December 2018 - Dry Tortugas
We spent our last day in the Florida Keys out at Dry Tortugas NP. It's a truly incredible place: a giant Civil War fort surrounded by miles and miles of open water. The fort is beautiful, and there's pretty good snorkeling too!
After this, our Florida road trip continued by driving back up the keys to Big Cypress.
We spent our last day in the Florida Keys out at Dry Tortugas NP. It's a truly incredible place: a giant Civil War fort surrounded by miles and miles of open water. The fort is beautiful, and there's pretty good snorkeling too!
After this, our Florida road trip continued by driving back up the keys to Big Cypress.
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| Approaching the Dry Tortugas, surrounded by nothing but a lot of water | Fort Jefferson, and some beautiful water | Snorkeling by the fort! |
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| Some decent coral snorkeling near the fort, although the water clarity was unfortunately not that great due to some storms the week before | There were quite a few fish hanging around | |
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| A bunch of blue striped grunts | A beautiful coral covered in even more beautiful new growths | |
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| Coral growing right next to the fort wall | ||
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| A sea biscuit: basically a giant sand dollar | The south beach | A hermit crab |
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| This guy needs an upgrade! | A high-roller hermit crab | Fort Jefferson. The largest masonry structure in the Americas. We've been to a few Civil War era forts before, and this one is _way_ larger than those others; it's mind blowingly large! |
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| So nice! | The moat | A big gun! |
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| The fort lighthouse, unfortunately under repair | The island as seen from the top of the fort | |
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| Inside the fort | The view from the cells. Not bad! | |
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| A whole bunch of magnificent frigatebirds were hovering over the fort | ||
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The conch shell may look cool, but it's rather impractical. He has a hard time getting through the grass with it.