Key West & Sugarloaf Key KOA: Island Life, Adventure, and Lessons from the Heat | Ep. 50

Celebrate with us as we hit a major milestone—our 50th episode! 

Join Dan and Melina for an unforgettable journey through Key West and the lush Sugarloaf Key KOA. From stunning tropical landscaping to the challenges of paddleboarding in sudden storms, we dive into the highs, lows, and lessons of our first trip to the Florida Keys.

We’ll share why we chose the Sugarloaf Key KOA over other resorts, how the campground exceeded our expectations, and tips for navigating Key West like a pro. Plus, hear about the Hemingway House, Duval Street adventures, incredible local ice cream, wild chickens, and why this trip became a bookmark for future visits.

Stick around for our Weekend Warrior Tip of the Week and get inspired to make your own island dreams a reality. Whether you're a seasoned RVer or planning your first trip to the Keys, this episode is packed with valuable insights and stories you won’t want to miss!

Listen now to dive into the adventure!

RESOURCES:

Check out the KOA Sugarloaf Key HERE
Check out the Daub Squad on their review of the KOA
Here is the Leslin Adventures doing their review of Sun Outdoors Islamorada

Transcript

00:05
Hello everybody and welcome to the RV Canucks podcast. I'm Melina. And I'm Dan. And together we are the RV Canucks, a wily band of Canadians traveling North America in our travel trailer, one trip at a time on a part-time basis. In this episode, we dive into our stay at the lush Sugarloaf Key KOA, explore the vibrant streets of Key West, and share adventures from the scenic Florida Keys.

00:28
from biking to new resorts to alligators and encountering sudden and very difficult weather changes while paddle boarding. Join us for the highlights and lessons learned on this leg of our journey. Yep, so we'll just take a minute here to acknowledge that this is our 50th episode and we did a little, we were on the road yesterday and Melina looked it up and only 11% of podcasts make it to the 50th episode.

00:53
So yay us and thank you to everybody for tuning in because it is a lot of fun. And it's taken us like four years, four years, I think, to get to this point. But that's OK. I just want to hit like the one for whatever one percent is, like one percent of podcasts get to like 200 episodes or something. I just want to get there because we're never going to be one percenters from the like financial perspective.

01:14
So if we can get to the 1% club in podcasting, I would be pretty darn happy with that. I think like, listen, we're real people with real jobs. This doesn't cost us money, doesn't make us money. We do it for fun and to spend time with each other and to kind of share stories. So Key West. So Key West. So if you listen to the first episode, we left on a Friday night. And by Sunday night, we were in Key West. No, Monday. Oh, well.

01:42
Look at me speeding the trip up. So you are. Yep, you are right. No doubt. So we left on a Friday night after work. And by Monday at suppertime, we were at the Sugarloaf Key West KOA. So initially, we looked at a lot of videos deciding where to stay in Key West. And I would say like an honorable mention would be the Sun Outdoors on Islamadora, which is like further up.

02:08
into like the upper Keys I guess you would call it. And that one looked really good if we were we were ready to stay there and they have a really good military discount like they just their properties are really well maintained. We'll talk about one later that we stayed at in St. Augustine on the way home. But the reason we opted not to stay there and to stay at the KOA instead was the fact that it was a lot closer to Key West and we knew as you know first-time visitors were going to want to be spending a lot more time.

02:35
in Key West and we didn't want like a 45 minute commute or a 40 minute commute to get there. The other one that we look at which everybody who knows anything about Key West and RVing will ask us why didn't you stay at Blue Water Key which is like the luxury, the creme de la creme of RV resorts in the Keys. And we basically just didn't stay there because of price. It was really expensive. And I think you know from what we were doing and who we had with us and what our plans were for the trip.

03:02
KOA was like perfection and I would say it far exceeded like my wildest dreams of what it should be with one exception which we'll talk about and that's not the KOA's fault at all it's the weather's fault. But it was it was stunning like you couldn't have picked a better more moderately priced resort that had like all of the amenities you need and more plus the benefit of having like just really beautiful lush landscaping.

