To the end of Florida Bay

After Tarpon Basin, we moved to Barnes Sound.  If we'd had a few more days of good weather (of course not)we would like to have visited a few more spots along the way but were grateful for what we could see.  We only had a few stretches of skinny water after the basin but nothing as breathtakingly scary as the first two days.  We anchored in a remote stretch next to a wildlife refuge and state park.  We were still behind Key Largo.  The northern most end of the key is primarily nature preserve except for one spectacularly wealthy enclave.  I guess some developer knew which palm to grease to get his acres.  With so much of Florida overdeveloped, it's nice that something was left alone. 

There were several stretches where the waterway wended its way between mangrove islands.
Since the water rushes through at tide change, these channels are usually deep.  Where the tricky part
comes is that all that fast water tends to deposit sand and each end of the cut making it dicey
for boats with much of a keel.

I am always fascinated by the mangroves.  Our water and air would be
so much dirtier without their filtering abilities.  They also protect the
mainland from more damaging storm surges in hurricanes.

Approaching Highway 1 as it turns north to head to Miami.  Some people
cross this bridge and think they're at the beginning of the keys.  Actually,
the keys stretch a long way to the east.  In fact, there is still quite of bit
of Key Largo after the bridge.

In case you doubted me about it being Highway 1.

We picked our anchorage because David wanted to try his luck fishing and we
both wanted to explore some of the creeks.  Two of them went from Barnes Sound
all the way to Card Sound so we took one of the out and the other one back.  The
largest creek is called Steamboat.  In some parts of the western US, this would
be a full blown river.

I guess this section of floating dock came in with the storm surge from
Hurricane Irma.  It's just jammed up in the mangroves.

The creek we took back was very scenic but much smaller.

We took some offshoots and were treated to some bits of backwoods Florida.

One section was mirror calm.  We held up and watched for birds and fish.
In one section, we scared a school of fish and they jumped all around us.

Our last ditch before entering Biscayne Bay.

We anchored behind Pumpkin Key, a completely private island.  The wealthy
enclave is on the shore ahead of us.  One of the boats behind a house on shore
probably cost more than all the boats in our home yacht club marina!  We are so
glad we were given the guidance and confidence to make this route happen.
We'll do it again!