FLORIDA
OCTOBER 2006
HAPPY BIRTHDAY LISA!
Lisa just turned 40 years old (lordy, lordy, look who's forty) :-)
I wanted to do something special for her big birthday, but I'm not much of a party planner. Then I remembered we wanted to go to Key West for some time. Luck would have it, I had enough frequent flier miles, so the birthday trip came to life.
I figured Key West would be warmer than home, but hallelujah, it was wonderful. The morning we left home, it was around freezing. When we arrived in Key West, it was in the mid 80s. We also learned there was a big snow storm in New York, which made this vacation all the more enjoyable. We had an option of flying to Miami and then driving down through the Keys. However, that's a four hour drive and with frequent fliers miles, it made more sense to fly right to our island. In Miami, we caught a small propeller plane and started our wonderful vacation. After picking up a rental car and checking into our hotel, we caught the free hotel shuttle into historic downtown Key West.
As soon as we got off the shuttle, we hit a big seafood restaurant and had a beer (or two). Then we made our way to Sloppy Joes. I had some conch fritters and a sloppy joe (seemed appropriate). The entertainment at this place was pretty amusing. After dinner, we went to Mallory Square where every evening is a big spectacle of people and performers who wait for the beautiful sunset (see above). As this was enjoyable, we did this almost every evening.
Our hotel offered a bar crawl as an excursion. This is not our type of activity, but what the heck. It was only $35 and included a free drink at five bars, plus a free T-shirt.
The forecast for our visit was thunderstorms almost every day. After our rained out Bermuda vacation, we were extremely happy to have nice weather in Key West. In fact, we never got rained on once!
One funny thing when you arrive in Key West is the airport because in big letters it says "Welcome to the Conch Republic." This confused me, but I later found an explanation. In the 1980s, the drug problem from Latin America became really bad in Key West. To combat it, the police blocked the only road into/out of Key West and searched all vehicles. This really hurt tourism and therefore Key West. The Mayor decided to combat the problem, so Key West declared they were seceding from the United States. They brought up a U.S. soldier, slapped him, and then surrendered. I heard Key West even requested war reparations from the United Nations. As it turns out, it was all a big publicity scam, but with a message. Key West wanted the government to know that they are U.S. citizens and expect to be treated as such. Kind of a funny story, don't you think?
The next morning, we got in our rental car and drove up towards Miami. After seeing the beautiful bridges in the movie True Lies, I wanted to see them in person. We didn't drive all the way to Miami, but went about 50 miles to the Seven Mile Bridge and Marathon Island. Above is a picture of me with part of the old roadway in the background.
Instead of just turning around at Marathon, we stopped at Crane Point Hammock Park. Above is Brad inspecting a live bee hive encased in glass. Bees flew into and out of the hive through a tube near the top of the glass.
We took a nature walk around the park. Sure is hot and humid!
Lisa on the nature walk
Check out this green lizard we found in a tree
There were spiders all over this walk, which was creepy. Mostly we saw these gigantic spiders above and little black spiders with red triangles on them. Since there weren't a lot of people at the park to keep the trails cleared of spider webs, there were quite a few of them over the pathways. We had to be careful not to walk into them and end up with one of these guys on us.
Hey, this turtle is red.
One of the things this park does is recover wounded birds. I think the bird above is an Osprey with a torn wing. You can't tell from this photo, but the bird is standing in a shower. It just stood in the raining water as if it were enjoying it. We were amused by this. A woman who works there said the bird showers every day. Apparently one of the rescue woman who works here is quasi-famous from the Animal Planet, but I never heard of her.
These big guys are fighting over that apple core
Lisa taking a break in the shade
We stopped at a seafood restaurant in Marathon for lunch. This was my first of three times having Key Lime pie :-)
Continue with Key West