03:28
which even though the sites were really close together, gave a lot of privacy when you were sitting down in a chair, like the way the landscaping was, you felt like you had a bit of a private site, which was so lovely. Yeah, so it's about 30 miles, 50 kilometers outside of Key West. So it was good that way. Just to set this up a little bit more, probably the YouTube algorithms had us decide that we were going to go to Key West because I watch some videos and the more I watch videos on Key West, I thought this looks awesome. I want to go to Key West. So that's how we landed on going to Key West.

03:58
And then, and this is an important part, like this is the serious part of what I'm gonna say is, if you're going to stay down there somewhere, I would use YouTube to look at somebody who stayed there recently and get a good feel for the place and see if that's the kind of place that you wanna stay at. And so we looked at some places that we would love to stay at, but we couldn't get in, some places that were maybe a bit pricey, but I do remember there was a couple of good videos and I don't have the names of them off the top of my head, but somebody kinda...

04:27
rode his bike or his golf cart and kind of did an entire tour of the whole thing. And we sped through it and we're like, yep, this is a good spot to stop. What I would just remind you is get a video that's recent because they get hurricanes and construction. And so some places are actually better now than they even were when we were there. And so like try and get something within like say the last six months. So, you know what you're going to, because I think something that's current is going to be the most helpful, unlike say a provincial park in Ontario. Yeah. And I think we'll go back in our.

04:57
watch history and we'll put in the show notes like who it is that we that we looked at because we had some really good we follow some really good creators as well and we're here to share the love so pointing you in the right direction to some of the creators that we have followed and found really helpful will be be helpful so i'll put those in the show notes as well you know when dan was saying like there's there's a variety of places to say obviously and and what's important to note is like each key at like has a different vibe to it right like it's got a different feel to it and where you stay is kind of going to reflect the vibe of like the key you're on

05:27
Yeah, I think that's probably pretty accurate, because it's still like, what, four hours from end to end? Like, that's still a lot of little like micro changes along the way. Yeah. And I think Sugarloaf was good. It was a perfect place to stay. There was like a couple of small restaurants, a little gas station, a couple of RV resorts and some condos. And, you know, it was a really great place, kind of gives you that like bit of a barefoot vibe, like where it's more laid back, more relaxed, but not like in like a beach town kind of way. It was just very

05:55
low-key, underrated, like perfect place that if you were just wanted to sit and spend a day or two at the campground and just chilling and just like riding your bike around Sugarloaf Key, perfect place for that. Kind of reminded me of the good stuff out of like Hawaii and California, those small little beachy towns, not the Miami vices. Yeah.

06:16
For sure. So the KOA itself, I would I was super excited for what I was most excited for is their kind of we'll call it the pool complex, right? So they've got like a great restaurant. They've got bands playing all the time. They've got a beautiful pool. They've got a hot tub. They've got a fire pit. They've got hammocks there. They've got kind of a lush like it's very like kind of jungly, tropical. There's horseshoe pits hidden in there. And we were really excited because we not only have the benefit of that.

06:44
beautiful pool complex, you're also right on the water and you're right kind of where the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico meet. Beautiful clear little bay and they have a variety of motorized and non-motorized water craft and activities that you can do and you can rent. They have their little marina there. I think they even had gas like to gas up your boat there and so you know it kind of had the best of everything that you would need if you're staying there at a campground. Our oldest daughter actually works in...

07:12
campground maintenance and management and was like super duper impressed with the staff the Garbage pickup the way that they would clean the campsites after people left like she notices all of these things and and it was just like Fantastic. It was impeccable. Like like there's a There's a poolside bar restaurant service was great there. There's coffee in the morning If I recall correctly, it's like refillable throughout the day

07:40
Like everything's impeccable. We were in like a medium. I don't forget the class is a site, but we were in the top end site. We're in like the medium site and it was really good. And like, if you have a chance to stay at one of the waterfront sites, that would be amazing. Yeah, of course they were all taken, which is fair, but I was really happy with the site that we had and we were pretty close to the pool and it was a nice little walk or a bike ride away to the water and the marina, which was great.

