Day 6: Easy Breezy Adventuring!

Psst. Just stopping in? Check out Day 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5!

This was a fun day. Day 6. We slept in. We recovered from The Fury. We ate a slow breakfast. Enjoyed the view of the water. Reveled in the peaceful morning and the prospect of an itinerary-free day.

Day 6 was meant to be chill…. we wanted to adventure, but didn’t want an agenda. We wanted to explore, but not feel burdened to sightsee. Our day was semi-scheduled, but unfolded organically. We knew two things: we wanted to go the the beach and visit Key West at night to see the sunset. Anything and everything else was bonus.

After breakfast, we slipped into our bathing suits, grabbed the sunscreen, cameras, and towels (and a book for me!) and hit the road. We chose to head north to visit Bahia Honda State Park- they have great beaches and some historic landmarks to see. Since we had just eaten breakfast a little while ago, we weren’t hungry, but thought we should stop and get some snacks to take to the beach. We figured it would be a snack-until-dinner type of day.

That is, until we got to the grocery store and realized… nah, we’d rather just eat lunch. 🙂

At that point, it was close to the lunch hour and we decided we’d rather use the opportunity to continue our quest to try some local foods, rather than just snacking on Cheez-its all day. Fortunately, there was a popular place to eat in the same shopping center as the grocery store, so we took a little walk and came across a small family-owned restaurant where we shared a few of their fan favorites. One thing we’d been wanting to try was Conch fritters… they were yummy!

After lunch, we ducked back into the grocery store to grab two pairs of goggles (just in case there were cool fish to see!) before heading to the beach.

The beach was glorious. Clear, warm water, white sand, blue sky. We couldn’t get enough.

We swam, then got out, laid in the sun for a little, swam again, went for a walk on the beach, swam some more. Basically, we did whatever we felt like! 🙂

Oh, and I would be remiss not to mention these little guys we found during our walk! They were faces made out of sand, twigs, shells, and other natural beachy things. There was a whole line up of them!

Eventually, some afternoon storm clouds came in and we got to experience swimming in the rain, which was fun too.

When we got tired of beaching, we packed everything up and headed back to the car, stopping at the Bahia Honda old bridge before driving back “home”. The bridge is awesome- awhile ago, the original bridge spanning over the keys was destroyed, but most of it is still visible as you drive over the new one. At Bahia Honda, you can even walk a ways out onto the old one!

There are great views of the ocean from way up there!

We headed back to the house to shower and clean up before making the trip into Key West for dinner, shopping, and sunset watching. Our original plan was to go to a hibachi style restaurant for dinner, but we ended up changing our mind and thank goodness we did! Had we not, we would have missed out on one of our favorite meals of the whole trip- we found an amazing Smokehouse style restaurant called Charlie Macs. It was awesome and after our HUGE meals, we were stuffed, but so so satisfied. If you’re in the area, GO THERE. It’s so good!

After dinner, we walked around Key West, ducking in shops and stopping to take photos with things we wanted to remember about our visit. One of which being this TREE. It was huge!

And just to give you a point of reference…

Finally, FINALLY we reached Mile Marker 0. 🙂

We loved walking through town, making our way toward Mallory Square to watch the street performers and see the sunset. It was so much fun!

Oh, and before I forget… we saw someone famous! It was the strangest thing- we were walking along the dock and there was a man walking toward us, followed by a man with a camera and another with a microphone. We both knew we recognized the man in front, but didn’t realize until later that it was Chef Curtis Stone!

After a little bit of shopping, an ice cream stop and getting lost trying to find our car (which was actually a pretty scary experience), we decided it was time to hit the road. BUT, not before stopping to see the Southernmost Point!

That night, we fell asleep quite tired, but feeling like we had a great day full of exploring and getting to see a lot of the beauty of the Keys. And we couldn’t ask for much more than that. 🙂