Florida Keys, Day 4, really

Since Maria's friends left the night before, right after we had dinner, we really had no plan at all for the day. We had just figured there was bound to be something to do, and it seemed a waste to spend new year's eve driving home all day, so we went back to the guidebook.

Bahia Honda, for the win! We tried pretty aimlessly to find a place to eat breakfast, only to end up with McDonald's, since no breakfast places on Big Pine Key were open (3 had actually shut down recently, according to the crazy local guy who'd been living on his boat for 30 years).

So we tried to find some key deer since we were there. It was too hot, so we only saw one, hiding in the shade.





Then it was on to Bahia Honda State Park. If you read the earlier parts, I had said that we'd be standing on that section of bridge later. This is where that bridge was. This is a section of Flagler's railway that didn't need use for trains anymore, as they never rebuilt the railway after the 1935 hurricane. So they used it for the Overseas Highway. This bridge was so narrow, that passengers had to be told to keep their hands inside to avoid hitting the trusses. Not wide enough for 2 car lanes...so they built the road on top of the friggin' train trusses...the VERY TOP!









Now I'm sorry, but can I get a "HELL NO!!" to driving over the top of those rusty-ass steel train trusses put there almost a hundred years ago? THANK YOU for the new road!

Absolutely spectacular view from up here, though!







It's hard to see in the picture below, but there is a shark in the water, just above and parallel to the shadow of the bridge. The water here was a bit clouded today with some weather coming or something. Not only did we watch him swimming around for a bit, but about 30 feet to the left of that little breakwater wall sticking out to separate the lagoon from the channel, he TWICE jumped completely out of the water like those damn crazy Great Whites do in South Africa!?!?! We were like WTF?!?!? I know damn well it was no dolphin, and am 100% sure it was a shark, and that sumbitch breached the surface TWICE inside of 5 minutes. Not just poke his dorsal fin out of the water, but jumped, whole body out of the water about a foot, jumped!

It was amazing to see.



Then we saw a Spotted Ray swim toward us and out under the bridge. You see it real good when he was in the shadow.












So I decide to go snorkeling over in that lagoon down there. I went as far as the breakwater, but I still couldn't see too good in that water, and I knew there were sharks in the water, and the jellyfish were everywhere, too. So I didn't go out past the swim bouys or anything dumb(er) like that.









Then it was time to get gas and head back to the campground to clean up before going to Key West for New Year's Eve!



We had a Cheeseburger on the balcony overlooking Duvall Street as the sun was setting. The crowds were just starting to come out. Our waitress told us all the places to be, but it was still very early.





Since there was hardly anyone out yet, we decided to walk to the South end of Duvall, as we hadn't been there, yet. There was not much going on, so we walked over to the Southernmost marker again...just because I could see it a block away, so why not?!





They were practicing the lowering of the slipper (with a transvestite in it) with the CNN camera crew in front of the Bourbon Street Bar.



Walked back up to the North end of Duvall (hey, the island is only 2 miles x 4 miles LOL), saw where the original Sloppy Joe's was, a half a block from it's current location. Legend has it the owner told his customers to grab their stools one night, as they were moving, and they walked to the new place, over a rent increase dispute. Now it's Captain Tony's. According to Pirate John's guide (which I got the info about the barstools from!), Captain Tony is an interesting character in his own right! I must go back...too much to see!



Walked around a bit in the darker corners, and found a lot more cool stuff to check out. It was all closed, but even more reason to go back.





And on the back of the obelisk:



We went back over to the harbor to see the lit up boats. There were a LOT of VERY expensive yachts in town. By expensive, I mean multi-million dollar yachts that cost more than every house you've ever owned combined, expensive. They apparently lower a wench at this party.





We had more Key Lime pie to kill time until it was close to midnight, then we decided we'd be at Sloppy Joe's to watch the dropping of the Conch at midnight. Caught a few sets of beads for Maria, got a champagne overspray, but otherwise it was a good time to be able to say we'd done it. Neither of us likes crowds, and I don't even drink, but it was fun to say we'd done it once. And now I never have to do that crap again :-)













We had been finding good parking everywhere we went, and never paid for parking. This was no different, and we got out of town pretty quickly, despite the crowds.

The next day, we woke up to 2008 to break camp finally, and head out of town...The sky was beautiful as we got up early. We drove out of town, and off the keys, only stopping to gas up or go to the restroom. Weather was turning, as that cold front that had been threatening us down here finally decided to turn toward us. It rained on us as Maria took over the driving (first time she'd driven the truck), but we didn't care, as vacation was over...and we like the rain. When we saw the Skyway bridge, we knew we were close.

Just another beautiful day in paradise...

Florida Keys, Day 2

I try to break these up, as I type fast, and have a tendency to include a ton of pictures (I love the digital age!!), but they get long. Oh well, if it's too much to read, then don't. If the pictures bog down your computer, get a better setup :-)

Since we got to our campsite late, we found it in the dark. Turned out it wasn't TOO bad, so the tent stayed there the whole 4 nights. Maria's friends were going to join us sometime later tonight, after they drove out from their campout in the Everglades. So we had the day to ourselves, and no plan at all.

We went straight to Key West. I knew we had to go to the silly Southernmost Point marker. It's not actually even the southernmost point on Key West, but it is a must-do, of course. A few people were there, so we got someone to take our pic, as well as returning the favor. We were told that we picked a good time to go there, as the couple who told us that said the line goes around the block during the later part of the day. Good Mojo, indeed.