08:05
But the one downside I would say, and again, not KOA's fault at all, this was us just being, OK, well, it's got a pool. The pool is going to feel refreshing when we dive in because we have been traveling. It's so hot. We are not used to this level of heat. And listen, we have been to Disney in July and August when it is like hotter than hot.

08:28
And I don't know why, but when you get in a pool at Disney, it's pretty refreshing. We got in the pool at the KOA in the middle of July, and it was like sitting in a hot tub. Like the pool was like sitting in a hot tub. And come to find out, like the pool is not heated because at first I was like, why would they heat this pool? It's July. And they were like, no, no, no, that's just the sun. Like it was so hot down there. And the size of the pool was like typical, you know, campground pool, like, you know, a fairly large pool, but not, you know, Olympic sized or anything.

08:56
And it was just the sun gets so hot that they can't do anything about it. That's just how hot the water is in the pool. So it was probably a little less than refreshing. And so, you know, the the actual ocean water was great, but also still very warm. So, like, you didn't get that, like, feeling when you get to dive into, like, a cold lake on a hot day in Canada. So this is what I'll say. Like, I didn't know we were like, we need to talk about this during the podcast. So.

09:21
Right now there's probably somebody driving down the road listening to the podcast. He's like, Marge, why did they go to K to Key West in July? Well, there's a good reason for that because we're beholden to the school calendar and our youngest is in school till the end of June. She's got to be back in school for the beginning of September. You know, we have hockey for both of them in the winter, like getting away for a couple of weeks to go down to Key West in like the best time to go, which would be like kind of your October to March ish.

09:49
timeframe just doesn't work for us. But the island boy, me, will come back some other time, but it was hotter than snot. And like, you know, you try and do your activities early in the day, you try to get inside for something in the afternoon. We did not have a campfire. We did not go outside because again, not the KOA's fault. Like there's these no-see-em bugs that bite you. And you know, you would, you could put on a fire, but it's too hot to put on a fire to keep them away.

10:17
you know, so incidentally the fire pit rings there are awesome, but you can't use them in July. And we have, and this is, I think one thing we learned, we have one air conditioner on our trailer and it worked fine, but all the locals have to, and like I think our next trailer is going to have two air conditioners. Cause I would imagine that as we empty nest our way into retirement, we're going to go down south more often into air conditioners would be nice.

10:42
Yeah, I would say that's a that's a really, really good point. Well, on the no seams, we did get a really lovely spray in the K.O.A. camp store that was for no seams, and it worked really, really well. But yes, we noticed all the way. Well, actually, once we were down there, we noticed, hey, wait a minute, everybody. Literally everybody had two air conditioners on their unit, even if they had like a 24 foot trailer. Some of them had to like two air conditioning units. And then we noticed on our drive home and every time we would pass RV dealerships on the road.

11:11
like most of their models, if not all of them, had to like dual air conditioners. And you don't generally find them in the stock that is in Canada. Or I have never noticed. You wouldn't need two air conditioners in Canada in the summer. It just wouldn't be required. It cools off at night. You just yeah, you wouldn't need two air conditioners unless you had a really, really big trailer. But your average 29 foot trailer or 27 foot trailer.

11:35
that usually gets used on weekends would not need two air conditioners in Canada. Yeah. So we kind of survived by having fans and our air conditioner went 24 7. Oh, yeah. Like tip of the lifetime. Bring a box fan and put it outside your trailer so you can sit in your lawn chair with a box fan going. Yeah, that that actually helped. And there was a lot of a lot of locals, a lot of people from Florida camping there, and they all had box fans under their awnings so that they could sit and get a nice breeze.

12:02
But just internally fans, like just to help move some of that cold air around from the air conditioner. Like we have one, you know, our main vent is in the living room, for lack of a better word. And then up in the master bed and in the bunk room in the back, there's only like one tiny little round vent pumping the AC through. So it's it's pretty, pretty warm if the air is not circulating well. And I would say if and again, like.

