Dry Tortugas NP (by Asher)

Dry Tortugas National Park, you are hard to get to.

Perhaps I should provide some background information. Dry Tortugas NP is one of the three national parks in Florida. The other two being Everglades NP and Biscayne NP. Back at the start of the RV trip, the first thing we did was head south. Due to the fact that it was March, and we didn't want to go north when it was cold. Since we didn't have much national-park-going experience, we didn't realize until too late that Dry Tortugas is in the ocean and needs a ferry to get to that is booked months in advance. (We also missed Biscayne NP, which is also on the water.)

Therefore, we made plans to go to the island with our cousins' family and booked a ferry and camping trip 12 months ago.

We were all staying in the RV as we went down to Key West from Georgia. It is not fun to sleep in an RV with nine people. Here's where everyone slept:

Everyone in our family slept where they always do. As you saw in the picture, we had enough sleeping spaces for everyone, but it still wasn't fun. The pullout couch looks huge in the picture. It's not. That bed and the table bed also have to be remade each night, which is why we don't use them for our beds.

For the first few nights of this trip, Sophia and Jordan talked and whispered at night. Since we're in an RV, they were clearly audible from my bunk bed. This was the part of our trip that I was not looking forward to.

At the very beginning of the RV trip, we stayed at Don Carter State Park. We met Sophia, Nathan, and Uncle Marc there. Sophia slept in Jordan's bed with her that night. Here's what I wrote in my journal for that night:

That night Jordan and Sophia slept in the same bed, and boy did they talk! How would you like to listen to their whispering at night and then have them keep you up from 5:20 to 7:30 in the morning with only their whispering to listen to? And when I told them to stop, they would either lower their voices or stop talking for thirty seconds.

Caleb's journal entry wasn't much different. So I was a little bit worried for the nights of the Florida trip. Fortunately, they only whispered during the first few nights of the trip.

Here's something about me: I'm an early riser. Most of the time, I'm the first person up. I also normally eat a bowl of cereal right when I wake up. I was very annoyed because the fridge was blocked by the pullout bed and the table had a kid sleeping on it. So I had to wait forever for everyone to get up. That was the worst thing about the Florida trip in my opinion.

OK. I realize that I'm just complaining about the trip. Pretty much everything else was great.

We were staying in the RV at Long Pine Key Campground in Everglades NP. On the morning of our sixth day of the Florida trip, we packed the rental van with all our stuff for Dry Tortugas NP. (On the way to the Everglades we had picked up a rental van that could hold all of us. We didn't bring any cars with us as none of them were big enough to hold nine people.) After we finally left (leaving can be a hassle with nine people), we were on our way to Dry Tortugas National Park!

We stopped on the way out of the Everglades to do a trail called the Anhinga Trail. We had done this trail the last time we were in the Everglades and we wanted to show it to our cousins. As soon as we got there, one thing became clear. We got lucky the first time we came. It was so hot this time! We did see some anhingas and a few alligators. One of them was a baby. After that everyone was ready to get back to the air conditioning of the van.

 

We had a two hour drive in the van to our hotel in the Keys.

When we arrived, we brought our hotel stuff up to our rooms. Then we went to the hotel pool! It was an outdoor, heated pool. We had fun playing for a few hours in the pool. Then we all showered and ate dinner that mom had brought.

After dinner we all walked to Mallory Square to watch the sunset. We stopped at a sweet shop on the way. I got a huge sprinkles cookie. After the sunset we watched a street performer.

In the morning we woke up at five o'clock and went to the ferry terminal for the Dry Tortugas ferry. We waited a long time before we got on the boat. I had more of my huge cookie while we waited. Finally we all boarded the boat. There were around 180 people on the boat but only one other person was camping on the island. We got breakfast bagels on the ferry. 

It was fun to stand at the bow of the boat while it went over the waves. One of the crew members told everyone facts about the island for some of the time.

When we arrived at the island, 70 miles from Key West, we got our camping stuff and went to set up. Since the campsite was right by a beach called South Beach, we went there. It was fun to play in the water and sand. There were lots of dead coral pieces on the bottom of the ocean. The island is about 14 acres big and most of it is covered by the fort. The fort has a moat wall around it. There were some coral and fish on the side of the moat wall. Jordan found two sea cucumbers there.

