The
not so good night sleep helped us to be up and ready to go down the road without
even brushing our teeth. We were ready to get away from the mosquitoes.
Goodbye Everglades. Maybe a trip back here some wintertime! The clouds looked pretty dark and scary. Time to get going.
Our destination today takes us to the little chain of islands down at the tip
of Florida: The Florida Keys. These are a serious of islands
connected to the mainland and to one another by a serious of 45 bridges. Some
a short, and one is seven miles long. We decided that we should stop for
breakfast in Key Largo. Patti just thought that breakfast in Key Largo
sounded quite sophisticated. We drove through pouring rain, and found ourselves
a perfect little coffee shop on Key Largo. There, we ate a very hearty breakfast,
chatted with the lovely waitress and met a guy who runs the Internet's largest
website for divers. We were entertained by many stories he had to tell
about the diving community.
We drove through quite a bit of rain over the next 100 miles, including
sometimes so heavy we could hardly see the road. So no real stopping to see the sites. Mostly, let's get through this storm without being blown off of
the bridge.
We arrived at our destination at the end of the islands a little before new. Key West. Again, how sophisticated did that sound? Our hotel was in a great location, and even though our room wasn’t quite ready for us yet, we parked the car and headed off to begin our exploration.
Key West has a terrific lighthouse and we went over for a tour. The area
around the Keys has many reefs and hundreds of ships have crashed there throughout
history, so a lighthouse was critical. One was built, taken out by a hurricane
and replaced with a new one. 
This one ended up with a woman lighthouse
keeper for 30 years. She only stopped being the keeper at age 80 when
there were rumors during he Civil War that she had Southern affections (which
was true) and so she was forcibly removed from her post. Here granddaughter
was later also the lighthouse keeper. We really enjoyed the museum,
knowing we will see may more lighthouses as we travel up the East Coast of the
US.
We had lunch at The Six Toed Cat. A little restaurant across the street
from Ernest Hemmingway’s house. At his home, there are nearly 40 cats,
about half of which are polydactyl or six-toes.
The Hemmingway house had a huge line of people standing in the rain to go inside. We found out that here were two cruise ships in town, dumping nearly 6000 tourists here for the afternoon. Tomorrow, no ships. We'll try Hemmingway then.
Next we were to the Audubon House and gardens. This is really misnamed, because
Audubon visited this home and did some of his bird drawings on Key West.
The upstairs of the house had many of his lithographs and they were exquisite.
We enjoyed taking photos, especially as the sun came back out.
Upon recommendation of the guide at Audubon, we went across the street to The
Custom House Key West Museum and saw some great exhibits about the history of
Key West. Dick had a surprise that one of the exhibits was of cartoons by
Mike Peters who originally drew political cartoons for the newspaper in Dayton
OH and helped with a fundraisers for the nonprofit that Dick was the director
for 30 years go. It was so fun to see his work on display. Peters
spends couple months each year in Key West and is part of that community.
We arrived at our destination at the end of the islands a little before new. Key West. Again, how sophisticated did that sound? Our hotel was in a great location, and even though our room wasn’t quite ready for us yet, we parked the car and headed off to begin our exploration.
This one ended up with a woman lighthouse
keeper for 30 years. She only stopped being the keeper at age 80 when
there were rumors during he Civil War that she had Southern affections (which
was true) and so she was forcibly removed from her post. Here granddaughter
was later also the lighthouse keeper. We really enjoyed the museum,
knowing we will see may more lighthouses as we travel up the East Coast of the
US.The Hemmingway house had a huge line of people standing in the rain to go inside. We found out that here were two cruise ships in town, dumping nearly 6000 tourists here for the afternoon. Tomorrow, no ships. We'll try Hemmingway then.
Next we were to the Audubon House and gardens. This is really misnamed, because
Audubon visited this home and did some of his bird drawings on Key West.
The upstairs of the house had many of his lithographs and they were exquisite.
We enjoyed taking photos, especially as the sun came back out.
Back at the hotel, we took advantage of settling in a for a couple of days to do laundry and go swimming. We also worked on changing a couple of nights of our camping plan to stay in hotels in the worst mosquito areas. Oh well.
Tomorrow ready to explore more of Key West.
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