florida keys road trip ~ #flkeys

Road trip!!! We are planning the definitive Florida Keys road trip ~ Key Largo to Key West and back! I am so excited about this trip and CANNOT contain it any longer 🙂 Can you tell?

This year is the 20 year anniversary of my first real trip to the Keys ~ a memorable birthday in Key West, when I did my entry level scuba certification. The past 20 years have been a love affair with both scuba diving (and many more cert levels!) and all the Florida Keys. Also, Labor Day is my 5 year blogging anniversary here on bluwaterlife.com ~ can you believe it has been 5 years? A Keys road trip seems the perfect way to mark both milestones, and round out the summer with a bang.

We are traveling around the Labor Day holiday, so have about 4 weeks before leaving ~ and I still have planning to do! I’ve booked the dates and locations, and now I’m filling in the sightseeing and adventure opportunities. So many choices! Things I’ve done before and want to do again ~ like the Hemingway House in Key West and Robbie’s Marina in Islamorada. Other places that have been on my list for a while as new adventures ~ Bahia Honda State Park, the Turtle Hospital in Marathon and the Dolphin Research Center on Grassy Key.  And the major wish list item ~ the seaplane adventure to Ft. Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas 🙂

Plus there are visits with friends all along the Overseas Highway, scuba diving throughout the Keys (wreck diving!), so many favorite places to eat and drink, some beach time to rest and recover ~ and don’t forget shopping!

I’ve done the end-to-end trip a few times, but this is a first for Bluwaterguy. We did a Keys trip year before last to Islamorada ~ and that was a FABULOUS trip ~ so the bar has been set pretty high already. Here are the links to the Islamorada series ~~~

Islamorada ~ welcome!
Islamorada ~ local color
Islamorada ~ Moorings Village
Islamorada ~ parting souvenir

Of course there will be a Keys road trip series on the blog, and some warm-up posts on the bluwaterlife Facebook page.  I’ll post to the other social media spots along the way ~ Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest.

I hope you’ll join us to share the love and adventure down the Overseas Highway ~~~

 

 

PS> In case you’re wondering ~ the mileage photo is from the Monroe County toll both at the end of the bridge on Card Sound Road. I remember taking this one with a film camera when I was visiting for the “party at the end of the millennium” New Year’s 1999-2000. I literally had to snap it in motion, as the attendant was waving and saying “move along” to every car in the toll line. He was not amused by my photo attempts ~ but I got my souvenir, and here it is some 14 years later in a medium that didn’t even exist then! Memories ~~~