The weather in the early part of November was still not the picture perfect Florida weather of sunshine and puffy clouds, there were days with heavy tropical rain as shown in an earlier picture of my flooded trailer spot.
I was quickly becoming a weather channel junky trying to predict the good days so that I could book dive trips. For the most part I was successful, only one trip was pretty rough, with 4-6 swells. Fortunately, I don’t get sea sick unless it is really bad and it mainly just makes getting back on the boat after the dive kind of “sporty”.
I usually would do a morning dive as that is when the wrecks get visited for the most part. I was able to get 3 dives on the Speigel Grove and 1 dive on the Duane and got a great video of a nurse shark that swam right under me. I also got to visit both Molasses reef and French reef where I got some great video of a pretty large sea turtle in the wild.
Here are some highlights from the dives.
Besides diving I also booked a guided paddle tour in the mangroves starting in Tavernier with Paddle the Florida Keys. I thought it would be fun to have a guide to explain about the mangroves and any wildlife we might see. I decided to use a rental kayak as it would give me a change of pace from my inflatable, just for contrast. Our small group was lead by Brittany and she helped us spot sharks and turtles and took us through cool little mangrove passages. The mangroves are very interesting, they grow in the water and create tunnels due to the currents in the water. The water is so clear you can see clear to the bottom to spot fish and turtles. It was very fun to explore!
It was a fun 2 hours and I would like to come back and explore this area some more in the future.
Of course it wasn’t until my last week in Key Largo that I started to meet cool people. I ran into Anna on the dive boat and we became fast friends. She is from Arizona, working remotely while living in her VW Vanagon. She has been travelling the country climbing mountains and diving. A few days later we were hanging out at the beach and met a couple from the UK travelling in their new Toyota four runner set up with all the cool overland gear including a roof top tent. I exchanged contact info with everyone I met and hopefully we can meet up again somewhere down the road.
Sadly, despite my best efforts I was unable to find ANY spot to stay in the Keys for December, it is the beginning of peak snowbird season and everything is and has been booked for a long time. So it looks like it’s time for me to get back on the road. I’m going to swing over to the Gulf coast for my trip North and I’ve been lucky enough to get spots in Florida state parks for the most part all the way up to Pensacola Florida. Once I leave Florida I plan to stay low along the southern US and I’ve got 6 nights booked in New Orleans over Christmas! Then I’ll be cutting across Texas and visiting a couple of Thousand trails parks and a Harvest host site for one night as I make my way to New Mexico. My plan currently is to explore New Mexico, Arizona and Southern Nevada for most of the rest of the winter. No sense returning to the PNW for winter. 😱
Hey Its Gregg! 