Bahia Honda State Park

 

Bahia Honda State Park is located along the Florida oversea highway to Key West. It is a beautiful state park where people can swim in the calm ocean water. On the South side of the park, the water depth is extremely shallow during the low tide. The park entry fee was $5 per vehicle and there were also several camp sites in the park. Other than that, the day use area has a huge parking lot as well.

We came to Bahia Honda State Park in the late afternoon before the sun set. It was coincidentally also during the low tide. Thus we went for a walk in the shallow water. The sand at the bottom of the ocean water was so soft and it felt so good just walking on it. We also saw several crabs running around under the water. This also shows how clear the water is.

The other attraction at Bahia Honda State Park is the unused old broken bridge. We were able to access it by taking the short trail all the way up to the bridge. From the top of the bridge, we had the panorama view of the entire park. It was really cool to see the oversea highway running across the ocean.

As the sun set comes, it was a beautiful sight. The park was kind of facing West, so we could see the sun setting down slowly beneath the horizon. We also so few more people coming and dip their body into the water during the sun set. It was interesting to us.

Bahia Honda State Park is definitely a great place to have fun in the water. The shallow park of the ocean was amazingly shallow with soft sand. We definitely would like to spend more time here next time to enjoy our day here.

Smathers Beach

 

Smathers Beach is one of the most beautiful beaches at Florida Key West. The beach has extreme soft sand. The ocean water at the beach is also very calm without much wave. In the early morning of each day, the beach is being managed by people and they rake the sand to make the beach look nice.  Since the beach is facing East, the sun rise at the beach is particularly beautiful. Many people come here early in the morning to have a early morning walk.

We got to the beach around 6AM, which is about 30 minutes before sun rise. The parking is free and payment is only required after 8AM. At 6AM, we could already see a lot of people on the beach taking a short walk. We also saw a dog enjoying a swim in the ocean. The breeze from the ocean also felt really nice in this humid weather.

As the sun rises, the sun light reflected off the cloud in the sky. It was really beautiful with the red glows. We walked over to the rocky area of the beach and noticed quite a lot of lobsters underneath the rocks. There were so many of them and these lobsters were quite large. The lady beside us told us that she has seen octopus here as well. She also had a golden retriever with her and told us her dog is quite a swimmer. Sometimes the dog even catch crabs in the ocean.

As the day gets brighter, more and more people were coming to the beach. We saw many people come here to jog. It is actually pretty difficult to jog on the beach but these people were able to do it effortlessly. There were even people playing soccer on the beach this early in the morning.

Smathers beach is definitely a must visit when travelling to Key West. We highly recommend to come by here early in the morning to see the sun rise. The color in the sky was quite specticular.

El Meson De Pepe

 

El Meson De Pepe is a restaurant offer authentic Cuban cuisine. It is located right by Mallory Square at Key West. Other than just serving food, it also sells many Cuban related items in the restaurant. It is quite a large restaurant with both indoor seat and patio seat. In the evenings, it also has live music played outside of the restaurant.

We went to El Meson De Pepe for lunch around noon. The restaurant was half empty and it seemed that the restaurant was usually busier at night. We chose the indoor seat that day because it was extremely humid and hot. We really need to be in a room with air conditioning.

We ordered a Bistec Palomilla A La Plancha and Caballo Grande. Before the entree was served, flat bread was served on the side. The bread was quite good and had garlic taste to it.

The Bistec Palomilla was like a Cuban style steak. It was a 12oz sirloin steak served with fried onion on top. The steak was cooked perfectly which still retained the juice and kept the meat tender. It was quite good. The fried yuuca was really good too, it was even better than fries.

Caballo Grande had a combination of 3 popular Cuban style meat. It included ground beef and sliced beef and pork. We didn't like this dish as much as the meat seemed a bit too salty to our taste.

As we finished our food, a young lady dropped by and asked to take photos of us. We were fine with it. She later came by and gave us a small print of the photo. She said we could buy large print of photo for $5 but we passed this.

El Meson De Pepe offered authentic Cuban food experience. We enjoyed most of it. What we are thinking of trying next time is the Cuban Sandwich with the flat bread.

Conch Republic Seafood Company

 

Conch Republic Seafood Restaurant is a famous seafood restaurant located in Key West. It is located right by the dock with great view. The restaurant itself offers service to cook the freshly caught fish from the guests, which is quite interesting. In front of the restaurant, it was also feeding unused fish to the tarpons down below.

We got to the restaurant around 4:30PM. The restaurant was still busy and full of people. We were given a window seat where we could see the entire dock. The warm breeze of the wind also felt really good.

We ordered the steam oyster, Key West pink peel shrimp, and bacon wrapped stuffed shrimp. The oyster came first. It was really steamed with some sauce on top of it. It was extremely juicy and fresh. The Key West pink peel shrimp was the best dish we ordered. The shrimp was large and served on top of the ice cold plate. We had to peel it ourselves but the shrimp was so tender. 

