Aventuras De Viaje

A Magical Mystery Tour of Bahia Honda State Park

Nestled just before the 7-mile bridge heading to Big Pine Key is an island  state park called Bahia Honda (pronounced Ba-HEE-ya Honda).  We packed Walter White, Big Red, Lucy Liu (Lisa’s bike finally got named) and No Name Bike (Dean’s bike so dubbed after our visit to No Name Pub – a different tale), and headed south 15 minutes to pay a nominal $8 fee, find a parking spot, and unloaded.

There’s always a quiet sense of excited anticipation when we go exploring on our bikes and we are rarely disappointed. Bahia Honda was no exception.  There are camping spots (big enough for a Sprinter van or small RV, but occasionally dotted with a tent and a VW van) that literally overlook the ocean for $36/night.

The single road that snakes along the sites and ocean is sided by heavy green brush on one side and low sea scrub vines that snake along the sand in a colubrid dance. The ocean sparkles in alternating shades of turquois, lapis and azure and the sun bathed us in its warm bosom.  The day could not have been more beautiful.

We had to de-bike for a bit to walk upward on a trail that led to the closed portion of the old Seven Mile Bridge that connected the Middle Keys to the Lower Keys on the Overseas Railroad.  Some portions have been renovated but they actually removed a section because people were venturing out on the old, dilapidated section, something I would absolutely have done, so I felt a little personally miffed at the chain link fence, but imagining a train crossing those tracks over the ocean is not a trip I would want to take. You can see the bridge in this brief video from our ride.

https://youtube.com/shorts/sc-7bFsija0?feature=share

Back on the bikes, Dean and Les discovered Nancy Jean, one of our new pickleball friends.  Nancy Jean is the most delicious form of crunchy, a free-spirited soul who wears a smile on her sun-aged skin, has an acerbic wit on the court, a 16 yr old dalmatian who can’t walk in her mini-Cooper, and plays the mandolin.  When we first met her at the pickleball courts, we actually thought she might be homeless her car was so stuffed, but there she was at one of the camp sites, bikini-clad and full of cheer, and invited us to a an evening concert with some of the Bahia Honda volunteers. We learned at the concert that they are volunteers, in part, because it allows them to stay more than 2 weeks at the Park.

The concert was a mixture of people and talents (all greater than mine) that reminded me a bit of the movie Nomadland, since they seemed to share this love of the nomadic lifestyle, meeting up in the park to sing and play and learn from each other.  The artists took turns singing and playing various guitars, plus one older gentleman who was a frequent accompaniment on the washboard with his steel-wire sanre-brush.  The whole event made Les and I smile, but at the end, when a couple were both thanking the 20 or so folks for coming and were speaking over each like Marty and Bobbi-Mohan Culp  (Will Farrell and Ana Gasteyer from Saturday Night Live – check-check-we got a hot mike here)  we actually laughed out loud.  Nancy Jean ‘s alternating between a baritone and a falsetto while playing her mandolin was my favorite, but mainly because she’s so much fun at pickleball and seemed so genuinely happy we made our way over to the gig.  She moved to Curry State Park this week and holds a regular beach side jam session with some friends, so we’ll report on that soon