2 VERY Different Florida Keys RV Sites

Today is one of our shortest travel days ever. About 30 miles. And flat. It's an easy tow, easy drive. We don't have any rain, we don't have any wind, we don't have any hills. But what we do have is humidity. About 80 percent. Yeah we're foggy. We're foggy. I forgot when your camera's in the air conditioner and you go outside to the 80 degree, 80 percent humidity, you're in trouble. It's like how our human bodies are too. You get used to this A.C. like right now. I'm in my A.C. clothes and I'm about to have non-A.C. weather. We're still going to set up the towed vehicle, right? Because that makes sense. Why would we drive separately? That's silly. That's silly. Plus we don't want you to get rusty. No. Uh-uh. Down. Down. That's a bad dog. No. He's bad today. Yeah he's demanding. So anything you do out here, you just start sweating. Big time. It's not that hot. It's only like 75 degrees. But with that humidity, it's rough. I can't complain too much though. We've been in the Keys for three weeks. We've been kind of taking a bit of a work vacation. And we haven't filmed a lot. So now we have a little bit more time in the Keys. And we got some more stuff to film. I even left the awning out because it's, you know, you got to just take any type of shade you can. And I'm going to try not to forget it before we pull off. Okay so I'm going to shut the air conditioners off. And then I'm going to have to unplug the RV. But again, the great thing about now having at least one air conditioner on battery power, like this is where you need it when it's that hot. And you just, you can't rely on just the the front Ford AC. You need more. Yeah totally. 100 percent. Okay I'm gonna go unplug us. Okay babe. We're almost ready. Great. Just got to make sure the AC kicks on the battery power. Come on baby. There's the AC. Does that feel good already? It's about to. It hasn't hit me yet. But just hearing it makes me feel better. You thought I was gonna forget didn't ya? The awning. Oops that's the light. Retract. There goes our shade. Hot hot hot. Can't even bring the sunshade down. It's just too hot right now. Kick this up. There we go. Yeah. Let's see. 11 o'clock is checkout. It's 10 55. They want to make sure we're leaving. Don't worry. Looking up the toad with an ocean view. All right these are my checks. One, two, three, four, five. That's it. Six points to connect it. That's the easiest part. Making sure it's in neutral tow mode is also easy but the more stressful part. So putzing around for 15 minutes past checkout puts us exactly at check-in time. By design not so much but it works. Goodbye Fiesta Key. So like I was saying we didn't film anything while we were here. Three weeks of just catching up, relaxing, and soaking in the sunshine. Rejuvenation. Yeah. Yeah. But how long can we continue that? Not long. So now we're going to be closer to Key West. We got a big Key West trip coming up and we got lots to explore down in that new area. Gotta love how lush and tropical it is down here in the Keys. That's my favorite part about being down here is just how hot it is. The consistent warmth. I love waking up and going on a morning walk with shorts on. Like that never happens. It only happens in the Florida Keys. Yeah. To truly reach warm temperatures while RVing you gotta go pretty far south. So if you're on the west coast that's why a lot of full-time RVers go to Mexico and Baja. Yeah. Because that's far south and it's a little bit warmer even than Arizona or Southern California. Yeah. And it really, you know, man we've had snow in Arizona. In Tucson. Tucson. We're not talking like Flagstaff. We're talking like Tucson. Yes. And it reaches, you know, overnights in the 30s quite often. So it's just a different feel in Southern Florida. That's where you get the overnights in the 60s and 70s and the highs in the 80s. Yeah. And as much as we love the dry heat of the desert and the bug free of the desert, we also love the tropics of Florida and that humidity and like getting a good sweat this is the only place that I like legit sweat on runs and get drenched and it feels pretty good every now and then. You don't even have to run to sweat. You can just walk. That's true. So one of the things we're trying to find on our short 30 mile drive today is propane. We thought we had plenty of propane but the weird thing about the Firefly propane gauge is it doesn't really change until you move. So if you sit somewhere for a couple weeks it doesn't really go down by percentage points. It just stays the same and then once you move it like catches up and then drops by like 10, 15, 20 percent. That's so odd. It's kind of weird because the rest of the gauges go down accurately with the water and the gray and the black. But anyways now we're sitting in the situation where we're low on propane. There's a couple of gas stations along the way which you actually have a correction to make because there is it's a racetrack down here which is actually part of the TSD open roads fuel discount program. So there is an option down here in the keys in Marathon right? It's in Marathon? Yep. And we just have to be careful I guess now that we're towing because we can't just zip in like we would have if we were only driving the Asada by itself. And that right there is probably my biggest downside or disappointment in having a towed vehicle. There's a lot of upsides of course but one of the biggest is trying to just pull in and do pretty much anything you want to do. Spontaneous. Yeah that's why we did the first six months in just straight driving the Dynamax