After we left Long Key, we went to Curry Hammock for two days, before we came back to Long Key for another two days.

Curry Hammock was awesome. Like Long Key, there were no waves. The sites weren’t right on the water, but the beach was totally awesome. When we first got there, I found a little pond and built canal to connect the pond to the ocean. My canal turned in to a river, and about half an hour later the pond was completely dry. We spent the rest of the afternoon hanging at the huge sandy beach.

While we were at Curry Hammock, we saw a huge marine iguana. It was so cool! Later we learned that the marine iguana is an invasive species and is harming the Keys environment. The iguanas first got there when pet owners released their pet iguanas.

Of course, the next day we spent at the beach. We were having a great time until I was wading along in the water and suddenly I felt a sting on my ankle. I looked down and saw a Portuguese Man of War with its tentacle attached to me. I freaked out, thrashing around until it came off. Then I started screaming and wading to shore, where Ma drove me to the ranger station. The ranger was very calm, probably because it happened a lot, and poured some ammonia on the sting. Soon, I started feeling better. I spent the rest of the afternoon inside the RV with a hot compress on my ankle.

Portuguese Man O’ War are not jellyfish, or even an animal, but they are a collection of organisms working together like one animal. On the Portuguese Man O’ War, there are three kinds of tentacles. One type is for reproduction, another type is for eating, and the last ones are long and stinging.

Our two days back at Long Key were good. I caught a few slow fish in my net, and found a piece of something called rose coral. Little Kid and I went swimming a few times. I tried to give Little Kid some swimming lessons, but he was pretty uncooperative. The two days went by super fast, and then we left on our trek to the Florida Panhandle, with a few one night stops.

We spent two weeks at Long Key State Park, in the Florida Keys. The spot was super close to the beach, so we spent most of our time playing at the beach. The water was a beautiful teal and aqua that was calm as far as we could see. The sand there was very strange. In the water, it was very squishy, and when I walked on it, I sunk in. Another strange thing about the beach was that it was the Atlantic Ocean, but there were almost no waves. We think it may have been partly because the water was so shallow so far out. The water was so shallow that we could walk out almost three hundred feet without swimming. Actually, at low tide, you had to walk almost three hundred feet to get your ankles wet. That gives you an idea how shallow the water was and how dramatic the tides were.

One day in the Keys we spent at Key West. My favorite thing about Key West was that there were free-range chickens roaming around everywhere. We spent several hours walking around town. We went to the southern most point buoy, even though it is not a real buoy, it is a big concrete buoy on land, and the real southern most point is a spit of land behind it.

While we were in the Keys, Pa decided to buy a remote control glider. The day after he got it, Pa and I went to a large field to fly the glider. Soon enough, we learned some new things about flying it. The first thing we learned was to never fly the glider near trees. On the first flight, Pa flew the glider straight into a tree. After a spending almost fifteen minutes searching for branches to poke the glider out and climbing up the tree to try to get it, we decided to go to Home Depot. At Home Depot, we bought a sixteen foot long telescoping pole to poke the plane out of the tree. Somehow, even though the glider was made of foam, we managed to poke the glider out of the tree without destroying it. After that, we spent another hour or two flying it around.

On another day, Ma, Little Kid and I headed to No Name Key to see the Key Deer. The Key Deer are a type of deer that only live in the Keys. Key Deer were stranded when the Keys were formed. Because of the limited food, they became smaller. I saw the the first Key Deer when we were just driving along. We had to do a crazy u-turn to see it, but it was definitely worth it. The Key Deer was so tiny! It was about the size of a golden retriever. It just looked like a baby deer, but the male we saw was even better. It was the same size as the other Key Deer, but he had full size antlers. Cool! We saw ten or twenty more Key Deer before we left. One almost walked up to our car!

Another thing we did was two hours of kayaking. We rented a kayak, and Ma, Little Kid and I went off. We spent most of our time paddling along the mangrove covered shore. We paddled past a few beaches, all covered with ibis and herons. A few times we thought we had seen fishing floats, but they all turned out to be trash or sea foam. On the way back, I suddenly looked down and saw two mating horseshoe crabs. They were scuttling along the bottom really fast. We watched them for awhile before continuing on.

