It happens sometimes when giving directions and you mention "Blimp Road" in passing, that they think you are joking. "Uh, Blimp Road?" and you just nod your head sagely.
It really does exist as you can see. It's a handy street not least because Mad Dawgz BBQ stand is right there, and this is the best barbecue in the Keys. 
Across the Overseas Highway my wife's "temple"crouches like a monument to physical fitness. it's called Pirate Wellness and is actually a very decent gym if you like those sorts of places (I don't). More obviously there is the Kickin' Back convenience store on the south side of the Highway, and that big white sign tells me I'm five minutes from home on my commute in the morning:
Blimp Road itself is home to the dump, now known as a transfer station, home to recycling and waste removal and all that good stuff (bring your used motorcycle oil for clean disposal) and also to it's namesake, Fat Albert:
Blimp Road is couple of miles long and runs dead straight north from the Overseas Highway at about Mile Marker 21:
And the closer you get to the end of the road the bigger Fat Albert gets: 
And bigger (a telephoto lense helps):
I found a bunch of excellent info about Fat Albert on the Internet, and learned to my surprise that it is in fact part of NORAD, the US Air Force radar defense alert system beloved of movie makers. They say Fat Albert uses radar to detect smugglers but I had an experience when I wondered about that. I saw a smugglers' boat in a Stock Island marina after they had dropped off a dozen Cubans and had been located by the Coastguard and chased into Oceanside Marina. Cuban smuggling is big business these days as Miami Cubans will pay ten grand each to have their friends imported. Smuggled Cubans aren't allowed to stay so when they land they have to say their boat sank because if they come over on their own and land on US soil they get to stay, but if they are smuggled they don't (call your US representative if any of this doesn't make sense). So this smuggler's boat was docked and it was a 25 foot black inflatable with three blacked out outboards and I got to wondering if rumors that they use a heat seeking device on Fat Albert may not be true. That boat seemed like it would be really hard to 'see' on radar...
Be that as it may the blimp flies without any humans on board though it is piloted from the ground. I learned that when I actually met a former pilot, and though I was bursting with questions I refrained as it seems rather silly to ask a person about their involvement with something as secretive as NORAD...Anyway I learned on line that the helium filled blimp flies at 10,000 feet (3,000 meters give or take) and is 175 feet long (55 meters more or less) and 58 feet around (18 meters) and carries 1200 pounds (400 kg) of something mysterious called "payload." It is launched from a ground station visible across the mangroves:
And this is the ground station seen from the water:
If you have any doubts about which direction the wind is blowing Fat Albert will point the way:
At night you can see Fat Albert blinking red in the night sky. Not everyone sees it though and I seem to recall last year a small private plane took off from around here someplace and flew straight into the wire holding up the blimp. They say the wire has a 26,000 pound (13 ton) breaking strain and it didn't do the plane any good which spun out and crashed killing the people on board. The blimp kept flying until they retrieved it to check for damage. If you fly a plane, like a sailor you should check your charts. And look for blinking lights aloft:
Cheyenne was indifferent to the delights and mysteries of flying blimps. She is also not interested in the water and sticks firmly to dry land. Next summer I am planning on teaching her to enjoy the water.
This is the view looking south down Kemp Channel toward Summerland Key on the left.
We have fun together. Awww!
This is the end of Blimp Road at the boat ramp:
Just before you reach the end of the road there is a side street to the left but it's not open to the public:
The turn off is exactly this far from the end of the road!
The exact cost of flying Fat Albert isn't made public as far as I can tell. But we do know that before Hurricane Wilma in 2005 a similar balloon flying alongside the NORAD blimp carried TV Marti anti-Castro propaganda at a cost to taxpayers of a cool $16,000,000 a year. And naturally the signal never got through as the Cuban authorities jammed it, but it kept the anti-Castro fanatics in Miami happy (and voting Republican in a keystone state). Now we are back down to one:
Fat Albert is barely visible in this photograph but it is amazingly visible all round the Lower Keys in real life. It got separated from the ground once in the mid 90s and they had to shoot it down before it reached Cuba and nowadays it seems they have a remote control that can deflate the blimp and bring it to earth if it breaks loose again. One sign of impending strong winds is when Fat Albert is brought back to ground :
Fat Albert may be costly but it is amazingly unobtrusive and life in the mangroves goes on as usual. If you stand right under the blimp you can hear it's steering propeller buzzing like a distant lawn mower on a summer afternoon. But out here it is silent and unnoticed:
TV Marti has thankfully faded away but Castro's in-laws, the Diaz-Balarts of Miami, who have pledged eternal hatred (a family value of course) still push for Radio Marti to send propaganda to Cuba and here it is at Mile Marker 15, an unobtrusive gated little road opposite Baby's Coffee: 
More taxpayer dollars being happily wasted to keep the Miami Mafia (as Castro calls them) happy. I listen to Radio Nacional on 950am (classical music) and Radio Reloj at 570 and590am (news headlines) which means I suppose I am getting a freebie from the Cuban government. Pity it's so boring! On the other hand I can't imagine how boring it is to be on the ground piloting the stationary blimp. The Cold War lives and demands its sacrifices I suppose.