The bacon wrapped stuffed shrimp was good too, just not as extraordinary compared to the oyster and the pink peel shrimp. The back wrapped stuffed shrimp was served with pineapple salsa. It was sweet and tasty. We really liked it.

Overall, Conch Republic Seafood Company offered great food and definitely a place that we would go back again. We highly recommend visiting this place when traveling to Key West.

Robbies

 

Robbie's is located at Islamorada island of Florida Keys. It is right off the oversea highway.  Robbie's is a place where tourist can dine, shop for local goods, and also watch people feeding tarpon.  Since Robbie's is located in the middle between Miami and Key West, many people stop by here to take a rest.

We got to Robbie's around 1PM. The large Robbie's sign can be seen clearly as we were driving on the oversea highway.  We took the exit and entered the parking lot. There is a lot of parking space for cars, but it may be more difficult for RVs to park.

As we got there, we saw so many pelicans on the dock. It was insane. These pelicans wanted to have the fish that people were using to feed the tarpons. We were only able to see it from the far side, thus we went around and entered from the main entrance. The admission fee was $2 per person. Each bucket of fish was $5.

As we walked on the dock, these pelicans simply weren't afraid of human. They just stood there and waited patiently for fish. As people were feeding the tarpons, few pelicans were very aggressive and would steal the fish from the bucket when the person weren't paying attention.

We walked further down the dock and we saw more tarpons. These tarpons were huge. If people were holding the fish 1 feet above the water, the tarpons would jump out of the water and snatch it.

We watched the tarpons a bit and then we saw something big under the water. There was a manatee under the water! The manatee was attracted by the fish and swam by as well. Although manatees are vegetarian, it looked like they can also eat fish.

It was quite interesting to watch these wildlifes out here. It was an interesting experience to see these pelicans, tarpons, and manatees. It was also a great place to stop by after a long drive.

Little Hen

 

Little Hen is a fancy brunch and afternoon restaurant in the Miami region. It has fancy and up class decorations that mimics what people experience in London. Its menu included varous brunch dishes such as omelet and also English afternoon tea. The price of each dish was also on the pricy side due to the fine dining experience.

We got to Little Hen around 10AM and the place was half full. As we walked in, the interior decoration was very fancy with paintings hanging on the wall and the chairs looked like there were from 19th century. We were quite excited as we walked in.  As we sat down at the table, we waited for a long time to get the food menu. We ordered an omelet and an avocado toast.

After about 10 minutes, our food has been delivered to our table. The avocado toast looked really good. The avocado on top was smooth and tasty on the crispy whole grain toast. The omelet came with potato and whole grain toast as well. However, there was no butter or jam that came with it. We thought maybe we just had to eat the toast as is. Then we later so the waitress giving the butter and jam to the other table, we realized that the waitress never gave the jam to us. We were quite unhappy about it and had to ask for it.

Overall, it was a disappointing experience at Little Hen.  The food was not bad but the service was definitely not on par with the price that it charges. We will probably not visit Little Hen in the future.

Hawkers Asian Street Food

 

Hawkers restaurant offers Asian street type of food across many Asian nations. It has many locations within the state of Florida and it is quite popular among people due to the variety of food that it offers. Other than just Asian street food, it also offer many different Asian liquors. Its operating model allows customers to try many different type of food within one dining session.

We got to Hawkers around 3:30PM in the afternoon and we took the seats at the bar. The restaurant was about half full. The restaurant also employed open kitchen concept where customers could see chef's work.

We ordered 4 different dishes including Roti Canai, which was the most popular dish. We also ordered Korean Twice Fried Wings, Bulgogi Steak Lettuce Wrap, and Hokkien Mee.

The Roti Canai comes with crispy roti and curry dip. The curry sauce smelled so good with a little bit of hot and spicy taste. We really liked the texture of the roti and it was best to eat it while it was still quite hot.

The Korean Twice Fried Wings was extremely crispy. The sesame seed spread on top of the wing made it smell really nice. The sauce on the wing was not spicy at all and it was quite sweet. It went really well with the wings.

The Bulgogi Steak Lettuce Wrap was not what we expected. The bulgogi meat seemed to be minced and not a larger piece of meat. Although the taste and the texture were really good, we were hoping for more meat.

Hokkien Mee was something new that we have never tried before. It was a noddle dish cooked with dark soy sauce. It smelled really good with a lot of sauce in the bowl. The dish has a strong wok smell which we liked. We were hoping the noodle to have less sauce however.

Overall, we enjoyed our dining experience as Hawkers. There were many more other street food dishes to try and we would definitely come back next time.

