Images of Dry Tortugas National Park – Florida Keys, taken in October 2016.

Seventy miles west of Key West in the Florida Keys lies Dry Tortugas National Park. Originally named Los Tortugas or “The Turtles” it was renamed to let travelers know that there was no fresh water available on these remote keys.

In 1846 the construction of Fort Jefferson was undertaken to protect the shipping lane into the Gulf of Mexico between the Florida Keys and Cuba. That effort went on for thirty years and was never completed; however, the fort was used to house Civil War prisoners as well as individuals implicated in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln to include Doctor Samuel Mudd who tended to the wounds of assassin John Wilkes Booth.

Today, along with the fort itself, the park protects the areas coral reefs as well as the nesting places of the endangered Green Sea Turtle and the threatened Loggerhead Turtle.

It’s always special to come to such a unique place as this but on this trip I was joined by a fellow traveler. Anna flew in from South Africa to spend time with me in the keys which is particularly interesting because of how and where we originally met; in the summer of 2015 both of us were traveling through Alaska touring National Parks, Anna with a small tour group and me just winging it on my own. Our paths crossed several times over the period of about a week so we got to know each other, kept in touch and ultimately made plans to do some touring together. We were also able to get to Everglades and Biscayne National Parks but it’s interesting to note that there are no two spots in the US that are farther apart than Alaska and the Florida Keys and we did them both in just over a year!