12:29
We didn't go into this blind. We know what Florida is like in the summer. We've done it before. And we made that decision to go there versus somewhere else because we really wanted to go to the Keys. And I'm glad that we did. But I would say, you know, for us as Canadians with one AC unit, like having on hand the number of like a mobile RV tech in the area wherever you're going is super important, because I will tell you, if we had had that unit crap out, we would have been. We would have been at the Holiday Inn Express. Actually.

12:58
Well, the K.O.A. Sugarloaf actually has hotel rooms right on property, and we would have paid the exorbitant amount to stay in them, just get some AC and we probably would have gone home. So that's probably another tip if you're traveling there and you have one that's going like 24 seven all day long. Yeah, like true story. Another family from Canada rolled in a day or two after us and they rolled out pretty quick. They cut their trip short. Yeah. And moved along. But like, listen, it, you know, if you're out there telling Marge we're idiots, you're probably right.

13:27
But, you know, we knew that walking in and you know, now the YouTube algorithm has got us lined up for Montana or Wyoming or North Dakota this summer. Who knows where we'll go. But anyways, like I think that's enough about the heat. We rode our bikes a lot. The kids rode their bikes a lot, especially for being a little bit older. It was nice to see them just get out and about and do like kid stuff, almost like they knew what it was like to be in the eighties. Like they don't have their eighties badge yet, but it was good to see them out doing that kind of stuff.

13:56
We did ride over to this, pardon me, the New Sun Outdoors Resort, which is like a four or five minute bike ride away. Wasn't really a planned ride. You're just out exploring, killing some time in the heat. And it's really nice. It's really new, like really, really new. Almost like I dare say not.

14:14
quite finished. It's probably 90% there, but I'm glad we didn't stay there because I didn't really have the same atmosphere of people and the landscaping wasn't quite filled in. It was a little more wide open, but it's going to be really nice when it maybe fills in just a little bit. I would say if they didn't have any plans for like planned foliage in that sun outdoors, I would probably choose the KOA over it because they're essentially right beside each other but we had

14:39
the girls with us. And so, you know, if I was going down there, just the two of us and maybe we're staying for a few months, I'd definitely give the sun outdoors a definite hard look. If I just wanted a nice spot that was nice and quiet to park my trailer, read my book, go and do some sightseeing play. Well, I don't even know if they have golf. They have golf courses down there, but we didn't play golf, but you know what I mean? Yeah. Um, so I would definitely give it a hard look for that. For sure. Yeah. And you know, I think for this trip, so my daughter and her boyfriend and Isla our youngest were

15:09
were the three kids that were with us and Fiona and her boyfriend were only able to join us for, you know, five days before they had to fly home. So the plan was that they would fly back from Key West home and then Isla drove back home with us. So we made more of a trip out of the trip back. But because we only had five days, it overlapped Dan's birthday. We wanted to kind of be really close to the action in Key West and like take them to see like a lot of those like.

15:36
top five, top ten sites that you would see if you were visiting Key West for the first time and that's kind of what we did. Yeah, I mean they nicknamed me the Island Boy. We did a lot of cool stuff in Key West. We got tell them about the Hemingway House. Yeah, so that was pretty much like one of the only things on my list that I wanted to do because I have read Hemingway for a long time and The Old Man and the Sea is one of my favorite novels and I really wanted to see Hemingway House and it did not disappoint. Even if you are not like a literary fan or you don't even know who Ernest Hemingway is.

16:05
you get enough of the history of Key West that you will be able to get an appreciation for, for the Keys, for their creation, the history, and some of the famous people that have kind of gone in and out through the Keys. So, um, highly, highly, highly recommend that. For me, it was, it was definitely the highlight of our trip for sure. Yeah, we got to see a lot of the city, and we were in a couple of times, but did our like day where we were going to go see the city. We rented a golf cart. We got the big model that held five of us.

