We have spent the week working at Islamorada in the Keys. so we decided to learn more about the coral reefs.
We took a nice ranger guided tour. We had walked by this tree and never saw the tree snail until the ranger spotted it.
The hammock is in shock from the hurricane. All of the leaves were stripped from the trees during the storm and many of the branches got broken. The state park does not cleanup after the storm and lets the branches decay to form soil.
The red bark tree is the gumbo limbo tree, the wood is very soft. The tree on the left is ironwood and very dense and hard.
This is poisonwood, if you touch the leaves or sap in a few days you have a rash worse then poison ivy.
the leaves of the poisonwood.
Henry Flagler started constructed the Overseas railroad in 1905. He quarried the coral from here to form the bed of the railroad.
He dynamited the coral, forming these lines.
In the Windley quarry blocks were cut off to be used on buildings.
Large blocks of coral that were cut. Larry is walking on coral. Billions of years ago this land was covered with 30 feet of water. The glaciers caused the water to drop. the Keys are formed of fossilized coral.
Walking on all kinds of fossilized coral.
The walls of the quarries
We saw a large iguana in the tree.
The coral used on the educational building.
We then drove 30 miles down the Keys, passing a lot of damage from the hurricane. We stopped at the Sunset Grille to watch the sunset.
It was too cool to eat outside, about 60, but breezy.
Clouds covered the sunset.
We had a good meal, a tall drink, and watched the Eagle game. It was a very enjoyable day.
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