Key Largo Vacation Rental house boat

If we tell you about the predictable difficulties of adjusting to life in very close quarters or the occasional jellyfish or baby barracuda in the bay, will you stay home? Good! Then the calendar will have openings and the rates won’t rise on this little slice of tropical paradise in Key Largo we were able to enjoy from November 1-December 1, 2007.
As folks who don’t golf, scuba, snorkel, or boat, who have little experience, coming as we do from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, with sun or surf, we are not typical Keys candidates where opportunities for those activities fill the Chamber of Commerce coupon booklets and the days of most who vacation here regularly.
We arrived in the wake of the last tropical storm of the season. After a few days tucked into the Banana Cabana (another small house on the property) waiting for the whitecaps to clear, we moved into our home away from home for the rest of the month. We were looking for a place to relax, and we found it: our houseboat tucked neatly between the jetty and the dock. The November days stretched before us like lazy second summer. Each day we awoke to the gentle rocking of the boat and the murmur of soft voices as more permanent residents prepared for work. A trip to the spacious and immaculate bath house, a quick chat with Terry as he raked the beach into zenlike perfection, and a perfect cup of coffee as we confirmed our plan for the day made every day a good-mood day.
Thereafter followed exploration of the local attractions—the bird sanctuary down the road toward Islamorada (a good value) and the Botanical park up toward the Card Sound Bridge (a good place for silly city people to get lost), the Theater of the Sea, Bahia Honda (gorgeous as promised) and Sombrero Beaches, the Princess 2 Glass Bottom Boat to the reef, Robbie’s Marina and Tarpon Feeding (another good value, with a good restaurant, too), as far north as the Everglades Alligator Farm and the Coral Castle (amazing) near Homestead and as far south as a day in Key West(Key West is what it is). And we shopped our way back from every adventure, hitting every tourist spot (Give Largo Cargo a try for “things to take back”, Key Lime Store for pie and cookie mixes, Pink Junktique for treasures, Fish Lips and Lazy Larry’s trio for miscellaneous goodies, and the Cover-to-Cover bookstore in the Pink Plaza for local reads and conversations, interesting looking flea market (every Saturday behind the bank), and roadside stand we found. All that touring and shopping required food, so we got a good look at local cuisine along the way. Up close, our favorites for breakfast and lunch included Doc’s Diner, DJ’s Diner, Harriett’s, the Galley, and Mrs. Mac’s. All provide good food in more than adequate quantities at reasonable prices, as does Herbie’s in Marathon, which we visited twice. Planned trips to the Island Grill in Islamorada, Alabama Jack’s right after the Card Sound Toll, and Senor Frijoles right there in town made a few meals extra special, but we quickly learned to take advantage of the great take-out offered by the Publix deli and to use our tiny kitchen and the provided propane grill to be sure we were back home in time for sunset—the most spectacular time of day—with the best part of our stay: the people.
It is nearly impossible to describe the community here, though we spent one whole evening with our new friends trying to figure it out why and how it worked. One incoming visitor described it as a Corona Commercial, and there was certainly that aspect. Everyone checked the communal cooler and refilled as needed; potlucks and sunset cruises erupted with some regularity; and watching Monday night football on a flatscreen tied to a palm tree from a tiki bar on the beach with a Keys sunset in the background and a manatee in the bay is undeniably cool. One more permanent resident offered an even more apt comparison when she called it a summer camp for adults—throw together a bunch of people from varied backgrou