In today's video, we're going to get out of this freaking RV park and go
explore some of the Florida keys. So let's go!
What is going on youtube, greetings from just southwest of Miami Florida. I'm here in an RV
park it's a thousand trails park it's decent it's a resort it's got a swimming pool it's
got a hot tub it's got a little miniature golf thing basketball court it's nice but i've kind
of been stuck here for about a week it's been pretty cold here in florida in the 40s at night
and barely in the 60s during the day i know some of you are up north just laughing at that being
cold weather but for florida that's pretty cold and you can't do the florida stuff you want to do
like go snorkeling go to the beach all that kind of stuff today the high is 75 so not exactly a
heat wave but i've got to get out of this rv park i've decided to take the van instead of
the motorcycle the reason being the van's been sitting here about a week there's all kinds of
tree limbs leaves and all kinds of crazy stuff on top of my roof and i want to kind of get the
van out to stretch its legs you know that kind of thing we're gonna head to a key called north key
largo it's as the name implies just north of key largo it's about 40 minutes away from here so not
a bad drive but the first thing i got to do is get this rig ready for departure i don't think
i've ever showed that before so let's go ahead and i'll show you what i do when i'm getting ready
to leave a campsite so obviously i've gotta open the front windows so that's what i'm gonna go do
i think i've showed these in past videos they're really cool they're made by van mate gear
they have magnets sewn into them so they just clip right up into my side windows they make it really
easy usually when i'm driving i'll just throw them on my bed sometimes i'll put them in the overhead
if i don't want to put them in but normally i just throw them on my bag so i'm going to
throw them back on there when i get back anyway all right next up i got to turn my seats around
all right now i got to clean up all these odds and ends so
stuff isn't flying everywhere while i'm driving
if you remember from my last video my organizational video where i got these
little boxes i had a fourth one and it didn't fit up there but i've made good use of it if
you watch that organizational video you'll know i put a bunch of stuff on my bed so i started using
this extra box here to put all those ins and outs in also this stuff this is where my bamboo plant
used to be i need to replace that and of course my keurig and i've had them here since i first bought
my van they've never moved even driving on bumpy washboard roads uh in national forests so i highly
recommend this sticky putty stuff this stuff just hasn't moved these are stuck on with sticky putty
as well and if you've been watching my videos for a while you know these have been on here since
day one as well all right the rest of the stuff i need to do is outside so let's head outside
and get this van ready to go all right so the first thing i need to do is unhook the water and
the electricity i'm actually going to leave all this stuff here this campground seems pretty safe
i will turn this off however i won't leave it on
how safe do you think it is to just leave my stuff here if i'm gonna leave and come back
i think it's good okay thanks so what's really cool about this thousand trails is there's like 10
groundskeepers and maintenance guys running around and they keep a really good eye on the park i just
asked him if it would be okay if i left this stuff here because i know some of you would say
something about it and he said it's good to go all right one more thing to do here right so back here
all i've got to do is take these up these down it's not like i can see
out of my back windows anyway but i take them down anyway
one last thing because i know i'm gonna get a comment about it
i will have my sunscreen on 50 spf i've already put it on my face and my head
but i know if i don't mention that i will get one million comments but i will have my
sunscreen on all right let's get out of here let's go check out some keys
so this rv park hasn't been too bad but it's definitely making me realize how much i enjoy
camping at blm land national forest land places like that that i can't really find
here in florida there is a little bit in central florida but not really that much
so the route we're headed is not the traditional route you would take to get to the keys which is
usually us-1 we're actually going to take a toll road because we're going to north key
largo i could take us-1 but it's the long way and the reason i'm going to north key largo is
i think it's probably a lot less visited than the rest of the keys i've heard that the bridge that
you cross to get there is actually pretty cool and there's a really cool park called big hammock park
or something like that so i want to go check that out if you're enjoying this video please hit that
thumbs up button and leave a comment below telling me where you're watching from also make sure you
hit that subscribe button so you don't miss any of my weekly videos all right so these florida toll
roads confuse the crap out of me sometimes you get a ticket sometimes it says by plate but a couple
times i've been on a toll road where there was no ticket then i got to the end of the toll road
and there's a little booth where you have to stop and give them your ticket or you have to
pay the full charge it's so confusing i'm assuming that at some point i'm gonna have
a bunch of toll charge envelopes from florida in my mailbox waiting for me it's really weird i
just got on with no ticket but i bet you when i go to get off this thing there'll be a ticket booth
and i'll get charged so if you're from florida and you know how these things work let me know
look at the name of this
crocodile lake wait a second
there there aren't any crocodiles in the united states i don't think
huh that's interesting why why
if you're from florida and you know why it's called crocodile lake let me know that's odd
also what is the difference between a crocodile and an alligator that's a serious question i
have no idea i think crocodiles get bigger but i don't know if that's the only like distinguishing
characteristic so yeah if you know the difference between a crocodile and an alligator
without googling it because i could just do that let me know down in the comments
okay so this is probably a little less known place in the keys it's in north key largo it's called
anna dagny johnson key largo hammock botanical state park this also used to be a housing project
a long time ago it was abandoned so recently they've went in and gotten rid of all that stuff