16:34
So that was kind of cool to drive around on the golf court. I would recommend getting a golf cart to scoot in and scoot out of these places like the Hemingway house. You always kind of had to fuss around a little bit to pay for parking every time you pulled into a new spot. You kind of got to worry about that, but you managed to get it figured out. Yeah. And there's a few there's like a very few places that have free parking, but only kind of while you're using their facilities. So the lighthouse is one the lighthouse has free parking, the QS lighthouse while you're there. But the the golf cart

17:04
was a tip that we had received and I'm so glad that we did it because Key West is very it's very old. There's very like there's cobblestone streets, they're very narrow streets. And especially if you're towing a trailer, you're going to have a truck that's going to be, you know, pretty large in some cases. So everybody just zips around town in golf carts. You take them to the grocery store, you take them to ice cream, you take them to your restaurant that you're going to. And it was a great, nice, really breezy way to see the city and

17:34
spots that we could zip in and out of that were sort of municipally owned and cost less than driving your truck. Because, I mean, Key West is it's a very walkable city. But if you were going end to end to end to end all day long, especially in the July heat, you would have to keep going back to your car and driving to the other side of the city. So we didn't want to do that. So what we did the first day that we were there is we parked over in Mallory Square.

17:56
walked over, got our golf cart and zipped around for that day. And then the next day that we were there, we parked in kind of the Truman waterfront area, which is near Fort Zachary Taylor. There's a huge parking lot there, which cost us a bit, probably about twenty five dollars for the day. But it was worth it. And that sort of area is close enough to Old Down and Duval Street that you could just kind of walk everywhere you wanted to go because we didn't get the golf cart kind of on day two. But I would say there is more to do in Key West than

18:26
in a two day trip, I would say you would probably want three good days to be able to reliably see everything we did it in two, which for our first trip was good. And I think we kind of acknowledged that when we were going down there, this is going to be like our bookmark trip where we're like, okay, we're going to bookmark this, we're going to come back to this. So other than seeing the Key West Lighthouse, which again, super worth it. I was surprised at how far inland it was actually. Yeah, you get a really good vantage point of the city. There's a little bit of a museum there that's got a washroom and it's

18:54
air conditioned so you can cool off a bit. So that's a nice little stop for like an hour long, maybe, would you say? Yeah. So that's cool. Yeah. And that's right across the street from Hemingway House. We saw southernmost point, obviously, Mallory Square. We went up and down Duval Street several times cruising along. I would say the points of interest that we that we had on the list that we did not get to because we only had two days were the Fort Zachary Taylor Smith and.

19:20
the Mel Fisher Maritime Museum, and there's also another Shipwrecked Museum, which I thought would have been really, really cool. And given the heat, it would have been great because they're indoors and they probably were air conditioned, but we just didn't have time because we were just trying to hit some of the highlights before we headed back to the campsite for the day. And there's like some cool shops in there. There's like your typical tourist spot, your tacky tourist gifts that you get. Like I got my best beer drinking glass there. And you know, you get a...

19:46
Key West license plate and t-shirts but then there's like a cool antique store that's got like shipwrecked jewelry and Kill Winds ice cream I think it was everybody loved that so there's like cool stuff to just jump out and see from the golf cart so that's really cool that way yeah and of course we we did have lunch at Margaritaville because you can't go down to Key West and not go to Margaritaville so that was typical Margaritaville but it was the original Margaritaville so

20:12
Kilwyn's ice cream was amazing. We actually went back twice. Everybody asked to go back there again. It was fantastic. We did have key lime pie while we were there. So I think we checked enough of like the must do this, must do that in Key West. We didn't take advantage of like going over to the dry torque to guys because you can only get there by plane or boat. And it was just oppressively hot. There's not a lot of shade there. There's not a lot of facilities there. And it just that would that would be well set up if you were to do a bit of like a snorkeling tour or something kind of in the spring.

