The speed limit is a sedate thirty not observed from what I could see by local residents, and a quick squirt of the gas showed the road is smooth and wide enough to take these series of s-bends at twice the legal limit quite easily. One takes one's motorcycling fun where one finds it in the Lower Keys. Little Torch ain't quite Manhattan but it apparently has pretensions:
The right fork of the main road runs out soon enough, and ends with the inevitable view of the water, wedged tightly between mangroves:
Little Torch Key, like Middle Torch and Big Torch, is named for an undistinguished looking tree that apparently burns like a ...torch when it is ignited. I have no idea what torch wood looks like, nor have I ever seen anyone wandering the back roads of the Lower keys holding aloft a burning spar, so I am forced to believe this piece of folklore is about vanished from the real world in which most of us here live. On the other hand there are things to be seen on Little Torch that come as a welcome surprise to the world weary traveler. Take mobile homes for example and this island is littered with them. many are winter homes shuttered up for the summer and protected by severe sounding notices:
Posted indeed. This next one appears to be appealing to Neptune for coverage in uncertain times:
It would have been nice had I noticed the lens was still a bit fogged from recent captivity in air conditioning but I'm trying not to sweat the small stuff. I am trying to remember to allow more open air time for the camera after each spell indoors. I also came across a mobile home that was decorated in a style I have never previously seen, all stuccoed and everything:
And I also found a swimming canal similar in all respects to the one I photographed in Geiger Key last week. This canal had a cute little floating platform in the middle. That was a first:
And similarly here I also came across a coral rock wall, this time protecting a waterfront Tiki hut. We know how to live well in the Keys, it would seem:
Keys Energy, the public utility is doing it's bit, planting brand new cement poles up and down the islands, leaving the old wooden poles to carry just cable and phone lines. They put them in on my street too, and I've read grumbles from people who think they are more likely to snap in a hurricane. Some people just need to bitch about everything:
It was a bight sunny afternoon yesterday, with a high near 90 degrees and a deep blue sky that made me feel good to be out under it, puttering around on my Bonneville.
I thought this old Jeep by the side of the road looked evocative of an earlier time in the Keys when people had a tougher time getting around and roads weren't so smooth, and as I took the picture a neighbor popped out of his trailer and we chatted about the change in the weather. He puffed about the heat but I told him I liked it, and I do. I like heat that comes with the clarity and brightness of a summer afternoon:
I could actually stand to see a bit more rain still, but even though the clouds mass, they don't yet seem ready to dump. My wife and I went swimming yesterday evening and there was a huge thunderhead building over Summerland Key with spectacular lightning and everything but it never seemed to get close and we didn't get a sniff of rain either. Looking among the mangroves it is obvious that to some degree this is the wet season:
I wandered for a while down the back roads on Little Torch, coasting alongside canals and suburban homes on stilts, some quite big too. I liked the "Adult Section" sign of this trailer park. One could imagine all sorts of debauchery but its probably just a haven from noisy youth:
Away from the salt water is where one finds the bigger homes on bigger lots and they end up looking like discreet hunting lodges in the forest. I hit up a couple of dirt roads, made friends with a nervous dog:
and found a whole new subdivision I want to come back to for some in depth exploration:
Back on the paved road, civilization and a straight ride home to tea and a properly behaving lap top, at last:
Not much gas burned for an afternoon out in the sun.