After we were done at the beach, we went back to the campsite and found that there were a ton of hermit crabs there! They look like a typical hermit crab that you'd see in a movie (I think. Honestly, how many movies have you seen that have hermit crabs in them?). One thing I found out quickly is that these hermit crabs pinch. Hard. So we picked them up by their shells. We had hermit crab races from the middle of a circle in the sand to the edge. We would let them go after a few races.

Dad cooked hamburgers for dinner on the campsite grill.

After dinner we went up to the roof of the fort to watch the sunset.

The fort is so big! This is only showing about a fourth of the wall

When we came back from the fort we saw that there were one or two hermit crab nests at the campsite. Each one had a few dozen hermit crabs clustered together.

Someone went down to the beach and discovered that there were bioluminescence in the water. We all went down to the beach to see. Every second or two a tiny dot of light would appear on the shore of the close beach. While we were out there, I set the camera up with my tripod to try to get a long exposure picture of the stars.

Dad woke me up at midnight so we could try to see a SpaceX rocket launch from Cape Canaveral. We didn't see it. The camera had died too.

The stars were incredible since we were on an island 70 miles from the mainland with only about 30 people on it at the time. 

In the morning mom came over to the kids tent and asked if I wanted to go see the sunrise. I was delayed getting dressed, so I didn't go right away. Mom was gone when I came out of the tent. I had assumed that she went ahead to watch the sunrise on the fort, so I got Jordan (since it was a good sunrise) and we went to the top of the fort to find mom. She wasn't there, so we sat down and waited. It was a good sunrise. I got enough juice out of the camera to get two pictures. Finally mom came. We went to meet her outside the fort. We went on a walk on the north side moat wall. It looked like it would be good for snorkeling later. 

It might seem silly that a fort on an island has a moat. It's there so that it can break waves and protect the fort wall.

After breakfast everyone walked around inside the fort. It's huge! (I know I already said that. It's so big that it deserves it twice). Once the ferry came, mom, dad, Uncle Marc, and I went on the tour of the fort (the tour guide comes with the ferry). I learned that Mexico could cut off shipping from the Mississippi River if they ever controlled these islands because of where the shipping channels are, so the US took control over them and built this gargantuan (too much?) fort here. This fort is also the most powerful one the US built. The reason for that is because if the fort fell under attack, there's no way for anyone to help or resupply it. There are spaces for over four hundred cannons.

Big

After that we went to the beach. About an hour later Uncle Marc, Caleb, mom, and I went to go snorkel at the north part of the moat wall. We saw a bunch of fish. Then we went back to the beach. Caleb and I played a game we called Ball-o Goal-o, which involved skipping a ball across the ocean to each other. We went back up to the top of the fort for the sunset. Three miles west of Fort Jefferson is a key called Loggerhead Key. Loggerhead has a lighthouse on it. We were there at the right time of year so the sun set right behind the lighthouse.

Wow. Look at its bigness.

Then we walked around the inside of the fort. 

I looked at the stars with the telescope I had brought. I could see about twenty times more stars through it. It was really neat.

In the morning our family went kayaking on the ocean. We had two kayaks while we were here. We didn't see any marine life, but it was nesting season here, and there were so many birds!

This is possibly the best picture we took here.

Then we packed up our campsite. Well, perhaps it's more accurate to say that the adults packed up the campsite while the kids played in the ocean. Once the campsite was packed up, we got Jersey Mike's sandwiches from the ferry and ate them at the beach. Mom and Caleb snorkeled at some coal dock ruins. When they came back, they told us that there were a lot of things there. Dad and I went to snorkel there next. We saw a lot of different fish, and a lot of coral. There wasn't much coral at the moat wall where we snorkeled before. We even saw a Barracuda. Snorkeling there was probably my favorite thing we did at Dry Tortugas.

Then we had to take the ferry back. On the ferry dad gave us money to each pick out a candy. The candy on the boat was really cheap.

When we got back to Key West, Uncle Marc got the van, and we headed back to the RV. On the way back we stopped at a restaurant to get dinner. There was fish feeding there that we did. Now, this was not not normal fish feeding. The fish we used as food were about six inches long. The fish we fed them to were four to six foot fish. Those fish were called Tarpons. Here's a picture of me feeding one:

It looks like he's trying to bite my hand off. I was actually holding out a fish for him.