Key West

Saturday, July 2 - We watched the snorkel boat go out this morning and stop in front of our campsite, we assume for their safety instructions, but then it turned around and came back in.  It was pretty choppy out there, no fun to snorkel when it's choppy, plus it was pretty cloudy, so they cancelled the snorkeling.
John called to check on us this morning.  They were mowing, house cleaning and working on their presentations for the conference this week, so we were lucky to be away from all that work.  We were sorry they were unable to join us down here, but they are very busy people.  He did tell us, though, that he thinks his dad has started a new trend with the flying crab in Texas.  John said they were driving on the freeway, and a "flying mouse" hit their windshield (and smeared all over it).  There were no trees around, so unless it fell out of a birds mouth, it just have been flying.  Something else for me to have the camera ready for, I guess.

We drove around the state park a little before we packed up this morning.  Over past where they were fishing last night, we found a bay (this on on the Gulf side) where we could see lots of fish around a coral shelf -- but no swimming or snorkeling here.

We drove back past the beach where we swam yesterday, and at high tide, it was a little more inviting, but it was still weedy.  Joe did find a conch shell when were out here yesterday (it's illegal to remove anything form the park, so we couldn't take it with us).  There were several people out in the water this morning, but when it started to sprinkle (and lightning), they all headed in.  Yesterday, Joe swears he saw a naked woman in the parking lot, changing out of her swimsuit.  When I looked, I could she had on see ivory-colored underwear, and a top of some kind, so I don't know if he actually saw her before she got her underwear on, or it was wishful thinking on his part. But women don't usually have underwear on beneath their bikini, so I'm assuming he was right.  Made his day, anyway.

Part of this beach area is roped off for nesting turtles.  We had hoped to see some but were told they usually come up on the beach about 3:00 or 4:00 a.m., and we didn't make that sighting.

We saw a little whirlwind out in the water, like an Arizona dust devil, only over the ocean.  It disintegrated when it hit land. 

We went back to camp, packed up and hooked up, and continued on our way, leaving this very nice state park.

The drive on down to Key West was just a series of channels and keys, each key had a channel on each side of it as a waterway to the Atlantic, with bridges over the channel.  Some of these bridges were just short spans, but coming out of Marathon we went over the "7-mile bridge."  All along this route, we could see the water was very shallow, and mangrove islands dotted both sides of the road.  For some reason, I thought there was only seven keys, but there are many more than that the the highway crosses, and there are islands all along the way.  There's even a "Cudjoe Key" (figures that Joe would have a key named for him).  We saw one island for sale. 

We saw an osprey as we were driving yesterday, but only a dead key deer today.  It rained on us on our way, lightly, but we got to our campsite about 1:00 --about 35 miles driven today.   Our campground, which we thought was on Key West, was actually about 5 miles before that on Geiger Key, but we found it easily enough.  Not sure how we will get out of here, but we pulled into a very nice spot, right on the channel, and we could fish, swim or snorkel right from the RV.  We even have our own little tiki hut.

This is the view out the front windshield (you can see some of the traveling zoo).  Unfortunately, the boat was not included in our rental price.  We sit here and watch boats come in and out, and a few swimmers, fishermen, and snorkelers go by every once in a while. 

And we had a visit from another iguana.  After we saw the first one, at Bahia Honda, we learned from Dr. John that the iguanas are an invasive species here (thought to be from Cuba, according to our current campground host), and they are trying to destroy all of them, so Joe missed an opportunity to get out his gun (I can't imagine what all trouble that would have brought!).  This one was smaller than the first one we saw, and he jumped into the water when Joe got too close with the camera.

After settling in, we drove into Key West, finally.

We decided to check out the beaches, and the first one we came to was Smathers Beach, a public beach on the Atlantic side.

But like the ones at Bahia Honda, it was another shallow, weedy area, not very inviting.  We have learned that the Keys really don't have any good beaches, because the shores are protected from erosion by the coral reef that runs parallel to the Keys, and the beaches are not naturally sandy. Most of Key West's beaches are fortified with sand that is brought in from elsewhere, but they are very shallow, and there are lots of seagrass growth on them, so it's hard to find turquoise, clear water to swim in. Having just left behind the Sarasota beaches, some of the best in the world, it's hard to get excited about getting in the water down here.  We are going to check out the Fort Zachary Taylor State Park and Beach tomorrow, which was recommended by our camp host.

We drove around to the Southernmost Point in the U.S., 90 miles from Cuba.  There was a line for picture taking, but I did get a picture. I might have to find a small replica of this as a souvenir -- it's pretty cool that we are here.

 Next, we worked our way over to the Gulf side and found the harbor.  We walked amongst the boats here, but it was hot and crowded, and we only had one hour on our parking meter, so we didn't hang around too long.

We did see some large (probably 4 foot) tarpon in the water here -- they hang around the fish cleaning station.  Parking is a problem down here -- actually, driving is a problem down here.  It's a bit like the French Quarter in New Orleans -- most of the streets are very narrow, with parking on both sides, they dead-end into the ocean, and some are one-way.  Pedestrian traffic is heavy, and the people driving (including us) don't know where they are going.  And parking lots charge $15-$20.  We'll have to brave this again to go watch the sunset at Mallory Square, but not today.  It actually was cloudy this evening, so I'm not sure there will be a view of the sunset anyway.

We pulled into a carwash, which we couldn't get to work, but there were a couple of chickens hanging out here.  We have seen a few of these around.

We found a place to have dinner (TGI Fridays, I wasn't very brave) and headed back to camp, but decided to drive on past our turnoff to go to the end of Geiger Key. There is a Naval Air Station right beside us, and the "dry" side of this road was fenced off and marked off as "U.S. property. "  After some housing, the road ended in a dead-end, of course, but we drove to the end and turned around.    This next is just hard to explain.  When we turned around, we saw this guy.  Right on the road.

Joe thinks he is training for Al-Queda.  He had his exercise mat out, and was going at it.  We tried not to be too obvious, but it was certainly an unusual sight.  Fortunately, we spotted a brown marsh rabbit across the road from him, so that gave us an excuse to be taking pictures.  I think we saw 3 of these rabbits on this drive.

Finally, we headed back to the RV to watch the NASCAR race.  Joe hooked up our little TV that Stacey gave us, and we sat on the brick sidewalk right beside the water and watched the race.  We had seen a mosquito-spraying truck on the highway (Thank God!) so we were ok for a while, but once the sun went down, we started getting buzzed by them (while Joe was getting buzzed by beer as well). 

That was our day.  A pretty full one for an old retired couple like us.