Wilderness Wandering

January 19, 2024

Biscayne National Park is 270 square miles of waterfront property within 30 minutes of Miami, and only 45 minutes from The Everglades.  This prime real estate became protected in the late 60s to prevent it from  being developed into waterfront hotels. 

The park is 95% underwater. Since we don’t have a boat, we booked a 6 hour Sail, Paddle and Snorkel adventure with the Biscayne National Park Institute, a non profit organization that handles the charters for Biscayne. Sorry for the lack of photographs. We don’t have a go pro and my iPhone in the water proof case didn’t capture much.

This morning was extremely foggy and humid. We arrived at Biscayne National Park and got our photo and passport stamp. We watched a great video about the park.  We checked in for our Sail, Paddle and Snorkle activity and rented our snorkel equipment. The group size is a maximum of 6 people per boat. Our group consisted of us and Stacey and Scott from  Bloomington, IL and our guide Michael. 

We set out on the 40’ sail boat Adventure. It was so foggy, we couldn’t see very far in front of us. There was no wind, so we couldn’t sail. We motored to Adams Key. We got off on the key and explored a little and had the lunch we brought.

After lunch, we launched kayaks from the ship and paddled to a nearby mangrove forest. We put on our snorkle equipment and bailed out of the kayaks. The water was about 70 degrees.  There was a decent current, so we were able to drift along the shore of the mangroves with no effort. The water was typically only 3-4 feet deep, so we were close to what we were seeing.  We snorkeled for about an hour.  We were on the shore side of the reef. There were many small fish, and a lot of pretty vegetation. Michael said the mangroves are the fish nursery. 

We saw one beautiful sea star. People routinely see nurse and lemon sharks, and there are some manatees in the area, but we didn’t see any of those. 

We paddled back to the ship. There was some weather coming in and the wind really blew up, but we were going into the wind, so again, we couldn’t sail. 

After we disembarked, we walked the pier. It was fun kayaking and snorkeling and if we ever come back, I would snorkel out further on the reef.

Next, we made a brief stop just to see Miami Beach and then a stop in Fort Meyers to see our friends Chris and Kelly and see their new home.

Thank you to all our friends who hosted us this trip! We had a great time!

That’s all for this trip. We will be back on the road in early February.