We arrived May 31 for 3 nights on Marathon, Florida. This park is located on the Atlantic side of the Key Islands. Key West is the southernmost Island in the island chain and Marathon is at mile marker 56 which means it is 56 miles from Key West. I believe the total distance of the chain is about 112 miles. I was surprised to see that most islands were connected by land with a few bridges; the longest was about 6 miles long. My expectations were that we would be traveling along a super long bridge between islands. As we drove south, the gulf coast was on our right side and the atlantic coast was on our left side. The water is absolutely beautiful with it's aqua blue green color. It reminded me of the waters of the Carribean. Cuba is only 60 miles away from Key West. We went swimming the first day and the water was 88 degrees - like bath water. We hiked out about 400 yards off shore to get to swimable deep water. The first 300 yards were no deeper than 18 inches. We had the ocean to ourselves since there are only 28 campsites in this campground. Our campsite directly accross from the beach entrance and we had a great view of the water from our motorhome directly out the windshield. We had a level site with full hookups and 50 amp service; very clean, well maintained campground. It was a little pricey though at $38.50 per night, but at least 50% less than all the private campgrounds in the Keys. I rate this park F****.
The following day we drove through some of the housing developments and were unimpressed with the area. We did take the dog to the beach a few miles away and let him go for a romp in the ocean. He went a couple hundred yards off shore, but finally returned to us. I did not want to go swimming after him.
The following day, Buddy was on his own in the motorhome while we took a trip to Key West. We took a glass bottom boat tour to a barrier reef about 6 miles out to sea from Key West. This reef is about 260 miles long and the third largest barrier reef in the world. We observed some beautiful colorful tropical fish and plantlife. We had no luck finding a restaurant with air conditioning and it was 95 degrees. We finally settled for a Cheeseburger restaurant, I ordered a cheeseburger & Aggie ordered a mai mai fish sandwich. Her's was great and I was not impressed with my cheeseburger. Parking was at a premium at $4 per hour so we limited our stay to 4 hours.
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