because we could literally pull over basically anywhere. Yeah and of course with the ability to go into reverse combined with the it was never a second thought or never any worry about it. And here's that famous turquoise water. I am excited to go over the seven mile bridge. We haven't done that yet on this stint and it'll be fun because now we have the Bronco to drive over it. Yeah. And take a cruise maybe with the top down. I don't know it depends on wind and rain and all of the elements but it you can't beat this turquoise water. It's beautiful and when the sun is shining like this it just magnifies. Right now the alternator charging is kicked on and with about 500 watts of solar coming in the AC is running flat. There's actually seven and a half amps five amps going into the battery. But once that alternator charging kicks off which it does every 15 minutes then it's gonna show a big drop. That's why we're at 93 percent over the last half hour. So you can't ride in comfort all day. Not all day. It'll last for hours and hours though. Four or five hours. Six hours. Propane, propane, propane, propane. I don't see it. I know. It's hard to miss the big tanks. So right here at the end of marathon is the racetrack. This is an open roads fuel discount program. Propane filled here. Yeah pull in right here. How do I do it? Well did I miss it? I think you might have pull in here. That's third generation. Oh that's the one that the lady told me to check. Are we on the crux? Is the fill on the driver or does it not matter? The fill is on the driver but I don't know if anybody's here or not so we'll have to take a peek. Well we found the big propane tank but they're closed. Seven mile bridge. Here we go. This is the big deal. It does feel like extra bright like I need to put my sunglasses on because the water is just reflecting awesomeness all around me. Amazing. There's the great walking bridge with no bathrooms by the way. That's that's what I don't like about this bridge. That's gonna be cool at night babe. There it is. Sunshine Key. It's busy here. Now we gotta check this one last marathon thing. Well we could ask them when we check in. Let's do that. Okay. We got lucky and they have propane right at the gas station next door to the RV park so away we go. How convenient. We could even if we wanted to be super proactive top off on our diesel so that the next time we leave we're full. Well if you're ever deciding between Fiesta Key RV and Sunshine Key RV, Sunshine definitely has the bigger sights. Yeah it's it's funny you say that because the big talk you know when you get to a Thousand Trails either one of those two down here in the Keys and you chat with other RVers it's always the question like oh where'd you come from where are you going to and it's like people like to go from one to the other and then the next natural question is well which one do you like better and it's so fun to see what people say because we swear we get about 50 50 or half say Fiesta and half say Sunshine. Yeah but no doubt the sites are two this site is three times as big as our site we just came from. Three times. No doubt yeah so I guess some high level differences between the two. Fiesta which is where we just came from they have an on-site restaurant normally they didn't while we were there this time they have a hot tub two hot tubs with ocean view with ocean view and the beach the big fancy a little bit nicer beach there nicer beach yeah and then here at Sunshine they do not have the hot tub they do not have the restaurant they used to have a restaurant long time ago they have a food truck now yeah but their restaurant got destroyed in like the 2019 or 2018 hurricane somewhere in there I don't know if we can see out here but we got ocean views at both campgrounds which is pretty crazy yeah to think about yeah I love it I really like this site the site is amazing I'm super excited to be here I hope that they open up the farmers market because I think in December they start to launch that and that's where I like to go get the fresh seafood from fishtails was here last time we were here I hope that they're back again grouper grouper $27.99 per pound grouper that's what I want a good grouper the mahi is great snapper actually I have a lot of hogfish too is your grouper crot local yes yeah and let's see I can show you that big big fillets but we cut them down okay we'll take some grouper for sure there's exactly a pound oh perfect how long will those last raw before I have to cook them these are good for five days I'll take a pound of those let's do a pound and a half I mean you gotta come for the shells and stuff right the shell and one of your seasonings and that's it okay now Aaron's cutting me off you're cut off this is like old bag oh okay this is more of a blackened seasoning I'm not sure what you're looking for I'm just letting you know what it tastes like I'll get them both okay I'll get them both thank you you know yeah thanks right one of our favorite things about the sunshine rv okay one of our favorite things about this rv park that we're at sunshine rv is the market that they have every friday morning specifically we've been thinking about fishtails they sell fish they sell meat and they sell pies and a whole bunch of stuff and we have been looking forward to getting back there since the last time so today we went there we spent some time picking out what we wanted and we went with the black grouper we got one pound for twenty eight dollars which is a fairly good price it's locally caught we have been shopping at other seafood markets in the area and we have