'm sorry Florida panther yeah they have signs all over the place for Florida panther Crossing even when you're in Naples which is you know a high-end area they have signs everywhere Panther Crossing and the lights are flashing you know like you're gonna see one at any second so we we've watched we haven't seen any but I bet if you drove at night there's a slight chance you might see going across the road that's cool it's cool how informative this episode has been in terms of things you've done but at the same time you're talking about things you want to do so you've been here so many times you have so much experience here but there's still a ton of things left to do that's great so so in terms of three things around the park I have the Everglades National Park the Robert Was Here Fruit Stand and then the Big Cypress swamp why I got kind of one more so we can kind of combine those two but um kaying through the mang gr now you can do this at John Penny Camp State Park um I actually haven't gotten the opportunity to do it because the first time we were there there was eoli in the water which kind of brings up another point that very good at monitoring the water to make sure it's safe for people to go in they're constantly checking the you know bacteria levels um but there's also a lot of other independent places where you can kayak the mangr and even take your dog with you as well and I think that to me that's it's on my bucket list of of kayaking the mangr giant Penny Camp is another place that you that offers offshore snorkeling opportunities we weren't able to do that because of weather both times that we were there but they do have it and it's supposed to be really good and they have the glass bottom boat tours which is nice when you go through the state park it's only like $30 a person whereas if you go go to an independent you know person it's going to cost a little bit more so that's a pretty low cost activity to do what are two complaints somebody might have or not necessarily complaints but things they wish they prepared for before visiting the Florida Keys I think one of the the biggest thing preparations is a mental thing like sometimes you can research a place and all you see are the most beautiful things you know something that kind of happened with us at Glacier too where all we saw these all these amazing views and like it's not all amazing views there are just Woods which are beautiful but the same thing with the Florida Keys like when you you kind of expect that it's all going to be the seven mile bridge kind of look we're really driving from you know up until Marathon it kind of just looks like Florida does you know there's just you don't really see the water that much once you get to the seven mile bridge to Key West that section is you know that's that has that feel the Florida key you see the water you go to these little Islands but that was something that especially for Jason he was kind of like whoa this is the Florida Keys like it was kind of like a little bit of a shock to him because he was expecting seven mile bridge and like all these water views the whole time where it really is from Marathon to Key West is where you get those views so that was one and I think the other one which I know we touched on a little bit was the cost is that you know if you can get into a state park and utilize a state park it's great but the campgrounds are super expensive hotel are super expensive flying they're super expensive so you you can do it on a lowc cost budget but it can also be a very expensive thing to do yeah those are great tips it's planning ahead and then managing expectations in terms of getting into the Florida Keys yeah now we talked about a lot today and I mean a lot but if you were to leave the Florida Keys what is the one thing you cannot leave the Florida keys without doing and we we kind of had different answers on this I also agree with this his answer but for me you have to snorkel because part of like the Florida Keys is getting in the water that's part of the cool thing about the Florida Keys is that has all the coral reefs that are surrounding you know all the Florida Keys I know he had something that I also agree with but you can't go without going to Key West and you know visit the southernmost point um get to your picture by that it's a large like a buoy that's on land if you're not familiar with it there's always a line to take a picture so be prepared do that cross that off your bucket list go to m Square for the sunset and I think that'll complete the trip perfect now any you start talking about snorkeling any favorite snorkel spots in the Florida Keys well I found I know I gu you never got to do a boat tour because it just never worked out in our schedule so I hear that those really are the best if you can go to a boat tour but if you are just snorkeling um by yourself and you're just going to Beach Fort zre Taylor State Park they have four different little sections of rocks and when you when you s those rocks and we saw so many different fish we saw jellyfish we saw Alexa saw an octopus even at the one little section but to me that place was like just magical like you really like I said you felt like you were swimming in an aquarium it was absolutely beautiful and that was one place you can go that you don't have to take a snor boat tour or to now do you guys bring your own snorkel gear or do you know if there's a place you can rent them if you're just flying in for the weekend so John Penny Camp State Park and beia Honda offer all rentals and you can purchase things there as well and there's also tons other dive shops in the area as well yeah I would say like every every little section of shops you'll have you know scuba and snorkeling gear key lime pie and you know it's kind like you kind of see the same things like over and over so yeah there's tons of places to buy things or yeah the state parks rent them and I'm sure even other places rent them as well perfect yeah awesome wow yeah this was a ton of information here everything from from cruise ship location snorkeling spots restaurants dog places um yeah thank you guys a ton for coming on and and sharing your experience and your advice on planning a trip to the Florida Keys we definitely have a full itinerary for sure good good well we looking forward to seeing that video that's right awesome Jason and Laura thanks again for coming on the show and once again if you haven't heard the first episode episode 13 of the travel path podcast they talked about their 75-day road trip across the country how they did that with their daughter Alexis and all the cool things they saw out there so give that a listen and one more time Jason Laura where can my audience find out more about you guys so we are on YouTube as Adventures of Mom Dad girl and a little white dog we're also on Facebook with that same name and then on Instagram um as idesa Airstream but I will admit that I'm not a big social media person so you can find me best on YouTube I try to I try to answer my comments as much as I can Perfect all right we will link those channels below Jason and Laura thanks again thank you thank you