Long Key to Jupiter FL

Finally a timed photo - at our campsite with neighbors sailboat in background

Tuesday March 9, 2010

A nice slow start for the day and it ended quite differently than we had planned. Pancakes for breakfast, checking email and reading began the day. Ben rode his bike, Jane looked for shells. We ate lunch and Ben took a nap and Jane was reading her book when the nice camp host came to say we needed to hurry up if we were going to make the 1 PM check out time… it was 1 PM ….we thought our check out was tomorrow that our reservation was through the 9^th well it was check out on 9^th!

There were of course no reservation vacancies there or at any of the other state parks in the keys…Jane checked the one private campground one key north and refused to pay the $77 for a tiny space not even close to the ocean. We have paid $28 for the site at Long Key!! The Florida State parks are a great bargain and I guess that is why there are never any empty spots. Anyway we thought if we were going to spend $77 for the night we would just spend it for a motel. We took down camp in 50 minutes – that is a record for us considering nothing was packed, we had to take the tent down, and pack up everything including the bikes. With the bikes you can’t just throw it in!!!

I tried to call Jonathan Dickinson where we had reservations for the 10^th and they would not take any reservations on the phone and would not even tell us if they had open spots. The site Reserve America takes all FL state park reservations and will not make reservations less than 24 hours out – so we just had to take a chance they would have a space.

We drove from Long Key to Hobe Sound in less than 4 hours but when we arrived –no room at the inn. There are several private campgrounds around, in fact we stayed in one last year but we were tired and just drove about 5 miles down the road to a Comfort Inn…and searched for a seafood restaurant! No we are not tired of eating seafood yet…and had planned where we were going in Islamorada tonight. We ate at Schooners in Jupiter Beach. We had fried scallops and fried grouper fingers and shared both – great food !!!

So we are now watching NCIS and enjoying the TV and internet. So the day ended well even tho not as we had planned. And we have changed our Savannah reservation so will just end up getting home a day early. The unpacking will not be much fun – usually we clean things up as we pack up for going home so we do not have to get everything out and just put it back in the Sprinter – oh well.