Key West and Everglades!

We had such a nice time in Key West thanks to new friends and family members!  It's hard to believe we had never met Curtis's cousin Pam, her boyfriend Dave, and her friends Joanne and Stephanie before.  

We spent our first day there biking around the island and walking up and down Duval St. checking out the shops and galleries. We stopped at the southernmost point (or the point closest to Cuba) and skirt around the long line of tourists to snap a photo.

We also visited Pam at her gallery: 7 Artists.  She's an amazing artist and her paintings are just as bright and colorful as Key West is.  I found myself wanting to paint palm trees and birds and everything else I saw too :) 

You can see Pam's art here: http://www.hobbsart.freeservers.com/

We watched the boat races in the bay and stayed for the Veteran's Day parade down Duval St.  I promise I did not pick up any candy off the street and eat it after the parade.

Over the weekend, we checked out Bahia Honda State Park, did more biking around Key West, and joined in on the nightly ritual of watching the sunset off of Mallory Square.  

Old Bridge in Bahia Honda

Sandspur beach

Calusa Beach.  You can see the old bridge walk

Biking along rt 1

Sunset off Mallory Square 

Somehow, we managed to leave Monday morning thanks to the lure of the Everglades (and gators!).  We camped out Monday night to the hum of a maddening cloud of mosquitoes around the tent.  Well, first it was mosquitoes, then no see ums, then mosquitoes again in shifts.  In other words, horrible. 

Doesn't quite capture it

We survived the night to rise early and rent a canoe to paddle off into the mangrove swamps.  The marina was full of manatees and the canal even had a few meandering crocodiles.

We shoved two bikes in the truck and threw the canoe on top to drive over to the launch area, then paddled in 6 miles to Hell's Bay Chickee--a raised platform over the water where we camped for the night.

Ready to go!

Hell's Bay Canoe trail

Curtis's clever technique for cramped paddling

Hell's Bay Chickee

Moonrise from our tent

Not a bad tentsite!

Paddling back out

After all that paddling, I still hadn't seen a gator!  After we dropped off the boat, we checked out a couple more viewpoints in the park, then walked along the Anhinga trail to see some gators and other wildlife:

Anhinga swimming underwater in search of fishies

Egret hunting

Gator!

Anhinga boardwalk

We camped out last night in Big Cypress National Preserve and just because 2 gator sightings are never enough--we searched out more gators this morning!  We're sunburned and I'm covered in insect bites of all kinds, so we're heading out of Florida, winding our way up the gulf coast over to who knows where next.  We're at a Starbucks now using the wifi listening to Christmas music in 85 degree weather (so wrong) so I'll leave you with that image and these last few gator pics (and a lizard):