20:42
maybe in the winter months, but it was just, it was not our vibe to do that while it was like 48 degrees. Yeah, so, but there's still a ton, like the mark of a good trip is that you leave and you didn't get to do everything, that you want to go back and see that place again. And I think that's what we want to do with Key West. There's some other stuff we got to do not in Key West proper. Did the seven mile bridge. So we walked out there. We just kinda enjoyed like being by the sea and watching people catch fish. There was a,

21:12
dude caught a, I think it was a drumhead shark. No, it was a nurse shark. A nurse, a nurse shark, you're right. And he caught this thing on a bass reel and he would like fought this thing all the way almost to the, till the water's edge and then it spit the hook. But like, that was really awesome to watch. Like one of those little memories, you just, you never planned for it, but you know, that was super cool. And everybody was cheering him on as he kinda got this thing to the side. So that was awesome. Well, he wasn't trying to reel it in because you, they're literally protected species. Like he was trying to get the hook out, get it close enough that he could get the hook out.

21:42
and was not successful, unfortunately, to get it out. It spat the hook and off it went, but it was certainly neat to see. We went and took the kids to, I would call it an aquarium, but it's not like it's aquarium slash nature preserve slash, I don't know, petting zoo for aquarium. I don't know. It was something that we could go and like you could feed alligators and you could pet stingrays and you feed.

22:09
a bunch of other fish and you can see manatees. And so, you know, it's a rehabilitation center as well. But they have a lot of like very interactive exhibits. And I think it's probably geared towards like families and younger kids, but our, you know, 16 and 19 year olds were super impressed. Well, I'm happy to get the hands on. Yeah, but we wouldn't see that kind of stuff in Canada. Like we've never seen an alligator up here. So it's kind of cool to see that kind of stuff. Yeah. So it was a good opportunity. Maybe would you budget like an hour and a half for that?

22:37
Yeah, an hour and a half for sure. It was called the Florida Keys Aquarium Encounters and it was in Marathon. Yeah. And then like right out in front of the parking lot, there's a little boat there, maybe like 14, 15 foot long boat that was actually used by Cuban migrants. And that's maybe just a little eye opening about like where you are in the world. You're in this like nice, safe, free country, but a reminder that you're only 90 miles from people that don't have it so lucky as the rest of us.

23:04
And to imagine that those people like took that big risk to do that is pretty impressive and just sets in sight how lucky we all are. Yeah. And I think, you know, we I didn't take a photo of the actual plaque that was beside this boat, but this boat was like, it was no more than 15 feet long. And there was something like, I forget how many people, but there was like almost 70 people on this boat. And it's just, you know, you go fishing in a 14 foot boat and like to have three people in there is like, we're tripping over each other. Yeah. You know, so

23:33
Maybe we'll talk a little bit about the highway. So we talked about this in part one of this trip, how we gassed up and it wasn't easy to get off for gas, but the speed limit's about, what did we say, about 50 miles an hour, 55 miles an hour. And you're kind of going through a small town every what, like 10 or 15 minutes, and then you're up over a bridge. Thing I would say is the traffic flowed really, really well.

23:57
I was expecting it to be stop and go and wait for somebody driving 40. Everybody drove at the same speed. I don't really remember any bad delays. That was nice. There are ghost cop cars about every 10 feet. And like coming from Ontario, you don't see ghost cars. And by what we mean is there is a police car. Like they're decoys. Like we have decoy cars and ghost cars, but there's a cop in there and he's going to write you a ticket in Ontario. These are just ones to like get everybody to slow down and it works.

24:26
So, but some of them, some of them did have police officers in them. So you never really knew. And that's how I think they keep you on your on your toes. But like, I think if you're this is going to be a long, stressful drive across all the keys, it was actually pretty straightforward and flowed really, really smoothly. So one of the highlights, I think, for our trip and one of the things that I really wanted to do was go paddle boarding. So we rented some paddle boards at the Marina at the KOA went out and.

