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

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Transcript

1 (5s): Hello everybody and welcome to the RV Canucks podcast. I’m Molina. 2 (9s): And I’m Dan. 1 (10s): And together we are the RV Connects, 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 say at the lush Sugarloaf key KOA, explore the vibrant streets of Key West and share adventures from the scenic Florida Keys 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. 2 (40s): Yep. So we’ll just take a minute here to acknowledge that this is, this is our 50th episode and we did a little, we were on the road yesterday and Molina looked it up and only 11% of podcasts make it to the 50th episode for So yay us and thank you to everybody for tuning in ’cause it is a lot of fun 1 (58s): And it’s taken us like four years. Four years I think to get to this point. But that’s okay. I just wanna hit like the one per whatever 1% is like 1% of podcasts get to like 200 episodes or something. I just wanna get there ’cause we’re never gonna be one percenters from the like financial perspective. So if we can get to the 1% club in podcasting, I would be pretty darn happy with that. 2 (1m 19s): I think like listen, we’re real people with Real Jobs. This doesn’t, it costs 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. 1 (1m 28s): So Key West, 2 (1m 29s): 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. 1 (1m 39s): Nope. Monday. 2 (1m 41s): Oh well 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 Sugar Loaf Key West KOA. 1 (1m 55s): 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 is Islam Medora, which is like further up into like the upper keys I guess you would call it. And that one looked really good and we were, we were ready to stay there and they have a really good military discount. Like it 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 we’re going to want to be spending a lot more time in Key West and we didn’t want like a 45 minute commute or a 40 minute commute to get there. 1 (2m 40s): 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, the 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 K, the KO a’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, 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. 2 (3m 38s): 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 gonna 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. 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. 2 (4m 21s): 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 kind of rode his biker’s golf cart and kind of did an entire tour of the whole thing and we sped through it and we’re like, yeah this is a good spot to stop. What I would just remind you is get a video that’s recent ’cause 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. 1 (4m 54s): Yeah and I think we’ll go back in our watch history and we’ll put in the show notes like who it is that we, that we looked at. ’cause 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 gonna reflect the vibe of like the key you’re on. 2 (5m 27s): 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. 1 (5m 36s): Yeah and I think Sugarloaf was good. It was a perfect place to stay. There was a 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 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 2 (6m 7s): Kind Kind of reminded me of the good stuff outta like Hawaii and California, those small little beachy towns. Not the yeah, not the, not the Miami. 1 (6m 16s): Yeah, 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 jungley tropically. There’s horseshoe pits hidden in there. And we were really excited because we not only have the benefit of that 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 and activities that you can do and you can rent. 1 (6m 59s): They have their little marina there, I think they even had gas like to gas up your boat there. Yeah. 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 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. 2 (7m 28s): 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. Like everything’s impeccable. We were in like a medium, I dunno, I don’t forget the classes of site, but we were in, 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. 1 (7m 53s): Yeah, of course they were all taken, which is fair. But I was really happy with the, the site that we had and we were pretty close to the pool and it was a nice little walk or or a bike ride away to the water and the marina, which was great. But the one downside I would say, and again not KO a’s fault at all, this was us just being okay, 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 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 the hot tub and come to find out like the pool’s not heated because at first I was like, why would they heat this pool? 1 (8m 45s): 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, it was like a typical, you know, campground pool like, you know, a fairly large pool but not, you know, Olympic sized or anything. 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 ah, feeling when you get to dive into like a cold lake on a hot day in Canada. 2 (9m 16s): So this is what I’ll say, like I didn’t know we were gonna like we’re we need to talk about this during the podcast. So right now there’s probably somebody driving down the road listening to the podcast and he’s like, Marge, why did they go to ca to 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 gotta be back in school for the beginning of September. You know we have hockey F 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 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. 