Key West---You either love or hate Key West (or, as in my case, both). It can be ridiculously crowded because a couple of cruise ships are in town and the "Amateurs" are ashore noisily crowding the bars, restaurants and shops. But after the ships depart it becomes quite tolerable. For the second time we hopped on one of the tour trolleys that travels all around "Old" Key West and the driver points out the sites, architecture, museums, etc and gives a history lesson as you ride around town.
Several of hundreds of chickens that roam free around town
(Stealing the Show)
On the way to Key West we stopped and spent a couple of hours at Bahia Honda State Park---beautiful beaches, nature trails, picnic and camping areas. Our friends here at the marina have gotten Diane (and consequently me) into combing the beaches for "Sea Beans". These are large bean husks that have been carried from the Amazon rainforest northward to the beaches of North America (we understand they are in profusion along the Texas beaches this year). You find them mixed in with the sea grass that comes ashore on the tides. They look, when cleaned up, like giant buckeyes
Cocoa Plumb Beach at high tide
While the flora is not yet quite in bloom we found a few beauties on our nature walks:
Diane is reading a book loaned to her by one of our new marina friends. It's titled "Tales of Old Florida" and consists of a collection of writings by turn-of-the-century authors describing what they found in south Florida and the Keys on their visits here (eg. Miami--6000 people and 2 hotels, relations with the Indians, traveling the natural waterways by boat). It is a very interesting collection and falls right into our goal of exploring "old" Florida on this trip.
Henry Flagler was a very wealthy (Original investor in Standard Oil) entrepenure
who came to Florida, built hotels and a railroad and developed St Augustine, Palm Beach, Miami and dreamed of extending his railroad to Key West to pick up on the soon to be coming ocean trade from through the Panama Canal, Cuba and S. America. He financed it himself and completed it (for 50 million dollars). (It was later destroyed by a hurricane and not rebuilt but in the meantime accomplished Flagler's goals of trade and tourism.) It's a fascinating history and Flagler is a fascinating man of great vision, energy and absence of fear of risk. He will be the subject of my next biographical read.
One of our trips was out to Pigeon Key, a State Park on a small island right off of the foot of 7 Mile Bridge--west of Marathon. This was where Flagler staged the railroad construction--dormitories for the imported workers, supplies, etc. It has been well preserved and makes for a very nice tour.
Yesterday we (Diane and me; Bruce and Rhonda from Sarasota and Terry and Dale from Niagara Canada) went out on our boat to do some snorkeling at Sombrero Key, about 8 miles out. We fought some rough seas on the way out and although were successful tying up to a mooring ball at the reef we never got off the boat---too rough--4 and 5 foot rollers. The wind was not high so I figure the rough seas had been stirred up by something going on off shore someplace. Needless to say we were very disappointed that we didn't get to snorkel this highly touted reef, but there will be another day!
We returned to the marina, had lunch and then lounged around on floaties of various kinds, off the back of our boat, for the balance of the afternoon, until it was time to move the party to the Tiki Hut.
Tomorrow it's back to civilization for a few days. We fly back to Houston and I, on to Albuqurque for the almost annual Dormer Cup golf tournament and Diane on to some decadent spa in the Texas Hill Country with her girl-friends. We'll return to the boat in a week
Life is good and fun in the Keys
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