Night Key West

The evening started out well. My wife rode downtown from her classroom to meet me at the Tropic Cinema. We went to see the third in the series of movies set in Sweden called the Millennium series. We found The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest excessively talky and the least enjoyable of the series. I felt like walking out I was so bored but I didn't want to miss out on the ending of the series...I parked Cheyenne in the multi story parking lot on Grinnell Street. She wasn't the only animal left in a car.When I came back to the car night had fallen and the parking structure had become a playground for a couple of active youngsters on their skateboards. My camera couldn't catch their determined features as they flashed by in the half light.This corner of Key West looks like the high rise part of the island, with the Steam Plant apartments rising out of the gloom. Such is the state of the economy that the $3.2 million luxury apartments are being offered at half price by developer Ed Swift. Private parking and rooftop pools and all.We parked our vehicles at the School District lot off Trumbo Road and went for a night time walk.The Coastguard Station across the water. In the old days, when the Steam Plant was an active electrical generating station the harbor waters here were so polluted they called this spot the Toxic Triangle.Nowadays it's much cleaner and thus also more commercial. Where once boats tied up informally to the seawall today we see modern marinas in Key West Bight- from shrimp docks to pleasure boat docks in one generation. This is the Galleon across the water.Beyond the school district parking lot the Coastguard station is always ready.From the madness of the big city, relatively speaking, Cheyenne and I soon found ourselves out enjoying the relative peace and quiet of the outer islands. In this case I figured Cheyenne could use an "extra walk" under the glorious almost full moon. I pulled into the park behind Baby's Coffee on Bay Point (Mile Marker 15).It was a splendid warm evening and we both enjoyed strolling around under the ridiculously bright lights illuminating an empty tennis court. Cheyenne trundled back and forth, nose to the ground, making up for the time she spent snoozing in the car in Key West. I played with the camera and enjoyed the contrast between the black night sky and the highly illuminated world around us.

Looking north there was nothing but blackness, the blinking red lights of the radio station towers and the red tail lights of cars streaming by through the long exposure of my camera.

Standing around in my shorts at the end of November is no bad way to spend a winter night outdoors. Not a snowflake in sight, thank goodness.