2 (10m 5s): We did not have a campfire, we did not go outside because again, not the K away’s fault. Like there’s these no seam 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, you know, so incidentally the fire pit rings there are awesome but you can’t use ’em 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 two and like I think our next trailer’s gonna have two air conditioners. ’cause I would imagine that as we empty nest our way into retirement, we’re gonna go down south more often and two air conditioners would be nice. 1 (10m 42s): 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 KOA 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. Like even if they had like a 24 foot trailer, some of them had two, like two air conditioning units. And then we noticed on our drive home and every time we would pass RV dealerships on the road, like most of their models, if not all of them had two like dual air conditioners. And you don’t generally find them in the stock that is in Canada or I have never noticed you 2 (11m 21s): Wouldn’t need two air conditioners in Canada in the summer. It just wouldn’t be required. And 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 that usually gets used on weekends would not need two air conditioners in Canada. 1 (11m 39s): Yeah. So we kind of survived by having fans and our air conditioner went 24 7. 2 (11m 46s): 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 1 (11m 53s): Yeah. That, that actually helped when 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. 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, our main vent is in the living room for lack of a better word or word. And then up in the master bed and 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 we didn’t go into this blind, we know what Florida is like in the summer. 1 (12m 33s): We’ve done it before and, 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’ve been, 2 (12m 55s): We would’ve been at the Holiday Inn Express. 1 (12m 57s): We actually, well the KOA Sugarloaf actually has hotel rooms right on property and we would’ve paid the exorbitant amount to stay in them just to get some a and we probably would’ve gone home. So that’s probably another tip if you’re traveling there and you have one that’s going like 24 7 all day long. 2 (13m 13s): 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, and and moved along. But like listen it, you know, if you’re out there telling Marge we’re idiots, you’re probably right. But you know, we knew but 1 (13m 29s): We’re idiots by 2 (13m 29s): Choice. 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 ’em just get out and about and do like kid stuff almost like they knew what it was like to be in the eighties like turned out they don’t have their eighties badge yet, but, but it was good to see them out doing that kind of stuff. 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. 2 (14m 11s): It’s really new, like really, really new. Almost like, I dare say not quite finished, it’s probably 90% there but I’m glad we didn’t stay there ’cause 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 gonna be really nice when it maybe fills in just a little bit. 1 (14m 29s): 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 2 (14m 39s): We had 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. So I I would definitely give it a hard look for that 1 (15m 2s): For sure. Yeah. And you know, for, I think for this trip though, my daughter and her boyfriend and, and Isla our youngest were, were the three kids that were with us. And, and Fiona and, 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, 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 top five, top 10 sites that you would see If you were visiting Key West for the first time. And that’s kind of what we did. 2 (15m 41s): Yeah, I mean they nicknamed me the island boy. We did a lot of cool stuff in in Key West. We got him about the Hemingway House. 1 (15m 48s): Yeah. So that was pretty much like one of the only things on my list that I wanted to do because I, I have read Hemingway for a long time and the Old Man in the Sea is one of my favorite novels and, 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 Hemingway is, 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 highly, highly, highly recommend that for me. It was, it was definitely the highlight of our trip for sure. 2 (16m 25s): 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 gonna go see the city. We rented a golf cart, we got the big model that held five of us. So that was kind of cool to drive around on the golf cart. I would recommend getting a golf cart to scoot in and scoot outta 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 gotta worry about that but you managed to get it figured out. 1 (16m 51s): 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 Key West Lighthouse while you’re there. But the, the golf cart 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, there’s 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 find some of those like really small parking spots that we could zip in an out of that were sort of municipally owned. 