National Key Deer Refuge

I got up at 5:30 since Steve Minor wanted to get on the road to Sebring early. We visited while he had his breakfast and enjoyed chatting. He got on the road by 6:30 for his five hour drive home.

I did my German lessons and responded to some email until the rest of the group awoke. I had a bagel, and most of the others had steel cut oats. As we had breakfast, we decided that we needed a more relaxing day than we have had on most of this trip. We sat around the house until nearly 11 am when we drove to a nearby nature preserve here on Sugarloaf Key hoping to see Key Deer. Mark, Cindy, Mary and I piled into Grant and Jodie’s Highlander while Grant stayed at the house to work on his research with Ancestry.com. We parked at a locked gate in the National Key Deer Refuge and walked 1.5 miles into the preserve. While we did not see any deer, we spotted several interesting birds. There were a few locals walking or bicycling on the closed road but we mostly had the area to ourselves. After our three mile walk we returned to the house to go to another area to look for the tiny Key Deer.

We made the short drive to Big Pine Key which is famous for their protected Key Deer population. We parked at the Blue Hole Nature Preserve and walked out to see a couple of large alligators swimming or basking. We saw about six tiny adult Key Deer, and we believe that all of them were bucks. It was strange to see adult male deer that were smaller than a collie with a full rack of antlers.

We attempted to go to lunch at Morita’s Cuban Cafe, a well rated Cuban restaurant, but they had closed for the day by the time we arrived at 2 pm. We drove a short distance to The Square Grouper, where we were at the end of lunch service but too early for dinner. Mary and I had the grouper sandwich that was topped with a Key Lime sauce and a few shredded fried onions. Our sandwiches were very good and filling. The waiter gave us a complimentary mango ice cream to share, and Mary and I ordered a slice of Key Lime pie to share. Mark had the giant brownie with ice cream, Cindy had Key Lime pie, and Jodie had the carrot cake. The waiter gave us recommendations for restaurants on other keys, and we headed back to the house. Cindy and I walked out to the mouth of Pelico Road past the flock of feral peafowl just to walk off some of our lunch.

After we returned to the house, most of us took a quick nap before gathering around the dining room table for games. Jodie brought one called Left, Center, Right in which players roll three dice telling them to pass dimes to players on their left or right as well as to the pot in the center. When a player is out of dimes, they are out of the game. The last player to have any money wins the pot in the center.
I made mojitos and whiskey sours for anyone wanting a mixed drink while the others played Mexican Train dominoes.

After the games we packed and prepared to depart the Pelico Paradise rental house around 9 am. We plan to spend a couple of hours at the Shark Valley Loop of Everglades National Park before driving to our Howard Johnson motel in Ft. Myers.