24:55
I can't tell you, like it was sunny, it was beautiful, there was white fluffy clouds in the sky and we get on these paddle boards and we go out and we're doing a great job. And we were maybe out 20 minutes and you know, you see some like dark clouds in the in the distance and within within five to seven minutes we were like, okay, it's getting dark, let's make our way back to shore. And then like out of nowhere, it was like a frickin monsoon, like it was a typhoon.

25:22
It was this this weather literally came out of nowhere. And if we were any further away from shore, like I'm not quite confident we probably would have gotten back and we're strong swimmers and we're used to swimming and we had life jackets and we had whistles and all of that kind of stuff. But the wind that came with this, like the rain was going sideways and we had to go. There's a portion of the of the beach at the KOA that has buoys and like lines that kind of mark off like the swimming area from.

25:48
other area and we had to take the paddleboards and just beeline it straight for the swimming area right over the right over the the guardrail or the floating uh buoy line to get just to get to shore because we were fighting like i was tired and we were maybe 100 feet offshore like it was crazy to me so how quickly the weather turned i don't even think you were 100 feet offshore but you also you know i guess we always go into like say the great lakes and we're worried about like the

26:17
There is a bit of a current there combined with the wind, the storm blows in. Like just keep an eye on things. I think is the lesson we're trying to say. Yeah, definitely. Definitely is a current, like just the way, you know, the Atlantic meets the Gulf of Mexico there. So a lot of fun, but definitely was, you know, a good reminder when you're out doing water sports, like conditions can change on a dime. Yeah, it's just, it's a different part of the world really. Right. Like, you know, even

26:42
You have to think a little bit about the wildlife that's down there. There's alligators. So if you've ever camped in, you know, most parts of Canada, or not most parts, a lot of parts of Canada, you're always worried about bear safety. And I guess I made a joke that, Hey, we're all safe from the alligators. Like.

26:57
and then only to find out after the fact that they can actually run 30 miles an hour. So like maybe just like you know that I didn't know that at all. I'm like, I'm riding my bike on the bike path. Like the alligators can't get me like short stubby little legs like that. No, then I found out they run 30 miles an hour. I'm like, oh, maybe something, maybe something to be aware of. I think you can bicycle 35. So you're OK. Well, I just have to be faster than one of the kids. Well, the kids are convinced to this day that they heard an alligator.

27:28
flopping around or slapping in the water when they were riding on a bit of a dike. So they are convinced to this day that they escaped with their lives. But I believe them because I was out with Isla and Peyton and we were kind of stopped and we're in kind of this thick brambles with a bike trail through it, kind of a wilderness area. And then we heard a big tail snap and we were on our bikes like it was like I was on my bike. Like I was 12 years old again in 1986.

27:56
trying to get home before I got it. I got it in me once and we wheeled out of there. But, you know, you let your imagination get away from you and that's what it's all about. Right. Yeah. Couple of really interesting things that I noticed when we were going through the keys actually was there is a whole bunch of abandoned and like scuttled boats and like half sunk boats. And I'm thinking, geez, like, is all of this from like prior hurricanes or just damage? And we actually looked it up. And what we found out is like people.

28:23
will go and they will either like steal boats or they will, you know, it's kind of like in California in like the Joshua Tree area, like the Badlands in between Southern California and Vegas, you will see a lot of like really old cars just abandoned on the side of the road and those are like the cars have broken and people just walk away from them and apparently quite similar things happen in the Keys with Boats where people will just abandon the boats and they will sink and it's like they have a full-time government department that like their only job is to find the people.

28:52
who left these boats there because it's an insane amount of money to remediate, remove them. And what they say is like their big challenge is it's like buying a used car that's changed hands three or four times, right? They're like, OK, well, they'll call the person who owns the boat, but that person hasn't owned the boat since 1992 and it's changed hands three times since then. And the paperwork necessarily hasn't maybe even changed with like the DMV or whoever it is that registers the boat. So that was actually shocked to me, shocking to me how much.

