How To Dry Tortugas National Park | Seaplanes, Fort Jefferson, and Snorkling

So cold! Holy cow! I can't believe this is happening. Hey uh here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna be putting somebody in the cockpit each way. One of you two wants to sit up there next to her. Yes put her up there. Holy cow! I cannot believe this. Today's journey starts in Orlando, Florida. We are heading south to the Florida Keys to finally go to Dry Tortugas National Park. Last year our flight was canceled 30 minutes before we were supposed to take off. Does that mean it just needs is there a rescheduling? Is that an option? Very unfortunate news. The seaplane visit to Dry Tortugas National Park was just canceled. That was one of the biggest heartbreaks of the entire trip. We checked the forecast and the weather is looking great tomorrow. It's gonna be 79, partly cloudy, and no rain. So the plan for today is to drive to Marathon. It's about two hours outside of Key West. We're gonna try to find a free place to park and then in the morning we have a 10 a.m. flight to Dry Tortugas. So last night we found a spot behind a McDonald's next to a Winn-Dixie. Normally this would be a prime spot. We do this all the time but since we're in the Florida Keys we were a little unsure if we were going to make it all the way throughout the night without a knock on the door. We did. We slept fine. It's a little hot but we were comfortable. So now we have a two-hour drive down to Key West but first we're gonna grab some McDonald's breakfast and I'm We're at the International Airport to get on our flight to Dry Tortugas National Park. We got here two hours early. One because we are just so excited to get on this plane and two to find free parking. We're at the airport. We snagged one of the few spots and we're ready to go. Let's go! Holy cow. I can't believe this is happening. Holy cow. I cannot believe this. Thanks for letting me do it, honey. I cannot believe this. That was so cool. I can't. That was the most fun I've ever had on an airplane. Hey guys, I'm gonna start handing stuff to this guy. If I can get a couple more people in the back here, we'll just settle stuff along. Oh, I'm gonna go and film. I don't want the camera Nathan got put to work. So we are all on the same page. We have to be back here at 12 55 to catch our plane back to the mainland. Oh, I can't believe we missed this last year. You know what? It was worth the wait. It really was. Absolutely. I don't know if this is the coolest park we've been to, but definitely top three. It's probably one of the most beautiful. Oh yeah, most unique. I'm still the mule of the team. I mean, someone has to record. We took the half day trip, which is only two hours on the island. So I'm sorry if our video looks a little sporadic. We're just so excited and we're trying to capture as much as we can while we're here. This park is nearly perfect. It's surrounded by nature and bird sanctuaries. There's also so much history here and just a little bit of danger since they don't have any guardrails on any of the walkways. During the civil war, this is where they held captors and union deserters. Four of those captors were the four people closely associated with the Lincoln assassination. One of those most famous ones is Dr. Samuel Mudd. There's a movie. Go and watch it. You can even come see Dr. Mudd's cell. This is bigger than my first apartment. What was his view? What else can we discover? Conquistador Ponce de Leon discovered this island while he was searching for the fountain of youth. He did not find the fountain, but however, they found lots of turtles. Thus the Tortugas part of the name. Tortugas is Spanish for turtles. The dry part of the name comes from the fact that there is no drinkable water on this island. They get that water from desalinating the ocean water over massive condensers. You can't view the entire fort. There are eight park rangers that maintain this place full-time. He said everything would be chaotic. We meant it. We don't know which direction to look, which way to point and shoot. We're sorry. We had a talk this morning about loving the mountains and not really caring for the beach or tropics. I take that back. You can see all these funny shaped rocks in all of the cement, and I think that is dead coral that they used as filler to build the fort. No railings. They were not joking. The fort was built over 30 years, but was quickly abandoned after the invention of rifled cannon. Those cannons could easily penetrate the wall, making this fort basically obsolete after that. I'm just geeked. I'm having a blast. That's when we came in. We seem to be trapped on the second floor and we cannot find the stairwell to get down. It's one of their strategies for their prisoners. No Pearson? Found it. In 2007, 33 Cubans took this homemade boat 100 miles across the ocean to Lager Cay. The U.S. has a law that if you have one dry foot on U.S. soil, then they'll accept you and help you work towards citizenship. Fascinating. There's one more thing that we came to this island to do. I'm more than a little nervous about this, but they've assured us they've been cleaned. I cannot believe that people camp overnight here. It's not very expensive, but you're not allowed to do it if you take the seaplane in, so we kind of had to pick and choose. Not only is the snorkeling gear free, but the seaplane gives you your own little personal cooler with your own drinks. Here's to an awesome day. One of our best national parks yet. Oh yeah. We have not been to Isle Royale. That is our last island national park, but so far if you have to pick a park on an island and take a seaplane, this is the one. What a great day. What a great day. Got to see where Dr. Mudd was imprisoned, birds, fish. Did you see turtles from the plane? No. Any of the little dots, they're really hard to see because you are... All the animals are really hard to see from the plane because you are still so far up, but from the naked eye you can definitely see them down there. This has been so much fun, but sadly, not sadly, we have a plane to catch. Wait! Just kidding, that's not our plane. The saddest part of the day is right now. It's not even two o'clock. Yeah. That's the end of our drive to Artuga's experience and what an experience it was. It's expensive. It's not the easiest park to get to, but we recommend it. If you can save up and do it, go for it. That's what we did. I debated on whether or not I should put makeup on today. I knew this would happen. I'm going to say, forgo the makeup. You don't need it. You're beautiful. Anyways, I kind of wish this was a beard. You might be wondering where Frank is. Frank is fine, but we have left him back in Orlando with the family. Imprisoned for her lack of magic and had Dumbledore truly left her to her fate while he went off to Hogwarts to prove himself brilliant and talented.