Long Pine Key Campground - Everglades National Park

We are currently in Central Alabama. We are moving back to the west. We expect to be in southern Arkansas by Early March and Missouri by late March. We don't move very fast, but we are making progress. We are also staying at awesome places that I can't wait to write about, but that will have to wait.

We left Flamingo on Sunday, January 20 and drove the 35 miles north through Everglades NP to Long Pine Key Campground. It is amazing how different this campground is than Flamingo. We were at about 5 feet above sea level, but this place is not swampy and full of tall pine trees. The bugs did not bother us other than one late evening when we tried to eat dinner outside. The trees did impact our ability to totally live from solar power and it was also cloudy and rainy much of the week we were there. The good news is we were now close enough to Homestead, Florida to get good Verizon cell signal and full OTA TV. As soon as we arrived, I tuned on the TV to watch the AFC and NFC championship games. I am still having trouble believing how they turned out. During the week, I cycled both generators that we carry to give them some fresh gas. I have made the mistake of not doing that in the past and it took me a while to get one of them running correctly again.

Our site at Long Pine Key. We loved the seclusion provided by the palmettos and other plants that surrounded the site.

We had a nice sunset the first night we were at Long Pine Key.

I started the week by taking a long walk around the campground. The area is sitting on a limestone plateau that lifts it up out of the surrounding grass lands. There is a beautiful clear lake in the middle of the campground. We then decided to make a trip outside the park over to Biscayne National Park. It is only about 30 miles away on the Atlantic coast. The day was windy and rainy, so we decided not to paddle. It looks like an awesome place to kayak around the islands and maybe even some snorkeling in the reefs.

You can see two kayaks in this shot. It was fairly windy and we did not want to paddle on this day.

I did not take many pictures at the park. There is a small marina, but most of the visitors center was closed due to the government shut down. We walked the 1/4th mile boardwalk out into the bay which gave you some nice views of the tops of the reefs and the Atlantic beyond. We did have a very enjoyable conversation with another couple that was visiting the park. They are part time RVers from Virginia that had a bunch of questions for us and an offer to park our boat on their dock if we are ever up in the Chesapeake Bay. Meeting cool people is the best part of our lifestyle.

We will only count Biscayne Bay NP as a "drive-by" visit. That means that we did not really experience what this park has to offer. We will have to return and get on and in the water to see what this place is really all about.

The next day, our friends Bob and Linda were flying in from Missouri to join us and enjoy south Florida for a week. I thought about including our time together in this entry, but it would be way too long. We did a lot in the 4 days we spent together. I will write all about that in my next entry.