Life's Highway can lead us down many paths. Concrete, blacktop, gravel, dirt roads and sometimes no road at all. That's the case for our adventure today. We take a Two and one quarter-hour boat ride 70 miles west of Key West to Dry Tortuga National Park. I wouldn't consider myself a history buff, but this place had me in total awe. We recently bought the Senior Lifetime National Park Pass and this is officially our first stop using the pass. It did not disappoint.
There is no way the pictures I will post here can really reveal the true beauty of this area. The blues and turquoise water were breathtaking and sitting in the middle of this natural beauty 70 miles off the coast from Key West sits Fort Jefferson on Garden Key. Fort Jefferson is the largest brick and mortar building in the Americas. Some 16 million bricks were used to build the fort. The bricks came from Maine and Pensacola. Can you imagine the challenge of getting all those bricks out to such a remote location?
Bush key is attached to Garden Key, we were not able to explore it. This area was closed because as you can see in the video like a scene from the 1963 Horror Classic from Alfred Hitchcock “The Birds”
The birds have taken over! It's nesting season and from the looks of it in full swing.
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| Moat wall around the Fort |
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| Lighthouse on Loggerhead Key across from Fort Jefferson |
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| Another way to Get to Dry Tortuga Seaplane |
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| Sitting on Upper Deck of Yankee Freedom III |
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| Lighthouse on Garden Key |
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| Building used to store Gunpowder for 450 Cannons |
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| Carol keeping her distance from the edge, it's a 45' drop to the moat below |
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| Water Cistern |
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| Pipe leading down from top of Fort to Cistern to collect Rain water |
No fresh water on this island, thus the term “Dry”. The fort had an elaborate water collection system where rain water was collected at the top of the fort and filtered through sand and gravel where it was then collected in cisterns. Holding 1.5 million gallons.
During our visit, there was a boat up on the dock, much like the one you see in the picture above. This picture was from earlier this year when Cuban Immigrants landed at Dry Tortuga. There were so many, the Park Service had to shut down the park to visitors while they processed the immigrants. When we think about a border crisis, most of us think about Mexico. This is the border crisis for those in Florida. You have to wonder how many of those boats between here and Cuba are at the bottom of the ocean.
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Wore out from a day of exploring
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We barely scratched the surface. If you're ever down in Key West, take an extra day and go to explore one of the least traveled National Parks. It's a little hard to get to but well worth the time. I guarantee you will leave there wishing you had more time to take it all in.
Comments
Just saw this comment as I was looking back, doing a little maintenance on the blog. Sorry I missed it earlier. To answer your question. Dry Tortuga is a National Park, so you can't take anything from there. We did see some huge, beautiful shells that were being dragged around by the hermit crabs! If you ever get the chance to go there, do so!!