Key Deer and the Bahia Honda Bridge

 This weeks adventure out found me at the Key Deer National Wildlife Refuge on Big Pine Key. I wanted to try and capture the Endangered Key Deer in the wild. The weather really worked against me on this trip, cold, windy and rainy (yes there are actually yucky days in the keys....lol) and all the  wildlife seemed to hunkered down and not moving at all, as we should have been.

 After scouring the refuge for a while with no luck, I took a short trip over to No Name Key and as luck would have it, I found these guys riding out the weather in a cove just off the road. These were the only deer or any other wildlife, I saw all day.

 With my wildlife search pretty much a bust, I headed to the next key over to check out Bahia Honda State Park and the old Bahia Honda Bridge. The park has some nice beaches which of course is why you come here, but my main focus today was the bridge.

 The old bridge was first built in the early 1900's as a railroad connecting the middle keys with the lower keys. As more and more people traveled to the Keys by car, they decided, instead of building another bridge to hold the car traffic, they would just build a road on top of the railroad bridge. Doesn't look like the best of ideas to me, but I guess it worked out, until the 1970's when it was replaced with a new one to carry the increasing vehicle traffic.

On my way out of the park, I found this guy striking a pose, so of course a portrait shot was in order. With the weather being as it was, the sea was pretty rough and churned up, so I am hoping to get back up there on a calmer day and capture the same shots with the crystal clear waters shining through.
A fun and enjoyable day out, it's great having a hobby that gets us out and about to some of the most scenic places we can find during our travels.
That'll do it for now, hope you enjoyed the shots, take care and see you back here again................