Our season ended Thursday night in the district semifinal. I got home after 11, dropped my bag in the carport and went to bed. On Saturday morning at 7:58, Dana was at the kitchen table with the laptop open and a sticky note with three site numbers on it, and I was standing behind her with a coffee, under orders not to talk. By 8:01 we had three nights at Bahia Honda State Park for spring break 2026, March 26 to 29, on a site with water and electric.
We don't own a camper. That's the funny part. We booked a site that will fit one, eleven months ahead, and right now the plan is to pitch a tent on it.
Why Bahia Honda, and why this early
Bahia Honda is about two and a half hours from home, past Marathon and over the Seven Mile Bridge, and it has some of the clearest water we've seen in Florida. There are beaches on both the ocean and bay sides, the old railroad bridge, and calm shallows where kids can put their faces in the water. After Curry Hammock last month, where Maya saw hermit crabs and a puffer and wrote "NOT YET" about sea turtles in her journal, she's been asking for "the clearer Keys." Bahia Honda is that.
It's also popular, and spring break is one of the busiest weeks of the year in the Keys. As far as we've seen, the only way to get a site for that week is to be on the reservation page at 8 a.m., exactly 11 months out.
Why water and electric for a tent
The campground has different kinds of sites. Some are small and close to the water, fine for a tent and a car. Others have water and electric and are long enough for a trailer. We went for the second kind, on purpose.
- Fans. Late March in the Keys was comfortable for us this year, nights around 70 with dew points in the low 60s. But that's close to the edge. If next March runs warm and sticky, an outlet means a plug-in fan all night instead of rationing the Ryobi clamp fan's batteries.
- Charging. Phones, headlamps and fan batteries, without hunting for an outlet at the bathhouse.
- Water at the site. For rinsing masks and sandy feet, and for not hauling a jug back and forth ten times a day.
- Room. A pad built for a trailer has space for the tent, the table, a cooking area and the Pilot without anyone tripping over a guy line.
And yes, the last reason. Dana and I have talked, a little, about whether we'll still be tent camping in five years. We have no plans to buy anything. But when you book almost a year out, a site that fits a tent or a camper keeps every door open. If we're still in the dome tent, it'll fit. If we ever borrow or rent something with wheels, that'll fit too.
What it cost, and what it could cost
The confirmation says $147.80 for three nights, fees included, about $49 a night. That's the most we've paid for a Florida campsite so far. Curry Hammock was $134 for three nights, about $45 a night.
If we have to cancel, what we were told is that we'd lose the $6.70 reservation fee plus a $17.75 cancellation fee, so $24.45 in all. Next year's baseball schedule doesn't exist yet. If it looks like this year's, there will be a tournament early in spring break week and we'll leave Thursday, which is why Dana picked Thursday to Sunday. If the schedule moves, we'll deal with it. Camp math says the risk is worth about one bag of groceries.
Our plan if we're still in a tent
Curry Hammock taught us about wind, and the Keys in March are windy. So the Bahia Honda tent plan already has notes:
- Longer, heavier stakes for sand and rock, bought well before then.
- A tarp rigged as a windbreak on the cooking side, so Dana's coffee doesn't take 14 minutes again.
- The Pilot parked upwind.
- A plug-in box fan and an outdoor extension cord for the electric post.
On Saturday afternoon, Maya wrote "BAHIA HONDA 3/26/26" on an orange sticky note and put it on the fridge, eleven months early, next to the Smokies countdown. Nico asked how old he'll be by then. Six, I told him. He said that sounded old enough to catch a fish. We'll see about that, too.
