You can’t get into Bahia Honda State Park very easily. This place is so popular that it often books up 11 months in advance. We tried a couple of months ago to get a spot here for this week, but it was impossible.

Then last week Brad tipped me off that a few sites had last-minute cancellations this week. I immediately got onto reserveamerica.com and found one site available for two days. Miracle! So we cancelled the rest of our stay at John Pennekamp State Park and headed about 65 miles further down the Keys.

(If you need to cancel or modify a reservation that you’ve made with ReserveAmerica, wait to do it at the campground. This avoids a $10 change fee that you’ll get if you do it by phone in advance.)

The Keys are basically one road all the way down, Rt 1, “Overseas Highway”. Instead of using addresses, most places indicate location by Mile Marker. We went from about MM 102 to MM 37.5. Before we left, we had breakfast at the Hideout restaurant, which is a very homey small place near the park next to “Jules Verne Undersea Lodge” (ideal if you would like to spend your vacation in a bubble under water). The Hideout doesn’t look like much but it’s friendly, local, and the back porch has a nice view.

As we were packing up at Pennekamp, a very large iguana wandered by the campsite. This one was a good two feet long in body with a two foot striped tail. Iguanas are not natural here — but some pets were probably set free years ago and now you can see them thriving on the Keys. This guy was a monster.

We also met John and Thelma, the campground volunteers at Pennekamp. They gave us some good advice on travel to Mexico and have helped to lower Eleanor’s suspicions of it. She now concedes that a trip with a few other people (a mini-caravan) would be OK. I’m starting some serious planning …

Along the way at MM 77, you can feed the tarpon at Robbie’s. But the brown pelicans are aggressive there and the experience can be, um, challenging.

Brad and Mary are parked just down the row from us. We took a sunset walk up to the old Flagler Bridge, a leftover from the railroad that first connected the Keys back in 1912, and then returned to their Airstream for a superb Thai dinner that Brad and Mary whipped up for us. We contributed Key Lime Pie for dessert, of course.