Kennedy Space Center

 

Kennedy Space Center is a world famous rocket launch site located in Florida. It is only an hour East of Orlando. Many of the famous space missions were launched from the launch pad near Kennedy Space Center. The Kennedy Space Center has a visitor complex that allows tourists to visit all the past and present projects. This includes the real Apollo Saturn V rocket and Space Shuttle Atlantis. The visitor complex also offers various activity for educational purpose and provide inspirations to people.

The admission ticket for Kennedy Space Center has to be purchased online. The general admission ticket already includes most of the activities other than meeting the real astronauts. We got to Kennedy Space Center visitor complex by around 8:50AM. It is about 10 minutes before it opens. One thing surprised us was that the parking fee was another $15. At the entrance, there was a huge countdown clock counting down.

As we entered the complex, the first thing we came across was the Rocket Garden. The Rocket Garden had rockets from the past, including the first generation of space rockets made by US. Some rockets were rather large. At the back of the Rocket Garden, there was a mock up of Saturn V rockets laying down horizontally. Initially we thought it was a real one, but it wasn't.

We then went to Journey to Mars center. There was presentation every 30 minutes going over the plan to occupy Mars. Coincidentally, we were wearing the SpaceX Occupy Mars T-Shirt that day. In this building, there were simulators that we could operate to dock spaceship onto the International Space Station. It was harder than we thought. One little movement could cause the spaceship to drift.

Afterwards, we went to Apollo Saturn V center. To get to Apollo Saturn V center, we had to take the bus that leaves every 15 minutes. We were really lucky to catch the bus right away. On the bus ride, we could see the NASA rocket manufacturing site on the far side.  One we arrived at Apollo Saturn V center, there was presentation on all the Apollo Missions. The mission controls in the auditorium were the real ones used back in the days.  After the presentation, we headed towards the huge room that has the real Saturn V rocket. The rocket was huge and it looked amazingly complex. Other than the rocket, there were also various other items such as the space capsule used to land on the moon and the pen that can be used in space. At the outside of Apollo Saturn V center, there was a viewing area where we could see the launch pad complex on the far side. We could see LC39 used by SpaceX but unfortunately there was no launch on that day.

After we got back to the visitor complex, we went to Atlantis Pavillion. This is where Space Shuttle Atlantis resides. We were very excited about this. Once we entered, we watched the video presenting the history of Space Shuttle. It was quite inspiring. After the video, we saw Space Shuttle Atlantis. It was an engineering marvel and beautiful. It was smaller than we thought however. At the pavilion, there were also simulators for landing the Space Shuttle. We then went for the Space Shuttle launch experience. It was quite fun. After getting out of the launch experience simulator, there was a ramp that we could use to slide down. This was the exact same type of ramp slide used by Space Shuttle.

At the back side of the visitor complex, there was a monument that honors the astronauts that passed away during space mission.

Overall, it was a great experience at Kennedy Space Center and it was quite inspirational. It is a great place for kids to visit and inspire them.

Hamilton Mountain

 

Hamilton Mountain is at Southern Washington state located by the Columbia Gorge near Portland. It is part of the Beacon Rock State Park. The trail head is cross from the main Beacon Rock trail. The trail itself is about 4 miles long with about 2000 feet elevation gain. From the top of the mountain, it provides a gorgeous view over the Columbia Gorge, thus many hiker like to hike Hamilton Mountain trail.

We visited Hamilton Mountain on the beautiful Saturday in April. The weather was still chilly but not as windy anymore. We got to the trail head around 7:30 in the morning and the parking lot was about 50% full. When we got there, we realized that the Northwest Pass cannot be used at this trail. Only Discovery Pass is accepted. Without Discovery Pass, each day visit costs $10, which is quite a lot. The Discovery Pass was only $30, thus we chose to just purchase the Discovery Pass.

As we started hiking on the trail, we noticed that the trail was still a bit muddy and wet. We had to choose our footings carefully. After about 2 miles, we reached Rodney Falls. There was huge volume of water flowing down. It was crazy. There was a wooden bridge that crosses the stream and it was completely wet. The stair case that goes up the trail was muddy and wet. We had to held onto the rails to ensure we don't slip.

After few zig zags, we then got to the look out area. It was a beautiful view. It has the panorama view of the Columbia Gorge. We could also see the Bonneville Dam on the far side. It was really cool to see the dam from the above.

As we proceeded further up, there was water on the trail flowing down. We could also see patches of snow on the trail. There was not that much snow but just have to be careful not to slip. It would be good to wear water proof shoes as well.

After about 2 hours, we got to the Hamilton Mountain Summit. As we got to the top, we were a little disappointed because the view was obstructed by the tall bushes. So we couldn't really see Columbia Gorge clearly. On the North side, we could see Table Mountain.

Overall, Hamilton Mountain was a good trail to start the hiking season. It has some elevation gain, but not too strenuous. When we got back down around 11AM, the parking lot was completely full. Thus it is important to get here early, otherwise you will have to park further down the road.