A few days before we left, we were lucky enough to get a spot at another park in the Keys, called Curry Hammock State Park. Now we are going there for two nights.

Right now we are in the lovely Florida Keys, which I will write about later. Now I am going to write about road schooling, which everybody asks about. First of all, I don’t have summer break. Instead, I work for three weeks, and then have one week off, year round. For my work, every week I do four lessons in a math workbook called Saxon. I also work in a Grammar and Literature (now known as “gramiture”) workbook, and I do a few different reading comprehension worksheets from my school in Tucson. I also write weekly blog posts and write summaries for every book I read.

Okay, by now you have probably noticed that everything I have mentioned is either a workbook or a worksheet, so I better explain that Ma and Pa don’t sit down and teach. Instead, I do work on my own, mostly during Little Kid’s nap. I can do any work when ever I like, but I have to finish all my weekly work before Friday night. Ma and Pa check it, and I correct anything I got wrong. I also have to finish any extra work for that week before Friday night. That extra work is things relating to where we are, such as Junior Ranger activities (in national/state parks), and books about the area.

As we begin our ninth month on the road, none of us want to think about our adventure ending in just five short months. Furthermore, we really want to explore the Pacific Northwest …. and after endlessly poring over maps, know it would not be possible if we were to return to Tucson August 1, as scheduled.

So ….. we have extended our trip by four months!! We will return to Tucson December 2015. The tenants signed a lease extension. School has been notified, so that Becca will return for the second half of sixth grade. And all the other people helping us out (our awesome mail carrier, my fantastic sister, our great friends P & B) have agreed to keep on keepin’ on until December …

We only spent five days at Everglades National Park, but those days were extremely awesome. On our first day, we just got settled in and explored the visitor center. The next day we did two short hikes called the Anhinga Trail and the Gumbo Limbo trail. In case you are wondering what the heck Gumbo Limbo is, it is a type of tree. The Gumbo Limbo tree is also called the tourist tree because the red peeling bark looks like a sunburn! The trail went through a thick forest that looked like it belonged in the tropics. We also did the Anhinga Trail, which was cool in a very different way than the Gumbo Limbo trail. Most of the way, it followed a canal with lots of gators and water birds. That night, Ma and I did the trail in the dark on a ranger led hike. The night hike was a lot of fun. Many times, when we shone our lights into the canal, we saw the orange reflection of gators’ eyes. At the end, their were so many gators. I was sure I heard one eating something!

The next day, we figured out a loop on the road and some trails. The first part was on the road and it was very lovely. When we got to the trail part, there were some mosquitoes, but not that bad. Unfortunately, the mosquitoes just kept getting worse. At the end, we were wondering why the heck the mosquito level (yes, at the entrance they have a sign showing the mosquito level) was recorded as moderate, not high. Fortunately, we got out of mosquito hell once we were back on the road. From there, it was only a short walk back to the campground.

Since we knew we had to do errands, we chose a rainy day to go to Miami. The whole day was spent shopping. The only fun thing was that I got an iPad mini. I had been saving for a very long time for it. It was so exciting to finally get it! Later we spent a few hours at the Apple Store to get it set up. Ma and Pa also got me a Smart Cover.

One day we went to a place in the park called Flamingo, which was on Florida Bay. When we first got there, we saw a huge osprey nest. After I got my junior ranger badge, we decided to go look for crocodiles. As we were walking, an osprey with a fish landed in a tree above us. A minute later, all the ospreys began calling and the osprey took off. Suddenly we realized why. Right behind it was a huge hawk trying to steal the fish! All the other ospreys were trying to chase off the hawk, swooping and squawking. The chase continued for about five minutes until the other ospreys drove off the hawk. The osprey returned to the tree to eat the fish.

For our last day, we did a short hike across the sawgrass prairie. We had a lot of fun. The next day, we drove to the Florida Keys.