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| Adderley House |
In 1949, Francis and Mary Crane bought this property. At the time, only about 600 people lived in the Middle Keys. Can you imagine? They loved nature and worked hard to preserve and improve the property. They built their home out near the point.
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| Crane House |
They owned the property until the late 1970's. In 1989, the Florida Land and Sea Trust purchased the property to save it from a scheduled development of homes and a mall. They preserved a beautiful, natural area of the Keys that is hard to find these days.
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| Door to Museum |
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| At the point |
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| Active Osprey nest. There were 2 babies. |
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| Along Palm Trail |
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| One of many spiders we encountered. |
We were really surprised that we didn't see more birds. Other than the osprey nest and the the birds in the rescue area, we didn't see any others. You would think that this tropical forest would be full of birds. We were there mid-morning when you would think the birds would be active.
We headed back to the RV park for some lunch and to see if we could get Doug to come with us for the next part of our adventure, but he wanted to nap and hang out with the dogs. So off we went to Big Pine Key to find the National Key Deer Refuge.
The Refuge was established in 1957 to protect the Key deer, provide a migratory area for birds and to conserve endangered and threatened fish, wildlife and plants. The Refuge is about 63,000 acres. The Key deer look like miniature versions of white tailed deer and most of the population of this kind of deer are only found in this area.
Gloria was my navigator to find the refuge. She put the location in a Google map and it tells us to turn right at this road, bear left on this road, right on this road and then left on this road, which took us to a "no outlet" sign. "Dang it", says Gloria, "this took us right into a neighborhood bordered by wild land but no sign of the National Refuge." "No problem", I say, "just let me turn around and we'll put it in the map again and we'll find it."
We turn around and look what we found.
Right in front of some homes! I have been through Big Pine Key many times but have never, ever seen one of these deer. I honestly thought we would end up at a visitor's center and maybe see some being rehabilitated in a cage or something, but there they were. Google map had not taken us to the Refuge Center but instead had taken us right to the Key deer! We saw two in front of one home and another one a few houses down. Everyone seems to have chain link fences around their back yards and I'm guessing it's to keep these deer out. It was an amazing experience.
Next we headed to Bahia Honda State Park. Their beaches were voted America's best two times. They also have a section of the old Overseas Train bridge. The beaches have shallow, sandy areas where you can walk for a long while in ankle-knee deep water.
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| Overseas Train Bridge at Bahia Honda |
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| Florida Horse Conch that Gloria found in the shallows. We only held it long enough for a quick photo and then set it back down. |
It was a great afternoon at a beautiful beach.
We had pizza and salad at the RV park with Doug and then went down to the docks for the last sunset of Karen and Gloria's trip. We had a little contest as to who shot the best the photo and Karen's was the winner.
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| Karen's winning photo with 27 likes. |
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| Gloria's photo. |
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| My photo. |
It was a great visit with my sisters and we are so glad they came. Many of the photos in this blog were taken by them and I appreciate them sharing their great photos with me.
They left early yesterday morning and at about 11:00 a.m. when Doug asked me if I wanted just to hang out here and sit in the sun on the patio, I said YES. My legs are aching from all the walking I've done the last few days and I jumped at that.
It's now Sunday morning and the weather forecast is sunny with a high of 84 degrees. I feel a beach day coming on. For now, I'm going to refill my coffee cup and read a bit.
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