spent thirty eight dollars a pound at other places so to be ten dollars cheaper you can't get too upset about that so that's the menu tonight is grouper focaccia bread broccoli in the air fryer we have some fresh white rice and our favorite thing about rving across the country is being able to buy local and have these things that the area is known for and in this case in the florida keys fresh seafood okay so we have all hands on deck here we're going to do the broccoli in the air fryer we're going to do the grouper on the saute on the induction we talk about the induction a lot we like how it's more efficient with heat temperature cooks better just big fans of it that helps in the 90 degree humidity down here it really does the white rice i've already cooked ahead of time you know and that's one thing about being in an rv that still irks me every now and then is that i still have to do some batch cooking because and not batch cooking don't use that word i still have to do like cooking in a series where i can't quite do everything at one time whether it's due to space or power or circuit limitations so i got the white rice out of the way because these starches hold their heat very well and it is such a good dinner in and we live for these moments where we have something special this is a little bit more you know elevated than what we usually have with the fresh grouper so aaron who's more excited me or you we're all super excited oh they're so cute these dogs have really bonded over the past year i'd say even the past three six months it's surprising how much they like the smell of fish it's because they don't they smell a lot of chicken beef and pork and fish is one of the lesser smelled items so they get really excited with it yeah fish is one of the things where i do like to shut the bedroom door because the fish smell carries and this is not an rv thing this is like any household thing i'd always try to shut the bedroom door shut the closets yeah that's why a door is important a door and and the top to bottom one that we have in here love it gotta get your pan piping hot before you put oil on it and tonight we went with the blackened seasoning the nice man who works at the fishtails market told me because they have a they actually have a brick and mortar store and restaurant that we still haven't gone to it's on our list of things to do and i actually think we're going to go there this week i have a feeling but they put this blackened seasoning on their fish and then they put this seafood seasoning on their shrimp and the seafood is more like a old bay flavor which we both love so we're going to save this for the shrimp that we got and we're basically going to copy what they do in-house because they're the masters i've never seen a blackened mix that's so pale so you can see it appears to be salt garlic and onion heavy which i like but then when you put it on here it looks red do you see that yeah it does look right it's like it changed color once it hit the fish weird hey siri start stopwatch so thick side in the center skinny sides on the outside and then i like to drop the heat down a little bit so it doesn't scorch and then my method is pretty simple on everything that i saute i just have a general idea of how long it takes once it looks about halfway or slightly more than halfway cooked i flip it and i take note of the time to mimic that for the second half yeah because every fillet of fish is going to be a different thickness right exactly yeah so there's no cook this for 10 minutes because every piece is different so you really got to watch it pay attention i always just use my stopwatch and let the first half guide my total cooking time parchment paper easy cleanup right into the shooter bada bing bada boom and then so i'm gonna let this go for like oh probably five minutes and then start the broccoli smells good already oh you you know the thing about the fresh fish you can see how nice and dry it is there's like no liquid on it it just you can just tell it's a nice piece of fresh never frozen it makes all the difference aaron's kind of picking now where he'll only eat fresh seafood on the atlantic coast well i don't eat it very often so you know when you do you might as well eat it right only the best yeah that's that's another thing that uh the rv life has really spoiled us where we've just had some good seafood and we've had good when you have good and it's funny for a minnesotan and wisconsin person to say that but once you get used to having fresh fish it's really hard to go to the frozen we have lake fish up there we have walleye perch perch and sunnies we're at five minutes so far i was expecting about 15 minutes and it's looking like we might be close to that it looks great doesn't it it's not even finished yet and i'm like really excited i see you have a christmas present back there i do wow that's from our friends mike and becky isn't it beautiful good looking present right next to my food saver box what do you all love to food saver what do you like to vacuum seal obviously like i plan on using it for meat and stuff but i'm sure there's other things that you can seal up and save money on by grocery shopping i want to make 2026 i want to like save money on groceries because that's a big bucket for us it's gotten out of control i wouldn't say i'm not just saying us i'm saying oh the price in general prices of groceries that i would grow yeah that i agree with so what do you what do y'all use your food saver for to help whether it's buy in bulk or prep in bulk whether it's food saving or food prepping or anything related