Vaca Key Travel Guide

Inside the museum is a Natural History section with dioramas of local flora and fauna and historic displays. Out in the back of the main museum building is a small aquarium and zoo, and a children's museum section. Then there are several nature trails that you can walk. Many of the plants have signs telling what they are.

Admission $7.50 per adult. Children under 6 free, students 6 and up $4.00 (college students must have ID) and seniors $6.00.

If you get one of those free guides to the Keys there's a $1.00 off coupon in there.

The daily rate is $1.60/ft and they will include everything in the length of the boat from the tip of the anchor to the end of the dinghy or swim platform on the stern.

The monthly rate is $18 plus/ft (when you add all the taxes etc to the published rate of $16.50/ft. and includes 2 free pumpouts/month. Over 2 pumpouts you pay $20 per pumpout. Pumpouts are done only on Thursday.

They require a deposit of $150 for utilities - Electric is 10 cents/kwh and water is 3 cents a gallon and there is a minimum monthly charge for both water and electric

If you come in the middle of the month, they pro-rate on the monthly rate by the day. If you leave in the middle of the month, they prorate by the weekly rate. They insist on billing from the first to the first. So when you leave, you can't get any money back because the weekly rate for 3 weeks is more than the monthly rate. They will not forward mail after you leave.

Equipment: The showers and toilets are kept clean.

Favorite thing: After Henry Flagler's death, the railroad was losing money, and the 1935 hurricane decimated the Islamorada area. His widow sold the railroad to the government, and they put a road on top of the rail bed. They used the old tracks to make a railing along the sides of the bridge.

Now there is a new fixed bridge (the old bridge was a draw bridge) with a high span over the Moser Channel. Sailors with 65 foot masts have to wait until low tide to get under this bridge.

Fondest memory: The old road was very narrow - so narrow that you had to fold in your left side mirrors, or you risked breaking them when you would hit the mirror of a vehicle coming the other direction.

We broke down once on the old bridge, and my husband pushed the car down onto Pigeon Key were he fixed it and then we continued.