The 3 1/2-hour-plus flight was uneventful. The young couple in the seats in front of us were flying from Fargo, North Dakota to Miami, via MSP, for an afternoon at the beach. They'd fly back in the evening. She works for Delta, so it costs them very little. Mary Joy says that I should get that sort of job when I retire! 
We picked up a car very quickly and with no hassles at Enterprise. They upgraded us to a dark blue Volkswagen Passat CC, since they were out of compacts.
After having a little trouble getting out of the airport (confusing signage and repair detours), we hit the road south around 12:40 p.m. EST and arrived in Key Largo about an hour-and-a-half later. We had lunch at the Fish House, (Grouper Matecumbe, a house specialty involving a sauce with dried tomatoes, onions and capers, and genuine key lime pie--all very good). Seafood in the Keys is generally very fresh, delivered straight from the fishing boat to the restaurant's dock.
The local fish on all the menus this time of year are grouper, yellowtail snapper and mahi-mahi, or dolphin fish. The dolphin fish is not the same as the dolphin mammal, or porpoise, so restaurants call it by its Hawaiian name, mahi-mahi, to avoid having customers ask them why they are cooking Flipper.We went on to
Tavernier and found the Island Bay Resort, where we checked into the Bridges Cottage. This is a very pleasant place, with nice grounds and a 
small beach and dock on Florida Bay. The only bad thing that anyone had to say about it on Tripadvisor was that it costs too much for what you get. There is something to that, but given that all the other alternatives had more problematic negatives (regarding condition, cleanliness, noise, service, etc.), Island Bay is probably worth a small premium. The Keys are pricey, touristy, and in some ways have a sort of 1950s-roadside- attraction-and-fishing-camp feel.
We went to the nearby Florida Keys Wild Bird Center, which is a sanctuary for injured birds. It was interesting, but not exciting. Among the birds we saw there were a couple of cute little Eastern Screech Owls and flocks of pelicans and cormorants. Mary Joy also befriended some 
chickens on the grounds.We drove on, crossing the bridge from Key Largo to Islamorada. The Florida Keys are chain of islands (from the Spanish cayo--a small, flat, sandy islet), connected by U.S. Highway 1, the Overseas Highway. You tell where something is by its distance from Mile Marker 0, at Key West, along the way to Mile Marker 108, at the bridge from Key Largo to the mainland. A point along this continuum is either oceanside (between U.S. 1 and the Atlantic) or bayside (between U.S. 1 and Florida Bay). Island Bay Resort is at MM 92.5, bayside. Much of the time, especially on the larger islands and toward the Key Largo end, you see very little water from the highway, but eventually you start crossing more and more bridges to more and more tiny islets, and the views on both sides are spectacular.
Islamorada (pronounced "eye-la-mor-AH-da") is a town stretching across a number of islands. As it was approaching sunset, we arrived at Robbie's, a marina, restaurant and conglomeration of tourist goods sales booths, best known for the tarpons you can personally feed at its dock. Since it was cool (around 70 and cloudy) and there weren't many tarpon, we were allowed to go out on the dock without paying anything. But , in the end, we saw only pelicans, not tarpon.
As the sun set, we turned around and headed back. We had dinner at Snappers, which is highly recommended. We weren't impressed. Our hogfish was mushy--maybe that is the nature of the fish, which we'd never had before, but maybe it was just overcooked.
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