Sonya's Blog - Day 208 - We Explore Key West

Sonya’s Blog - Day 208 - January 16th - We Explore Key West

Today was going to be sunny and 25, so the plan was to head to Key West. This is the southern most point of the Continental United States, only 90 miles from Cuba. It was about an hour and 20 minute drive from where we are camping.

The Turtle Hospital, with the ambulance in the background:

Sign for the famous Seven Mile Bridge:

The Keys are beautiful. The drive was very scenic and the water is such a pretty colour around here, just amazing. The drive was very scenic and traffic wasn’t too bad. It was backed up a little bit on Big Pine Key due to a massive Farmer’s Market, but it was nothing major. Big Pine Key has the National Deer Key Refuge. This refuge was established to protect the Key Deer, which is a sub-species of the White Tailed deer and is endangered. They are endemic to the Florida Keys and the current population sits at about 800. This is the smallest of the North American Deer. The Refuge is quite large, covering 8500 acres or so.

The Saddle Bunch Keys are really neat as well. They are a series of Mangrove (Mangroves are very cool trees) Islands that are scattered between Lower Sugarloaf Key and Shark Key. The water seemed very shallow here and I saw quite a few people putting their kayaks in the water. What a great location to do that, as the wilderness is in the water. Pretty cool.

When we arrived in Key West we headed towards Duvall Street, which is a street that runs from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean. We found a great little parking lot that was only 1/2 block from Duvall and set out to walk along the street. It is all shops and restaurants and if you follow it all the way to the Atlantic Ocean, the Southern most point is just off of Duvall Street. We wandered down and decided to stop in a nice cafe for some drinks. They were the first one that had a patio area and they allowed us to have Kizmet there with us. Blake and I looked at our spreadsheet and map to start planning our trip after New Orleans. We are going to Galveston, Texas after New Orleans and it is right on the Gulf of Mexico. It is also not far from Houston, but I don’t know if we will make it into Houston. I would rather see other parts of Texas. After Galveston we are heading to San Antonio and then to New Mexico. We have changed our schedule around a tiny bit, but nothing too major.

When we were done at the cafe we walked down towards the water. We walked down to the pier and had a look around. There is a cafe right on the water, called the Southernmost Beach Cafe, or something like that. They have a pretty sweet set-up with beach chairs and sand and beautiful water. We could not take Kizmet in there, but this interesting gentleman was allowed in. When he wasn’t in the water he had a tutu on, that’s what covered up all the things that are not normally shown. When he was in the water, he did not have his tutu on and well, everything was showing. Awkward!!!

We got a picture on the end of the pier, so this is the Atlantic side:

This is a picture of me with the Southernmost House:

We then walked down South Street to get a picture at the Southernmost Point. There was a little souvenir shop, so Natasha went in there to see if they had any cool keychains. I went with her, while Isaac Blake and Kizmet walked down the block to see the buoy at the Southernmost Point. They did not realize that there was a huge line-up of people waiting to get their picture with the buoy and Isaac ran up and got his picture. Seriously, they are not very observant. I saw the line right away, but they already had their picture by that point:

When I look at the map, this does not seem like the Southernmost point, but what do I know.

We then walked back to the truck and grabbed our lunch and continued the other way down Duvall Street towards the Gulf of Mexico. There is a square down there, where the cruise ships dock, that I thought we could eat our lunch in. The water is so beautiful on this side, take a look:

We found a place to perch and ate our lunch. We then walked through Mallory Square and checked out the sites. It was set up like a market and historical area, probably because of all the cruise ship traffic that pours through there. We liked the Sculpture Garden of famous people that visited or lived in Key West. Blake got a pic with Ernest Hemingway, who had a house in Key West. It is the most visited place in Key West, but we didn’t go see it (not a huge fan of his work, well I only tried one and couldn’t make it through so didn’t try any others). Blake did get a picture with his statue:

We then walked over to Sunset Pier and sat down to get some drinks. They had a live band that sounded pretty good when we had first walked by. The band was still playing so we gave it a shot. We all ordered drinks and small starters to share. The band was really good, they did all sorts of genres and seemed to be having fun up there. We had fun listening to them and enjoying our drinks and food. They were from Buffalo, New York, but had moved down to Key West to play their music (Blake went and chatted with them when they were done their set).

When they were finished we paid our bill and headed back to the truck. Clouds were starting to roll in and they looked like rain clouds, so we wanted to be heading back. We took a different street, one block over for a change of pace, for a few blocks on the way back. We saw this cool tree:

Here is something you may not know about Key West, there are a lot of chickens and roosters roaming around. They are everywhere, just hanging out and cockle doodle dooing and chicken walking. We even saw a bit of a fight in the Sculpture Garden. Nothing major, one just got too close to the other one. It reminded us of Cuba, there were lots of chickens and roosters roaming around there as well. This picture is of Kizmet getting in trouble for trying to chase one and nearly pulling off Blake’s arm. The rooster is over by Natasha:

Once we were back in the car, we were back on the Overseas Highway in less than 5 minutes and heading out of town. It was good timing on our part, because it started to rain about 10 minutes into our drive and continued on and off for the whole way home.

Once back at the RV we got some supper together and then sat down to watch The Shawshank Redemption. Such a good movie.

Sonya