29:22
of abandoned boats and half sunk boats there were. It wasn't like one or two. It was intriguing. Yeah, it's intriguing in the way like there was chickens running around on the street that we weren't. I don't think I knew of going into that. Yeah. In Key West, there's wild chickens that just run around those streets. And it was it was really, really neat. And it was very reminiscent of like the North Shore and Oahu, where you will have the same thing makes you feel a little guilty when you're eating a chicken burger or whatever.

29:51
looking at the chickens running around. But yeah, really, it just lends itself to their really neat, unique vibe of the keys. Do you want to talk about that like blimp? Oh, yeah, that was there was like this. It was US Navy, I think, wasn't it? And it's this massive big blimp that they use for like, radar or something. It's weather. It's a weather weather balloon. Yeah, it was like, awesome.

30:14
Yeah, and it's like one of the one the last ones in use. But we would see this thing go up and down in the distance and we're like, is that a cloud? Is it an alien? What's going on? And we looked it up and it has a name and I forget what it is now. But it was it was kind of a cool thing. So we could tell when the weather was going to be fair because we saw it every day. And if we didn't see it, it's because they had lowered it down and we knew that probably it was going to rain or bad weather was going to come, which kind of played out like like clockwork every afternoon. So it was really interesting. And it was a bit of like land.

30:42
for the kids and of course you let their imaginations run wild before you know it like they thought they saw aliens climbing out of it so that's cool. Yeah. So that was kind of the Keys in a nutshell really. I think it was a really really good first trip to get down there and like I said just like act as that bookmark trip of the things we want to go back and see. I think the next time we go down will I would like to spend more time in the Keys themselves

31:13
a couple of days at a time, maybe go down for two weeks and see three different RV resorts or something so that you can really get a feel for where you would like to go or visit long term because like we said, like they do like the the upper keys totally has a different vibe. It's more like beachy surf town vibe than like Key West itself. And yeah, like I think medium term retirement, I see us going down there and spending a winter. I don't know if I told you that but

31:36
like put it in your calendar. Okay, island boy. And we'll like maybe stay in the middle because then you have a little bit more time to drive the length of the keys and explore if you're down there for more time. And there's stuff we didn't get to see, like the state park, and I always get this wrong, B Honda State Park. Bahia. Bahia State Park. Bahia Honda. I really wanna go there. I wanna go to the Honda State Park. I really wanna go there. We didn't even get to drive in there. So like I see us going down there a lot.

32:04
And it was just a really great trip. And that's just like the first part of the trip. Like we haven't even talked about the way home yet. Yeah. So join us in the next two episodes because we're going to talk about heading back to one of our favorite places on the planet. And that is Disney's Fort Wilderness Resort, which we realize we have never done a dedicated episode on. So we are going to do that next episode. And then we're going to detail the rest of the way home, returning to St. Augustine, another one of our most favorite places to visit.

32:32
Or mine, at least I don't know about Dan's, but. And a police. We saw a real live police chase, too. Yeah, we saw a bunch of interesting things we can tell you about. The police did not get their man at the end of this one. I hate to be the spoiler alert, but maybe that's what makes it a good story. Yeah, for sure. So we'll get into that and much more. And I will end this week with our weekend warrior tip of the week. And I would say for this, when you are traveling in the summer, don't hold your expectations too high. So when we go to Disney, we have this like

33:02
phrase that says like when you're here you're on Disney time so like just chill like it's it's okay if you don't see everything it's okay if you don't do everything and when you're traveling in the heat you kind of have to do the same thing you need to operate your life around what the weather is doing at the moment and if that means getting up early and doing some activities outside before it gets too hot and then you know you have a popsicle and everyone lays on their bed for 30 minutes to to cool off in the afternoon before you go out again just be wary wear your sunscreen bring lots of water with you and just

33:31
be on Sun time. Like just don't worry about it if you can't see everything because the evenings offer a lot of opportunity to do cool things as do the early mornings and you have a lot of time in the afternoon to rest. So just go with the flow. Exactly, like then you can achieve island boy status like me. Okay. And on that note, we will end this episode and we'll see you next time. Have a great day. Bye.