Bahia Honda

In July South Florida is a hot and humid place. It is not recommended to go out side for any reason. They say necessity is the mother of invention and I believe that air conditioning was developed by someone who lived down here. Even the Mosquitoes sweat in July.

In New England summer is a time to get outside and enjoy the sunny weather. People head to the beach and play outside any chance they get. In Miami it’s the opposite. The entire population huddles inside next to the air conditioner. We only leave the house to buy hurricane supplies, and we wait to the last minute to do that. None of the locals can be found on the beach, and no one plays sports except the crazy Brazilians, who play soccer 24/7.

With this in mind it is an oddity for ExtremeMiami to have a camping trip in July. July 8th we went down to Bahia Honda State park for an overnight adventure. This park is located in the Florida Keys, just above Key West at mile marker 38. It very hard to get reservations for a site, which is why we ended up there in July instead of April. We figured it’s totally worth it because the campsites are right on the beach and the cool breeze from the water would keep our shorts from melting.

Saturday morning dawned grey and overcast. I was psyched because this meant it wouldn’t be too hot. It’s amazing what a difference it makes when the sun is out vs. behind the clouds. I got picked up at 9 for the long ride down there. It’s about 3 hours form Miami. We stopped on the way down at Robbie’s. This is a keys institution located on a small inlet where you can actually feed Tarpon in the water. It’s like a marine petting zoo. They hang out underneath the dock and you just throw in fish. They go crazy! These are huge fish, too! One was about 6 feet long. He actually jumped out of the water to get at a fish I was holding!

We arrived at the campsite to find that we weren’t in the beach spots. We were around the back of the park in a dredged out inlet where we weren’t allowed to swim. Supposedly there were manatees in the area, but we sure didn’t see any. The campsite was not great, it was pretty much rock clearing where we pitched our tents. We had to build the fire in a metal grill up on a post, no ground fires allowed. Despite it being overcast we had a good turnout, about 15 people. We played some football and Frisbee in the water at the beach in the afternoon. I wish I had video of us trying out the skim board! It remained overcast for the whole day, but it was warm, not hot and it hadn’t rained on us.

As the sky began to darken we headed back to camp for dinner and some drinking games. Kings was the game of choice and I was living large with my Milwaukee’s best! Unleash the Beast! Now after my experience in the Badlands I make sure not to drink too much alcohol while in the wilderness. So I was the first to realize it was starting to rain. Within three minutes it was pouring. One of the tents collapsed under the onslaught and those guys had to sleep in their car!

The next morning the weather was beautiful and clear. We headed back to the beach and it was easy to see why it was consistently ranked high among America’s beaches. We snorkeled and swam and played more Frisbee on the sand. On the way home we stopped for lunch at little café and had seafood and authentic key lime pie, which is never green!