Greg & Camille Go Bike

We woke up around 6 am and started the day with coffee and breakfast sandwiches from a nearby cafe. Breakfast in hand, we walked down to the end of the street and sat on the dock in our host's community's private beach. The wind was blowing pretty hard and sloshing water up near our feet. Clouds covered the horizon, so we never did see the sunrise, but it was a peaceful way to start the day.

We walked back to our hosts' house. They were busy getting ready and rushing off to work. We said brief good byes and finished packing up.

We stopped off at Harriet's for a second breakfast: more coffee, muffins (including their famous key lime muffins), a conch fritter and a mahi mahi eggs benedict. We ate in the shade behind the building by a nice mural depicting. After finishing our meal, we got back on the road biking through the heat to the public library where we enjoyed some computer time in the air conditioning. What a great escape from the heat.

After a couple hours of computer time, we set back out on the path towards Robbie's and our final destination for the day at Curry Hammock State Park. Robbie's was supposed to be a spot where we could feed Tarpons right from the docks. It had a very different vibe than we were actually expecting, with a bunch of small touristy shops, a restaurant and lots of people gathered by the marina. We could see the dock where people were walking out with buckets of food, but it looked like they were mostly just feeding the pelicans. There were lots of pelicans close by that seemed really comfortable with all the people. One of the workers here approached us and started asking about our tour. He asked us about our trip and mentioned that he'd done some touring himself. We had a brief chat before he rushed off back to work.

We then traveled the last 20 miles to Marathon Key. We alternated views of water on our left, on our right and sometimes biked across narrow stretches of island where we could see it on both. The water was absolutely pristine and we were disappointed that our photos never really seemed to do it justice. Lots of iguanas lined the paths in front of us and kept darting into the brush when they noticed us coming. We hopped from key to key across a series of bridges. Often there was an old bridge running parallel to the current Route 1 bridge that had been repurposed for pedestrians and frequently had people fishing. Some such bridges were closed due to structural issues and it wasn't always obvious leading up. We missed biking on a lot of them, but thankfully, we managed to get on the pedestrian bridge for the longest stretch of the day, running maybe 3 miles between Long Key and Conch Key.

A bit before 5 pm, we arrived at Curry Hammock State Park. We checked in at the entrance to the state park and proceeded to our site. They put us right on the beach and it was absolutely beautiful. It seemed like our site is usually a group camping site, but bikers/hikers/paddlers passing through are allowed to use it. When we arrived a bunch of other campers were hanging out in the area as well. An older couple from Vermont said they were jealous that we got to camp so close to the water. We were maybe 15 feet away from the water when setting up (which appeared to be high tide). We got lots of funny looks from passersby and Greg was a little anxious that they may think we were just squatting without permission. Pretty soon he stopped caring.

Despite a bit of bugginess, we enjoyed a pleasant sunset over the water. For dinner we had cous cous, tuna and almond butter/sweet potato butter/passion fruit jam wraps. We both cleaned up before bed. Greg particularly enjoyed reading all the great educational signage near the bathrooms, especially the sign discussing light pollution. It's easy to forget how many different ways people can negatively impact their environment, not just through generation of trash.