We have caught up on some of our boat things including a couple of trips to West Marine, Home Depot, the Winn-Dixie grocery store, the Publix grocery store, and many side trips to museums, and local sites.
We first took a bus up to one of the towns further up the keys, it is Islamorada. It is always interesting taking the bus as we have not done much travel (like rarely) by public transportation. The bus drivers are great and will usually drop you off at a location and not just the bus stop. After we visited the History of Diving Museum, one of the locals explained that you can flag the bus down. This alone is quite interesting as US1 is the major highway through the keys and is extremely busy with trucks, cars, motorcycles, and very large motor homes with their tow behind vehicles. Mind you the bus just pulls off the highway and picks you up. The only thing you need is $2.35 in exact change to ride back to Marathon.
So the diving museum was one of the attractions that interested us since Erwin has recently started to be re-certified in scuba diving. The museum was a fascinating collection of diving equipment and history beginning all the way to the 1600's. It was very well organized and a real delight to see. It was amazing as it is a private collection of a husband and wife doctor team that wanted to share this collection. The museum is run by volunteers and was well worth the admission. Here are some of our pictures, although we did loose a few pictures as one of the cameras was messing up.
This was a very interesting functioning mailbox.
This was the beautiful murals that were on the building at the museum.
This is one of the murals on the wall inside the museum, just like the one in the kids movies.
On Saturday last week we were so pleased that one of the local cruisers, Larry and Carolyn offered to take us to the Nautical Flea Market at Islamorada. This was an entire morning of so much fishing, boating, jewelry, and anything else you can imagine! If you have not gone to a flea market in Florida you really should try it, they are quite a bit to take in. It was so sweet of these two to drive us up there. We did not plan on purchasing anything, but of course, we found some treasures we could not live without. One of the treasures was a 2M dive suit for Erwin. It was perfect the day we took the boat out to the reef.
Here is the sign posted outside Founders Park. There are so many folks that attend, there is not near enough parking, so they all park at the local high school and then they run a shuttle bus.
So we have taken the boat out to the moorings on the Sombrero Reef. You can not anchor your boat because the anchor can disturb the fragile coral. The first time we went out there was quite a bit of ocean swell, but the water was crystal clear and Erwin was able to snorkel and I could see the tropical fish right off the side of the boat. My pictures of the fish did not come out good, but here is a picture of Erwin doing his snorkeling bit.
Do you think he is in his happy place?
The next adventure we went on was to walk up to the Sea Turtle Hospital. Yes, they actually have a hospital for the sea turtles, there are several in the state of Florida. Our other new friends from Massachusetts, Ruth and Steve, booked our tour in advance and we all hiked up to the hospital. It was fabulous, however, I am very partial to turtles of any kind. This facility was actually supported by one of the local motel owners. He donated the land for the building and the funding was provided from the guests and profits of his motel. It was a wonderful program that educated us on what dangers and threats there are for these awesome creatures.
So the hospital actually will pick up injured or sick turtles. Here is a picture of the ambulance and the sign outside the facility.
So this facility will actually perform surgeries or any other needs of the turtles. It gets them back to a healthy state and releases them back to the sea. If the turtles are unable to fend for themselves, then they become permanent residents. The turtles each have a name. Some of them are named for the folks that assisted in the rescue! There were 28 turtles at the location the day we visited. Here are some pictures of the turtles in the pools that keep them isolated when necessary. Some of the larger pools have 5 or 6 turtles in them, but the personalities have to match in order to be in those pools.
I also took this picture of the resort at the hospital, this is looking at Florida Bay.
Not a bad view, huh?
Well all four of us agreed that this was a great facility. We were all hiking back to the marina (less than a mile) and we came upon an interesting local attraction. There is a restaurant here called the Stuffed Pig. It has an interesting array of pig memorabilia on the walls. There were having pig races, yes, pigs were racing. It was sponsoring a local school and they were selling raffle tickets, etc. You could buy lunch and T-shirts,etc. It is an annual event. Here is a picture of one of the pig races.
What a hoot! Each of the pigs has a name and a silk number on its back. They are like Bacon, Bacon or side of pork, just hilarious. It was great fun.
So just so you don't think we have fun all the time, this picture may require a little explanation. The dinghy motor smelled quite warm on our way back to the boat last night. Erwin checked and sure enough there was no water coming out of the outboard. This is never a good sign and it never happens at a good moment in time. It was just past dusk and getting dark fast, no other dinghies around, the wind was blowing like snot, the dinghy has oars but does not row well at all. The only thing going for us was the wind was blowing us toward the boat. Well we made it to the boat and today Erwin is repairing the engine. If you have to make do, that is what you do. This is his invention of pulling the motor (while the dinghy is underneath). Pretty smart as if he drops any tools or parts they do not go into the bottom of the anchorage. He is so smart he had it fixed in a couple of hours! You got to love that.
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