Biscayne National Park
On our third day of our three National Park Trip to Florida, Lauren and I headed to downtown Miami in the early am hours. We tried hard to beat rush hour traffic, which we didn’t try hard enough. After sitting in traffic for a while in our oversized Sprinter Van, we finally made it to the docks where our small shuttle boat took us out to Biscayne National Park and our second park of the trip.
The shuttle boat was about 16’ wide and maybe 40’ long. It was bigger than Dexter’s boat, and there were more people, so I wasn’t too worried about being dumped into the middle of the ocean, in a garbage bag. It was a super calm day, so we didn’t have the high seas and chop that we had on our Dry Tortugas trip in a couple of days.
Heading out of the bay we got a little bit of a history lesson about Miami and the bay in general. The port that we took off from, was the old Miami Sea Airport, which was neat. Our first stop was Stillsville. I would have loved to be around back in Stillsville’s heyday. There are only a couple of structures left out in the ocean. Some of the areas are only a foot deep out here. Looking back, the skyline of Miami looms large and is quite breathtaking. But right now, we were focused on the history lesson of how Hurricane Andrew wiped out several of the structures and the latest structure to be lost was in a fire. No new structures can be built out here, and if you have an existing one, you can still use it. Some parties happen on the weekends out here still, but its a shell of its former self. There was a neat lighthouse on the key that Lauren and I visited the day before, that you got to see from the ocean, which was a cool sight. There was also a light tower out in the ocean that was built in the 1800’s off in the distance. I was wondering what that was until the tour guide got me up to speed.
We cruised around in the ocean, looking for wild and plant life. There were some neat sponges and starfish to be found. We didn’t get to see anything really cool though. 95% of the park is a reef and underwater, so on land, there isn’t much to see. We cruised the ocean for a bit and than headed for the northern most Key in the chain. We docked at Key Boca Chita. There is some cannons left and an old light house. The entire time, we thought the lighthouse would be under renovation and wouldn’t be cool to see, we lucked out and there wasn’t any scaffolding set up and it was clear to see. You could see downtown Miami off in the distance behind it and in the other direction, you could see Key Largo. We stayed on the Key for about 45 minutes. You can camp out here, which would actually be pretty cool. Typical assholes had litter all over the place and there was glass bottles laying around. That is so disheartening to see. So much beauty to be wasted by assholes. People suck sometimes.
We walked around the key, and got some photos and headed back to the shuttle boat for the 35 minute cruise back to Miami. We loaded up the Sprinter and headed to South Beach. Not a bad morning in Miami!
Equipment used:
Sony a1
Sony 70-200 mm f/2.8
Tamron 17-28 mm f/2.8
