DRTO

DRTO, better known to all and sundry as the Dry Tortugas.

Well... Yes, I have been remiss.
I’ve been here several days and no posts.
Sorry.

Hopefully this will give you an idea what’s been going on.

Arrived here on the 27th of December. Heard there was a boatload of Cuban migrants on Christmas Day, so I guess the variable winter weather really hasn’t stemmed the influx.

The place was hit hard this season...

Compared to this shot from June...

All the trees have pretty much been stripped of every bit of leaf and twig, and most of the palms are dead or dying.

The morning of the 30th was pretty cool.
I’ve never seen ground fog in the parade ground before.




I also shot a couple photos of sunrise over Long Key.


A pair of our campers came over and asked if Bush Key and Long Key were closed to visitors; I told them that the islands were closed and they said that was odd, because there was a number of people walking around on the far side of Long Key.
Lovely.
Either I have a bunch of intrepid explorers from the campground or a sailboat, or we have a chug on Long Key.
I rousted the Rangers and we spend the morning dealing with the 15 Cubans who had arrived. Eventually we took them to Loggerhead Key to await pickup by the Coast Guard later last night.
We spent the rest of the day dealing with the chug- getting if off Long Key and taken back to the Chugpile.

This morning, at about 3:00 am, we had 13 more arrive on Loggerhead Key. Too bad the Coast Guard couldn’t have waited a little longer, they could picked them all up at once.

Other than that, things have been pretty sedate here… The campground has been full almost every night, and tonight is no exception... More than full tonight… We have all 8 sites full, plus 2 tents in the group site, and 2 in the overflow site.

Things will calm down in the next day or so, once the holiday is over...

More later

TBG out-