Boca Chica Beach

It wasn't too terribly long ago I was down at Boca Chica Beach at dawn taking pictures of the Bonneville and getting eaten alive by mosquitoes. This recent cold front put the mossies to bed and made the beach safe for humans for a short while. That and the fact I covered myself in poison to keep them away maybe. I took advantage to pay a daytime visit to the beach and go for a walk.Boca Chica (small mouth in Spanish) is actually a large island, large enough to hold a Naval Air Station and a good bit of land beyond that. Its southernmost coastline is open to the public and makes for a pleasant recreational area for those so inclined. To get to the beach one turns south at the Shell gas station on Big Coppitt Key, near Mile Marker 10. The road to the beach is several miles long and passes through Tamarac Park, a sub division on Geiger Key, before dead ending at the cement barriers in the photograph above. Beyond the barricade lies the rest of the roadway:This was all open to cars in 2005, with a line of small trees throwing shade across the two lane roadway. Hurricane Wilma put paid to the greenery and washed out part of the roadway, that which is left is being overrun by vines, and there is little more than a footpath to show the way to the back country. The beach itself isn't much to write home about if you expect a beach to have sand, and lots of it.

This place is more like a seaweed factory:Which helps to give the waters their unusually tannin brown complexion. All very unsavory, especially when you consider the waters aren't even very deep. You can wade out a quarter of a mile and still not drown, assuming a wader of average height. So why come to this cruddy beach at all? Well, these are the keys and if you want decent sand beaches you'll have to go elsewhere, like Sarasota...but locals come to Boca Chica because the views are pretty enough:And there is still a stretch of roadway with vegetation:And a picnic table to contemplate the joy of it all:I used to walk my dog here and after she grew old and died I was reluctant to come back, as I had too many memories of Emma stumping along and throwing herself in the water to cool off. I wasn't ready to do the same but the water beyond the seaweed looked inviting. These days Monroe County is busy sticking up signs along the beach advising free range dogs are no longer allowed. I was glad to see one couple,and their small dog, ignoring the strictures to no one's apparent detriment:It really is a pleasant spot for a picnic if one felt so inclined, or to watch passing boats:I felt inclined to walk especially as I was a bit short of time- my wife expected me to be home when she got there. I got walking down the roadway. Two youngsters on skateboards ignored me completely, so engrossed in their private dramas were they:Then a young mother approached pushing her offspring. I felt like I was in a busy city park:I don't think the pavement lasted half a mile before it ended in the spot where, pre-Wilma, cars had to turn around and the dirt track begins:The path follows the old roadway more or less, which at this point is washed out on one side and runs close alongside the boundary fence of the Naval Air Station on the other. The path meanders for a while and then rejoins the paved segment of the road further along. Some people bring bicycles, and I have cycled this place in the past. The roadway ends at the remnants of a wooden bridge that is gone leaving a rather large crevasse as the final obstacle. I may be wrong but I seem to think that traffic into Key West came this way in the old days before the new Highway was built in 1982. These days this area sees other kinds of travelers landing:This hovel craft looks like a Cuban escape raft, one of the more sophisticated efforts, showing signs of an inboard engine removed, and flotation jackets still alongside the hull, which is metal sheathed in fiberglass. USCG Okay is painted in white spray on the side of the boat, presumably to show it had been checked, but the cost of removal of dead boats is prohibitive so I suppose it will stay here ignominiously destined to become a garbage scow, a process already underway. I have to admire people who would put to sea in a craft like this to take on the mighty Gulf Stream. I arrived in the U S courtesy of Boeing Corporation, a much saner way to travel. Talking of rubbish, someone took it upon themselves to decorate the Navy's fence with footwear flotsam:The fence actually runs out at one point and turns inland cutting across the mangroves towards the Navy's traffic control tower :These areas of Boca Chica beach open up to lots of little coves along the water, several notorious as gay nude (nude gay?) hang outs. Also young people like to gather and be uncomfortable around camp fires and the like. I met a few loaded with supplies headed out towards a rather loud gathering along the beach:They had their faces painted white like Japanese Kabuki performers which gave them a grotesque ethereal air. Sprites on their way to a piss up. Which rather made me feel glad to be old and en route to a proper dinner with a proper wife in a comfortable home. I took the opposite path to Oberon and his fairies...So I'm not going to deny the onset of middle age or anything but while the youth were getting drunk and even louder I was finding my lost youth with the help of two wheels and sixty horsepower:Quite the best way to arrive at Boca Chica beach. And to leave also, in a cloud of mosquito repellent and exhaust.