Leaving the Keys

May 9 We left Sunshine Key Resort with somewhat heavy hearts. We all liked the place even though parts of it were not completely accessible. i.e. the ramp to the bathroom had a six inch step up onto the ramp. We enjoyed our time there and even though I didn't get to do any diving, we had a lot of fun.

Had to wake Patrick up.

On the way out we stopped at the The Wreck & Galley Grill. We had sandwiches and sweet tea that came in a small pitcher. Every time I have been to the Keys, I have stopped to eat at The Wreck. Then we went next door to the Dolphin Research Center. We had stopped here on the last trip and Patrick wanted to stop again. I didn't really want to but looked at the website which said that all admissions were half off due to construction. Can't pass up a deal now can we, except........they didn't honor their advertisement and the lady at the counter told me they weren't doing any construction that day. Except that....they were. I think it should be renamed making money off dolphins. Researching the inside of your wallet. As we were leaving some girl dropped a grand to become a member of this place. Uhmmm, no.

For more money you could interact with the dolphins.

Talented young ladies put on a show featuring dolphins.

You could allow the dolphin to paint a t-shirt for you. 

They had some sea dogs living at the DRC. The big one is blind, a common thing for sea lions because on the bright sun.

I'm cheap, I let Patrick hug a statue of a dolphin.

I'm not sure what they research at the Dolphin Research Center but they have to pay all those lovely young ladies, buy fish for the dolphins and do maintenance on the facility so all in all the full price is probably a drop in the bucket for their daily budget. Anyways, we had fun and learned more about dolphins.
From the Keys, we drove up into Homestead and stopped at the Miami-Everglades RV Resort. Their greeter looked rather menacing.

It seemed like this place was in the middle of nowhere but it was just around the bend from town and the national parks. It was surrounded with miles and miles of green houses and nurseries.They had massive greenhouses made from steel pipe and black fabric that stretched for a quarter mile. All this farming was made possible by draining the Everglades. Now they are trying to build a new project of canals and such to pipe more water back into the Everglades so that the Everglades can sustain itself and there is water for the growing human population. 

I called these snake head plants because they looked like Medusa. The plants are trained to grow up the poles and they build these heads. We saw one house that had a fence made from these. It would be effective too as these had small stickers on their leaves.