and so eventually these mangroves and and the tropical forest here will reclaim that area so
that's pretty cool and there is a park admission fee here it says 250 it's like on the honor system
there's no envelopes even though it says there should be so what i'm gonna do is
i'm just gonna throw three dollars in there into where you slide the envelope
all right it went in so
this is not a national park it's a state park um and it's really pretty um it's
supposed to be about a mile and a half so we'll see so far it's just a big giant
road basically i'm sure this is probably left over from when they were going to build a housing
project here i'm assuming they probably laid down some roads because it looks like an older road
but i can also see why they would uh why people would want to turn
this into a housing project it's really pretty back here
it's really really thick really really thick forest tropical type jungle type stuff
there's also a lot of signs in here that tells you what you're looking at so here we're looking at
black bead so it's just a shrub so that's pretty cool that it tells you what you're looking at
there's also a relative to poison oak in here that you got to be careful of i don't know what
it looks like maybe we'll see a sign that shows us what that looks like so i'm kind of like
i'm really really allergic to poison ivy and poison oak oh cool
there's a little pit toilet in here just in case you get back from the hike and you need
to use the restroom and you don't have a cool winnebago travado with a bathroom in it like i do
okay speak of the devil i found the poison oak type stuff here let me show you real quick
so that is the stuff you don't want to touch the poison wood you can also see the remnants
here of the old housing development which is really fascinating to me
i mean obviously this is a really easy hike as you can see there's little benches
it's a perfect place to come if you're not into the adventurous going to the
go into the wilderness type of hike you want like a paved hike
looks like back here there's some little bitty side roads like dirt roads it looks like there's
actual trails so i'm probably not going to do one of these trails because i'm in
sandals but looks like there's actual real trails and hit up some of these nature trails like
that's kind of cool and unexpected
oh hold on a second all right i asked this question about a crocodile earlier
apparently there are american crocodiles so there are some american crocodiles in here
i guess that's a little concerning that crocodile thing so let's see what happens
all right so i can see why there might be crocodiles now over here i think you can
see there's some water over here and of course now that i've seen a sign that says there's crocodiles
i'm hearing every little sound that happens in the woods so here you can see in here
i don't know if you can see that but the water is really really crystal clear i'm going to try
to try to get a little closer i know this makes some of you really nervous when i do this but uh
i don't know i feel i feel comfortable i feel okay
oh man hold on maybe not
oh man the water is so clear though i want you to see it i want to hopefully i can get it
i don't know what alligator tracks look like but that might be what those are over there
all right look at that can you see that water it's so pretty
that's such a pretty environment over here
all right i'm a little bit freaked out so i'm gonna head back on to onto the main trail
okay as we get deeper into here it's getting kind of cool actually
getting a little bit more tropical and wildernessy than i thought it was going
to be at first there's a sign that says you can do a half loop or a full loop here
so since i'm pretty out of shape i think we're going to go for the full loop because i need the
exercise and i think it'll make better video give us a better chance of maybe seeing a crocodile or
an alligator that'll be really interesting i'd love to show you one i mean obviously i'm not
gonna get too close to it if i find one but you know fingers crossed there's one in a distance
that i can you know capture on film i think it would just be really cool to to see one in the
wild i just don't want to see one up close a lot of you in a previous video had expressed
a little concern about snakes you're like kevin you really need to look out for snakes and i lots
of times hike in sandals which probably isn't the smartest thing i am pretty hyper aware of snakes
here's a little fun fact about me i was bit by a poisonous snake when i was a kid i was bit
by a copperhead when i was 11 years old i spent a week in the hospital because of it it was a pretty
crazy experience it's one of those like fun facts like three truths i always have a pretty cool one
i was bit by a poisonous snake you can actually see the fang marks i don't know if you'll be able
to see them in this video but one of them is right there bit me on this finger here i don't know if
you can see that but one of them's there and then one's on top of my knuckle here you probably won't
be able to see that one in the camera it's kind of faded over time but you can definitely see
the one on the side of my finger if you were here i you know i'd show you i don't know if
it picked up on the camera very well but yeah so i'm very hyper aware of snakes for sure
that was a good little hike it was about almost two miles not quite yeah i think it's worth a
worth of stop if you're in north key largo so it's about an hour from sunset so i'm gonna drive south
and try to find somewhere to watch the sunset not sure if i'll be able to find one but we're gonna
give it a try all right so i found a spot to watch the sunset it's a public park uh closes a half an
hour after sunset so let's head down there and see what kind of sunset we get from key largo
so i decided to kind of hike away from the crowd water's really pretty here it's really clear
i wasn't going to try to capture the sunset i would put the gopro in the water but
i want to make sure i have my lens clear for the sunset although i'm kind of looking over towards
the sunset spot and you're not really going to be able to see it on the water i think there's
like a bunch of mangroves out there but it's still going to be pretty nonetheless i think
all right i think this is going to be our little sunset spot hopefully nobody else comes over here
not every van life day is perfect we have our ups and downs just like any other lifestyle
but the ups seem to be higher and more frequent and i'm just so thankful that i
get to live this life and share some of the experiences with you thank you for watching
you