to anything with the food saver i need some tips because it's brand new to me i'm gonna flip it we're about seven and a half minutes in i'm gonna give it a quick little zhuzh so that i'm not flipping it dry it is looking good i did just drop the heat down a little bit that's a little bit more scorched than what i like to see that can happen with seasoning it's not like ruined or anything for us that doesn't bother us but looks good to me it's just continuing to get hot you know the heat is building so you gotta monitor your temperature in previous years we would buy grouper but it was just grouper and now this year i don't know why black grouper is what's locally caught at all the markets and it's not it's no longer just plain grouper it's black grouper this year it seems like the black grouper is thicker though doesn't it it seems that way bigger i couldn't i can't confirm it it's hard to it's hard to share facts based off memory this pan was really hot that was done perfect oh you know what we need on our cracked bread though is cracked salt and pepper this would be really good on the grill too yeah it would but since this was so thin i was a little bit scared of it getting overcooked on the grill so it's sometimes nice to be able to monitor it right inside one thing we have to be careful of is our our skinny skinny countertop there by the sink i've seen some disasters there before for me yeah yeah when i'm rushing and i'm usually it's when i'm in a bad mood and i'm rushing accidents happen anytime i cook a starchy carb i always cook as much as this pot can fit which is usually two cups of dry rice but this is what a typical you know seven foot rv kitchen gets you you can cook in it yeah plenty of space but you gotta use it all and you kind of gotta go with you have to go through a lot of sessions to figure out what your flow is right like everybody has their own flow when they cook that's that this is ready it looks ready you can just tell it's splitting juices are running i actually prefer my broccoli butter steamed versus the air fryer i don't like it when it gets all crispy so i give aaron all these crispy pieces because he likes it that way and then i try to take the less crispy pieces you never knew that i did that but i do oh i knew and i appreciate it yes it's a win-win is one of these groupers calling your name well again i like the more crispy one so i usually take like the the thinner one or the more you want this one yeah either one they look pretty similar i know they look exactly like yeah beautiful looks good oh mine released a little bit better okay one more little so my favorite things about meals like this aside from supporting local people eating local food um immersing in the area that you're in as far as cuisine goes you kind of talk about how expensive it is to eat out nowadays right yeah so you know what did this cost we'll call it thirty dollars for the fish i think the broccoli was like three dollars and then the rice we'll call it nominal in this event but if you were to go out to eat this it'd be way more double easily double yeah we've said it before you know you order fresh fish in this area it's going to be 45 maybe lunch will be like 35 but dinner is going to be 45 50 a plate yeah and eating out at lunch is another good tip to get more affordable dining out experiences and we love dining out we do that too but the majority of the time we're cooking at home so we might eat out once or twice a month on average and the rest is just like this all right give it a taste okay do you need to let the fish rest or no no i mean if you do then i've been doing it wrong my entire life look how good that looks it's meaty and juicy and flaky and hot it's a very mild fish yeah grouper is pretty good bon appetit dig in mine's gonna be gone by the time you get your first bite erin erin i have one more surprise for you it doesn't have to be right now but i think like a week ago i got us this little tiny frozen key lime pie oh i was gonna say what is that made by the key lime pie co we've eaten there before we have and a fun story is our very first trip to the florida keys when we were in the van we were so excited for the key lime pie we did like a key lime pie-a-thon where we had a notebook we had a rating system and over the course of four days we went to like multiple key lime pie places do you remember yeah this was two months before we started youtube yeah we weren't yet filming two months before we actually like filmed anything so we had this elaborate rating system and it's still in my apple notebook on my phone key lime maybe we'll share that we rated the crust we rated the filling we rated the whipped cream we rated the texture and the flavor i want to say that was like the five components of this key lime pie-a-thon do we know who came out on top yeah the key lime pie factory did the key lime pie factory came out with an overall rating of 8.5 out of 10 which that's a big deal because aaron and i don't give out tens that's just like your old employee annual review like if you get a 10 you better be really good ever wonder where the name irene iron travels comes from it's actually named after my online fitness and nutrition coaching business irene iron fitness i help people move better feel better and eat better with strength training and real food no fad diets no harsh restrictions no counting calories and absolutely no processed food in a package if you want to get stronger and feel better at any age check the description below for the links with my new client special or join in on our next and upcoming group challenge