Home, Sweet, Home

This is where volunteers stay in the park.....

The luxurious apartment for volunteers is located on the 2nd level of the fort, in one of the casements. This is the outdoor patio area. It overlooks the harbor, main dock, and part of the campground. It's protected from the sun and rain, and has a picnic table, chairs, and a grill.

The air conditioned apartment is a whopping 150 sq. ft and contains 2 rooms - a bathroom and the living area, which contains the kitchen and sleeping area. Checkout the pictures:

The kitchen contains a microwave, refrigerator, and small counter. Probably no gourment meals this trip. The sleeping area has two bunk beds, a small dresser, a cabinet, and some shelves. Well, as long as it's air conditioned, everything else is OK!

In the beginning...

Everytime we tell people where we're going in September (2009), their first response is "You're going WHERE for a month?!" The next question is always "What if there is a hurricane?" So, what is this all about?


Monia and I have talked about volunteering in a national park for several years, off and on. The problem with most of them is that volunteers have to provide their own housing (i.e., an RV. Even though we're retired, we don't own an RV and don't plan to.) So, this was mostly a dead end.


In the spring of 2008 we visited Dry Tortugas National Park for a day. Immediately afterward we applied to work there as volunteers. In case you don't know, the park is 70 miles due west of Key West and only accessible by boat or sea-plane. Here's a link with more info: http://www.nps.gov/drto/


We didn't hear anything from our application for a year. I tried to track it down, but didn't have any luck. Then, in April of this year we received a call that there was a cancellation for September. (Only 2 volunteers at a time are in the park.) Were we still interested? Do birds fly? Being the water rats we are and with a love for outdoors activities, this was a no-brainer. So, we'll be living on a tropical island for a month, with no phone service, no mail, limited Internet - well, you get the idea. The living conditions are not luxurious, either. Hence, people's question and the name of this blog.


So now, we're into the planning stage. The first concern was what to do with our cat. This was easy - Monia's mother will keep it for us. The biggest problem is that we have to pack in everything we'll need for a month (except food - see below). There's no 7-11 available, so we better get it right the first time. However, there have been many volunteers before us and we've been given lists to work from, so we'll manage.


We have to provide our own food. We'll take some with us on the trip out - this has to last for a week. After that we can order once a week (via Internet) from a grocer in Key West and it's delivered by a park service boat.

Enough for now - more details as we get them.