It really does exist as you can see. It's a handy street not least because Mad Dawgz BBQ stand is right there, and this is the best barbecue in the Keys. Across the Overseas Highway my wife's "temple"crouches like a monument to physical fitness. it's called Pirate Wellness and is actually a very decent gym if you like those sorts of places (I don't). More obviously there is the Kickin' Back convenience store on the south side of the Highway, and that big white sign tells me I'm five minutes from home on my commute in the morning:
Blimp Road itself is home to the dump, now known as a transfer station, home to recycling and waste removal and all that good stuff (bring your used motorcycle oil for clean disposal) and also to it's namesake, Fat Albert:Blimp Road is couple of miles long and runs dead straight north from the Overseas Highway at about Mile Marker 21:
And the closer you get to the end of the road the bigger Fat Albert gets: 
And bigger (a telephoto lense helps):
I found a bunch of excellent info about Fat Albert on the Internet, and learned to my surprise that it is in fact part of NORAD, the US Air Force radar defense alert system beloved of movie makers. They say Fat Albert uses radar to detect smugglers but I had an experience when I wondered about that. I saw a smugglers' boat in a Stock Island marina after they had dropped off a dozen Cubans and had been located by the Coastguard and chased into Oceanside Marina. Cuban smuggling is big business these days as Miami Cubans will pay ten grand each to have their friends imported. Smuggled Cubans aren't allowed to stay so when they land they have to say their boat sank because if they come over on their own and land on US soil they get to stay, but if they are smuggled they don't (call your US representative if any of this doesn't make sense). So this smuggler's boat was docked and it was a 25 foot black inflatable with three blacked out outboards and I got to wondering if rumors that they use a heat seeking device on Fat Albert may not be true. That boat seemed like it would be really hard to 'see' on radar...Be that as it may the blimp flies without any humans on board though it is piloted from the ground. I learned that when I actually met a former pilot, and though I was bursting with questions I refrained as it seems rather silly to ask a person about their involvement with something as secretive as NORAD...Anyway I learned on line that the helium filled blimp flies at 10,000 feet (3,000 meters give or take) and is 175 feet long (55 meters more or less) and 58 feet around (18 meters) and carries 1200 pounds (400 kg) of something mysterious called "payload." It is launched from a ground station visible across the mangroves:
If you have any doubts about which direction the wind is blowing Fat Albert will point the way:At night you can see Fat Albert blinking red in the night sky. Not everyone sees it though and I seem to recall last year a small private plane took off from around here someplace and flew straight into the wire holding up the blimp. They say the wire has a 26,000 pound (13 ton) breaking strain and it didn't do the plane any good which spun out and crashed killing the people on board. The blimp kept flying until they retrieved it to check for damage. If you fly a plane, like a sailor you should check your charts. And look for blinking lights aloft:Cheyenne was indifferent to the delights and mysteries of flying blimps. She is also not interested in the water and sticks firmly to dry land. Next summer I am planning on teaching her to enjoy the water.This is the view looking south down Kemp Channel toward Summerland Key on the left.
We have fun together. Awww!
This is the end of Blimp Road at the boat ramp:Just before you reach the end of the road there is a side street to the left but it's not open to the public:
The turn off is exactly this far from the end of the road!The exact cost of flying Fat Albert isn't made public as far as I can tell. But we do know that before Hurricane Wilma in 2005 a similar balloon flying alongside the NORAD blimp carried TV Marti anti-Castro propaganda at a cost to taxpayers of a cool $16,000,000 a year. And naturally the signal never got through as the Cuban authorities jammed it, but it kept the anti-Castro fanatics in Miami happy (and voting Republican in a keystone state). Now we are back down to one:Fat Albert is barely visible in this photograph but it is amazingly visible all round the Lower Keys in real life. It got separated from the ground once in the mid 90s and they had to shoot it down before it reached Cuba and nowadays it seems they have a remote control that can deflate the blimp and bring it to earth if it breaks loose again. One sign of impending strong winds is when Fat Albert is brought back to ground :Fat Albert may be costly but it is amazingly unobtrusive and life in the mangroves goes on as usual. If you stand right under the blimp you can hear it's steering propeller buzzing like a distant lawn mower on a summer afternoon. But out here it is silent and unnoticed:
TV Marti has thankfully faded away but Castro's in-laws, the Diaz-Balarts of Miami, who have pledged eternal hatred (a family value of course) still push for Radio Marti to send propaganda to Cuba and here it is at Mile Marker 15, an unobtrusive gated little road opposite Baby's Coffee: More taxpayer dollars being happily wasted to keep the Miami Mafia (as Castro calls them) happy. I listen to Radio Nacional on 950am (classical music) and Radio Reloj at 570 and590am (news headlines) which means I suppose I am getting a freebie from the Cuban government. Pity it's so boring! On the other hand I can't imagine how boring it is to be on the ground piloting the stationary blimp. The Cold War lives and demands its sacrifices I suppose.
