Key West

Marathon Harbor, N24 42W81 05

Today we took the bus to Key West to spend the day as tourists. I really didn’t want to bring Tarwathie down there but it the bus only cost $3 so why not?

It’s about a 45 mile long trip from Marathon to Key West. We were surprised at how many sunken and/or high-and-dry boats we saw on the way. We even saw a big Casino boat up on the hard about a half mile from shore. In Key West we saw dozens more boats driven up on shore. All this is the remnants of Hurricane Wilma that passed through here in October. The storm surge must have been 2-3 meters high.

We also saw an RV campground that looked terrible. (See The Picture) The RVs were densely packed with only dusty ground between them. Retired people living in RVs are kindred spirits to Libby and I. In this case though it looks like the land cruisers fare much worse than the sea cruisers.

We got there around 10 AM and walked around the harbor. It sure is a crowded place, full of people and boats.

It was charming though to see how fearless the fish are in the harbor. There are lots of medium and large fish swimming near the sidewalk. The tourists throw fish food at them. There were even big Tarpons. See the picture.

After a very nice lunch of raw oysters (see the picture) we continued our tour. There was a great shop full of sea shells of all kinds, including conch shells ready for honking. We would have bought some but soon we hope to be in exotic places where we can pick up our own. We can even eat the creatures before taking their shells.

We skipped the museum where the show the pirate treasure recovered by the famous Mel Fisher, but we did go to the museum store where they sell pieces of actual treasure.

We also walked around the so-called Little White House and the surrounding area called the Truman Annex. The Little White House was used as a vacation retreat and office by Presidents Truman, Eisenhour, Kennedy, Carter, and Clinton, and before that it was the residence of Thomas Edison. The neighborhood surrounding the Little White House is very charming, and all the houses look like they must be worth millions of dollars, and are all in 19th century styles. Oddly, only three of about 100 houses we looked at showed signs of anyone being home. It seems to be the norm here in Florida that the more people pay for a place to stay, the less time they stay there. Go figure.

Jenny had told us to watch for the homeless, the kooks and the characters, for which Key West is famous. There was little evidence of them today. We just saw endless thousands of tourists. Perhaps if we were out on the streets of Key West late at night, we might encounter different types of people. That’s way past our bedtime though.

We returned to Tarwathie in time for supper. It was a very good day. Libby is feeling very smug about a major purchase she made. I’ll not divulge the secret.

On other fronts. This week I got our email working from the SSB radio on the boat. That means I’ll be able to report positions and to post blogs while at sea and while located in exotic remote countries. That is for the benefit of all you beloved blog readers. I also managed to sell all of our charts and many of the cruising guides that we wont be needing until we come back to the Atlantic. I don’t want to carry them around the world with us. We’ll try to buy charts in small increments, one or two destinations in advance. Financially, we did OK, recovering at least half of the money we paid to buy the charts. I also find that the HP printer/copier that we bought a few weeks back can make copies of other people’s charts. That may help a lot in keeping our chart budget lower than I feared.