So then we were concerned about parking, as we kept seeing signs all over for parking anywhere from 20-40 bucks. I found the restaurant I wanted to go to (from Pirate John's Guide, of course), and found a spot a street or two away in the residential Ghetto-like area, that was neither metered, nor marked as residential or permitted only. Ended up leaving it there all day. Yay for cheap Mojo!

So we walked the 2 blocks to "My Blue Heaven". As most things in Key West seem to be associated somehow with either Jimmy Buffett or Ernest Hemingway, this ramshackle little outdoor dining courtyard of a restaurant stakes it's local fame on the fact that Hemingway used to referee boxing matches here. His house is about 50 yards away, and I know he was a boxer himself, so I have no doubt that's true. They have several bits of memorabilia, particularly in the gift shop. The wait was about 20 minutes, but it was fun to check out all the parts of the building, and try to figure out what might come crashing down at any time.





I've never eaten anywhere that had chickens and roosters walking around between the tables, though. Everything is done differently in Key West...But the Shrimp omelette was delicious!!






After breakfast, we headed over to the Hemingway home. He lived there for a buncha years, wrote a bunch of his books there, his ex-wife stayed there (one of the 4) after they were divorced, when he finally died, his sons sold it to the lady that made it a museum. Go there, take the tour...I didn't remember all the facts. It is worth it, and you are free to walk around wherever you want as long as you want whether you take the tour or not.



Something like 47 of the 6-toed cats Hemingway kept (descendants of his, obviously).



His writing studio is a separate building on the property.


Me lounging by the pool with one of the cats, posting a picture on So-calsportbikes.com.



The local story claims that the pool was put in by the wife while Hemingway was elsewhere. He saw it when he got back, she said it had cost somewhere like 20k to build. He thought it was dumb, since the house had cost considerably less than that. He said, "here, take my last penny" and tossed her one, claiming it was now his last cent, since she'd spent so much. She pressed it into the cement, which was still wet. The penny is a 1934. Probably not entirely true, but it's a cute story, so who cares?





Legend has it that Picasso designed the tiles of this ugly bathroom. Hemingway was friends with him, so it wouldn't be too far-fetched.



This is a watering hole for the cats. Hemingway's favorite bar, Sloppy Joe's, was remodeling. He thought one of the urinals they were throwing out would make a good trough for his cats if you laid it flat. The wife he lived with in this house was mortified (she was the editor of Vogue Paris when they married). So she had it all tiled like that, and had the big vase (Spanish Olive oil jar??) to pretty it up.



The house has been there since it was built in 1851. It was built by Asa Tift, who was the biggest dude in Key West back when Key West was the biggest city in Florida. More on him in a second. The walls are 18inches thick of limestone mined off the site the house sits on. It is also on the 2nd highest point on the island (at a whopping 18' elevation...they actually called it a "hill" :-), so it has never been destroyed or flooded by any of the myriad hurricanes that it has experienced.

Here's a chunk for reference:



The lighthouse across the street is open for self-guided tours, and worth it. I have always liked lighthouses. Probably because I had never really seen one except in movies. But it was fun to climb to the top of the spiral staircase and try not to throw up, lose my balance or pass out and tumble to my painful death below. Definitely the best view on the island, being the highest.





Now if you are actually bothering to read any of this little tour, you'll recall I mentioned a Mr. Asa Tift, having built the Hemingway House. Well as I said, Key West used to be the largest city in Florida (being only 2x4 miles in size, that's interesting). Now it was the largest city in Florida because of the main industry at the time. It was a port city, being the closest point of the U.S. to Cuba and the rest of the Carribean, so obviously a lot of ships came through that way. Many merchant ships filled to the gills with the treasures and goods of the Americas back to Europe.

The waters around the Keys and Dry Tortugas were very shallow and many a reef was lurking just beneath the surface of the water. This made navigating in and around the island waters very treacherous. Lighthouses were very important navigational aids to these valuable merchant ships.

The biggest industry of Key West at this time was Salvage. Yes, if you were unfortunate enough to run your ship aground onto a sandbar or reef in these shallow waters, a salvage company could be hired to come recover the goods of your wallowing ship, and transfer it back to their warehouses on the Keys. Their payment was a percentage of the loot saved. Oftentimes, extra goods were known to simply disappear, of course. But it was a very lucrative business. Asa Tift was the man who owned the salvage companies.

Remember how I said the lighthouses were important to the ships? This one was actually the 2nd version built on Key West. It was put on it's highest hill (18' elevation), and even had to be extended 20' higher because buildings around Key West were getting bigger (business was GOOD).

Remember also how Asa Tift built his sturdy home on the highest hill in Key West? It is across the street from the lighthouse. The lighthouses helped ships from running aground, yet ships running aground was the biggest business of the island. It wasn't unusual for the biggest ships that did run aground to claim that the lighthouses were turned off. Turning off the lighthouse when certain high-dollar vessels were coming in would make for big money. Good thing it's right across the street from the only person who stands to gain from a ship not being helped by the lighthouse...







Sloppy Joe's is still there, and likely the most popular bar on the Island. Pirate John says on any given day there are 185 of them, so to be there since the 30's and still the best is something, I guess. Getting ready for New Year's.



Over to watch the sunset festival that happens every night. Maria's friends got there, and met us there as the sun was going down.





We then went over to the Conch Republic Seafood Company, as I learned in the guide that this door is Shrimpboat Sound Studios, Jimmy Buffett’s recording studio. And interestingly enough, where we had to be at 7:30am to catch the boat parked right next to that to go to the Dry Tortugas!!





We just walked by this window, and these were set up like this...we didn't do it!