1 (17m 39s): And it 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 wanna do that. So what we did the first day that we were there is we parked over in Mallory Square, walked over, got our golf cart and zipped around for that day. And then the, 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 $25 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 ’cause we didn’t get the the golf cart kind of on day two. 1 (18m 21s): But I would say there is more to do in Key West than 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 gonna be like our bookmark trip where we’re like okay, we’re gonna bookmark this, we’re gonna 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. 2 (18m 49s): 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 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 1 (19m 1s): 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 the Mel Fisher Maritime Museum and there’s also another shipwreck museum, which I thought would’ve been really, really cool. And given the heat it would’ve been great ’cause they’re indoors and they probably were air conditioned but we just didn’t have time ’cause we were just trying to hit some of the highlights before we headed back to the campsite for the day. 2 (19m 36s): 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 Key West license plate and t-shirts, but then there’s like a cool antique store that’s got like shipwreck 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. 1 (20m 2s): 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, or the original Margaritaville. So kill wind’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 togas because you can only get there by plane or boat and it, 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, maybe in the winter months. 1 (20m 44s): But it was just, it was not our vibe to do that while it was like 48 degrees. 2 (20m 49s): 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 kind of enjoyed like being by the sea and watching people catch fish. There was a dude caught a, I think it was a drum head shark wasn it. 1 (21m 15s): No it was a nurse shark. 2 (21m 16s): 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. 1 (21m 35s): Well he wasn’t trying to reel it in because you, they’re literally protected species. Yeah. Like he was trying to get the hook out, get it close enough and he could get the hook out and was not successful unfortunately to get it out. It spat the hook and and off it went. But it was, 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, a petting zoo for aquarium. I dunno. It was something that we could go and like you could feed alligators and you could pet stingrays stingrays and you know, you feed a bunch of other fish and you could see manatees and so you know, it’s a rehabilitation center as well. 1 (22m 15s): 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 If you and happy to get the hands on. Yeah. 2 (22m 28s): 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? 1 (22m 37s): Yeah, an hour and a half for sure. It was called the Florida Keys Aquarium Encounters and it was in marathon. 2 (22m 44s): Yeah. And then like right out in front in 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 eyeopening 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. And to imagine that those people like took that big risk to, to do that is pretty impressive and just sets in sight how lucky we all are. 1 (23m 12s): Yeah and I think, you know, we, I didn’t take a photo of the, 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 2 (23m 30s): We’re tripping over each other. Yeah. You know. So maybe we’ll talk a little bit about the highway. So we, we talked about this in a part one of this trip, how, you know, we gassed up and you know, it wasn’t easy to get off for gas but the speed limit’s about, what did we say about 50 miles an hour? Yeah, 55 miles. Yeah, 50, 55. Yeah. 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. The thing I would say is the traffic flowed really, really well. Like 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 well by what we mean is there is a police car, like 1 (24m 18s): They’re decoys, 2 (24m 19s): Like we have decoy cars in ghost cars, but there’s a cop in there and he is gonna write you a ticket in Ontario. These are just ones to like get everybody to slow down and it worked. 1 (24m 27s): 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, 2 (24m 33s): On your toes, keep you on your toes. But like I think if you’re, this is gonna be a long stressful drive across all the keys, it was actually pretty straightforward and flowed really, really smoothly. 1 (24m 45s): So one of the highlights I think for our trip and one of the things that Isla really wanted to do was go paddle boarding. So we rented some paddleboards at the marina at the KOA went out and 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 paddleboards 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 we’re like, okay, it’s getting dark, let’s make our way back to shore. And then like out of nowhere it was like a fricking monsoon, like it was a typhoon, 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’ve 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. 1 (25m 35s): 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 the other area. And we had to take the paddleboards and just beline it straight for the swimming area right over the right over the, the guard rail or the floating boy line to get, just to get to shore because we were fighting like I was tired and we were maybe a hundred feet off shore. Like it was crazy to me. So how quickly the weather turned, 2 (26m 9s): I don’t even think you were a hundred feet shore, but you also, you know, I guess we always go into like say the Great Lakes and we’re worried about like the undertow but 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. 