13 comments:
"Blimp" and "BBQ stand". Is that a coincidence, or a carefully planned location for the eating establishment?
Thanks for educating us about Fat Albert. I hadn't known about it before I read your post.
Now you know not to try to emigrate illegally into the US across the straits of Florida. We don't want any of your Swiss socialism over here- universal health care, regulated banking and National Service.Oh and a strong currency. we have Fat Albert to protect our southern flank from subversive ideas.Oh and four official languages living in harmony. Imagine that!?
iirc: Then there was this story about the blimp breaking loose:
A couple of fishermen in a small runabout were heading out to the gulf for some early morning fishing and saw Fat Albert on the surface of the water by Mud Keys. They thought salvage? maybe Reward!!!! and found a line and tied it off their boat. As the sun rose the suns rays warmed the blimp and as the blimp heated it broke free from the surface and began to rise. Must have been quite the site watching the blimp rise-- they must have thought "good it will be easier to tow" at least until it rose to the point of lifting the stern of their boat up, dumping them and all their gear in the water. As they treaded water and watched the blimp drift off with their boat they must have thought "%$#^*!!!!"
(then the blimp got shot down)
Great post and great story. See - perhaps a reason to leave government property alone, your boat might get pulled out of the water.
Great pics!
I am visiting there in May & hope to get many also (though not nearly as good as yours)
When I first saw the title of this post, I thought you were going to say something about the tree in my front yard, also known as "Fat Albert".
Do they ever decorate the blimp for Christmas like we do our tree?
That would be cool.
It's good to know that our taxpayer dollars are being spent wisely, however I bet we could buy a whole lot of blimps for the price of one bomber.
Great post!
Cool!! I learned a few new things about Fat Albert!! I have never went out there on my excursions to the Keys, and probably would not have been brave enough to photograph as well as you did!! I would have been looking around g=for the G-men to pop out with handcuffs to haul me off for hours of interrogation at worst, and a confiscated camera at best!! I'm alwaya cautious in my travels while I'm there, just too many government activities for my liking!! LOL!!! Maybe if I lived there and had more time, I would be braver! Kudos for checking this stuff out for us!
Your writing makes me want to see Blimp Road!! And I do prefer the word "dump" to "transfer station." I wonder if they changed it to be politically correct? LOL
Mr Conchscooter:
I'm still stuck at mile marker 21 and 5 minutes from home (mile marker 29.5), at 5 minutes you must be really travelling fast.
At least the Blimp is not a secret, after all, they named it Blimp Road for a reason
I tried to find Radio Nacional on the web, but couldn't, lots of other internet stations though.
bob
bobskoot: wet coast scootin
Hey Robert, I heard the cuban fisherman dropped into the water when they shot the plane down and he found he was just off his old home and he went home for a visit. Which seems a hard way to do it. See you next week when Layne gets back.
Photographers need to check bobskoots blog because he knows what he is doing. I use minimum pixels and fast shutter speeds to try to give pictures a polarized look to compensate for sun but around here it's all sunshine and primary colors which makes photography easy. (Except when photographing dogs).
shonassie I was actually wondering if I was violating the PATRIOT act in some way not made public. I figured when the secret police came for me I would set my underwear on fire and shout allah al akbar, claim political persecution and go live in bobskoot's garage (with free health care). It never happened.
dj they call it a transfer station because they take the trash and load it into giant trucks and strew it across the highway for 200 miles to pompano beach where the county pays a million bucks a year to bury it. we used to have a waste-to-energy plant but it got deep sixed because business interests make more money hauling than having key west operate a municipal trash burning plant ( the new scrubbers would have cost $20 million and the plant generated 30% of the city's electrical needs.(Stunning? Sure.)
Cpa12343 I saw the tree called fat albert and think it would be a much way to spend untold millions. A scooter in every Kansas garage and a christmas tree in ever front yard.
Dear bobskoot let us say 5 minutes is a figure of speech though these days the ride in to work is crowded by strangers driving 40 miles an hour the whole way. I should do like Charlie Sheen and threaten to kill my wife out of frustration. Oh no, wait a minute I am a mere mortal and I can't do that. She is having a great time by the way snorkeling in the Bahamas threat free. Cheyenne misses her.I'm fine.
I'm just glad to see something besides me called Fat Albert.
I wonder if kite flying is a good thing to have on your resume when you apply to be the blimp's handler.
Now you know why I was carrying the bar-b-que on the bike. Mad Dawgz said they would share technique but I had to bring my own grill.
Fascinating story. Especially the salvage operation captkeywest relates! LOL!!
I see BobSkoot is lost again -:)
Cheers,
Chuck
Thanks for clarifying where Radio Marti was. For some reason I thought is was in Marathon, but it makes sense to be near the blimp base.
And Baby's makes gooood coffee.
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