Biscayne National Park

Wednesday, June 29 - We had a few things still to do here before we left Homestead.  The first thing, we found the Military Surplus Store and bought 2 net shirts (expect a picture later).  We are now fully prepared to these pesky mosquitoes, if we just are smart enough to have all the gear on when we are exposed (which is just about all the time).  Then we drove back out to Biscayne National Park, which was established to prevent builders from putting up subdivisions in this beautiful country.  The park is 95% underwater, so we just walked around the boardwalk and checked out the visitor center.  We could see little fishes in the clear water (and big mosquitoes on our arms -- we left our new nets in the car).

Our next stop was the Homestead-Miami race track.  We went into the gift shop, and the clerk there graciously took us on a tour of the track -- we took the elevator up to the top and got to see the whole track from that viewpoint.  He said the elevation of the track is about 4 foot above sea level, and turns 3 and 4 are probably the highest points in Homestead.

This race track was built in 1995, with stimulus funds from the devastation caused by Hurricane Andrew in 1992.  For any non-NASCAR readers, this track hosts the last race of the season, in November.  It would be fun to get to come here for that race some time.

From there we headed back to camp and got ready to leave.  We took the Card Sound Highway down to Key Largo, which parallels Hwy 1.  We were driving through a rain storm for these 20 miles so I didn't take any pictures.  Except for crossing one big bridge, we mostly drove between stands of mangrove trees lining the highway, with an occasional view of bay water on either side.  We are in the John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park at Key Largo, which is a beautiful campground, surrounded by water.  They do scuba and snorkeling out of here, but we haven't committed to anything yet.  There are only 47 campsites here, and it is full, so we were very fortunate to have been able to reserve a spot here.  We got set up just before a thunderstorm hit here, so we didn't go exploring until after dinner.  We drove down to the beach, then drove around the town a little, and bought water shoes for each of us, since the beaches are rocky rather than sandy here.  We got back to camp just before it started to rain again, so we called it a day.  We'll see what tomorrow brings.