1 (26m 26s): Yeah, definitely. Definitely is a current like just the way, you know, the Atlantic meets the, 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. 2 (26m 38s): Yeah it’s just, it’s a different part of the world really. Right. Like you know, even 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 and then only to find out after the fact that they can actually run 30 miles an hour. So like maybe just like you didn’t know that. I didn’t know that at all. I’m like ah, I’m riding my bike on the bike path. Like the alligators can’t get me like short stubby little legs like that. No, but then I found out they run 30 miles an hour. I’m like, ooh, that’s okay. Maybe something, maybe something to be aware of. I think 1 (27m 17s): You can bicycle 35 so you’re okay. 2 (27m 20s): Well I just have to be faster than one of the kids. 1 (27m 24s): Well the kids are convinced to this day that they heard an alligator 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, that they escaped with their lives. 2 (27m 36s): 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, a wilderness area and then we heard a big tail snap and we were on our bikes. Like it was like I like I was on my bike like I was 12 years old again in 1986 1 (27m 56s): Trying to to get home 2 (27m 57s): Before the story. I got it, I got it in me once and we wheeled outta there. But you know, you let your imagination get away from you and that’s what it’s all about. Right. Yeah. 1 (28m 6s): A 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 we, what we found out is like people 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 who left these boats there because it’s an insane amount of money to remediate and remove them. 1 (28m 58s): 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, okay, 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 it, that was actually shock to me, shocking to me how much of of abandoned boats and half sunk boats there were. 2 (29m 26s): It wasn’t like one or two, it was intriguing. 1 (29m 28s): It’s dozens. Yeah, it was 2 (29m 29s): Intriguing, right? 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. 1 (29m 37s): 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 and looking at, looking at the chickens running around. But yeah, really it it just lends itself to the really neat unique vibe of the keys. Do you wanna talk about that? Like blimp 2 (30m 2s): Remember? 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. 1 (30m 11s): It’s weather. It’s a weather balloon. 2 (30m 12s): Weather balloon. Yeah it was like awesome. Yeah and 1 (30m 15s): 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? Like what’s going on? And we, we looked it up and then it has a name and I, 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 gonna rain or bad weather was gonna come, which kind of played out like, like clockwork every afternoon. So it was really 2 (30m 41s): Interesting and it was a bit of a like landmark for the kids and of course you let their imaginations run wild and before you know it like they thought they saw aliens climbing out of it. So that’s cool. Yeah, 1 (30m 52s): 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, we wanna go back and see. I think the next time we go down, we’ll I would like to spend more time in the keys themselves but I would also spend time in a few different RV parks for a couple of days at a time. Maybe go down for two weeks and and see three different RV resorts or something so that you can really get a feel for where you would like to go and 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 2 (31m 30s): 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 like put it in your calendar. Okay 1 (31m 38s): I land 2 (31m 39s): 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 but, and I always get this wrong, be Honda State Park, 1 (31m 53s): Bia, 2 (31m 54s): BIA State Park, BIA Honda, I really wanna go there. I want to go to the Honda State Park. I really want to go there. We didn’t even get to drive in there so like I see us going down there. Yeah. A lot. 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. 1 (32m 11s): 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 gonna detail the rest of the way home. Returning to St. Augustine, another one of our most favorite places to visit or mine at least, I don’t know about Dan’s but, 2 (32m 35s): And a police cha. We saw a real live police chase too. Yeah, we 1 (32m 38s): Saw a, we’ll have to squeeze that one in. Interesting things we can tell you 2 (32m 41s): About the police did not get their man at the end of this one. I hate to like be the spoiler alert, but maybe that’s what makes it a good story. Yeah, for 1 (32m 48s): 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 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. 1 (33m 29s): Wear your sunscreen, bring lots of water with you and just be on sun time. Like just don’t worry about it If you can’t see everything because the evenings offer a lot, 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 ru so just go with the flow 2 (33m 44s): Exactly like then you can achieve island boy status like me. 1 (33m 49s): Okay. And on that note, we’ll end this episode and we’ll see you next time. 2 (33m 54s): Have a great day. Bye.