After almost exactly a year on the road we are back where we started.
The first thing I noticed was how burned the greenery was and how wind ravaged was the shoreline. Irma in 2017 and Ian in 2022 have not been kind to my favorite beach. Rusty didn’t seem to mind.
He used to ignore the heat but I couldn’t help but feel he might perhaps be missing the cool pine forests of western Montana or the damp summer chill of northern Maine. He dropped into puddles of water repeatedly to cool off.
We arrived Saturday afternoon a little ahead of schedule and we decided to drop out of the traffic flow heading to Fantasy Fest to spend the night by the water. Once upon a time we used to come here just twenty minutes from home to test our van and ponder the wisdom of our notion that we should retire and take to the road in a tiny home. Best choice ever.
“I miss this,” Layne said as we discussed what we missed from our life in the Florida Keys. We don’t miss the Overseas Highway traffic which is considerably less tedious when you are retired with an open schedule.
We rolled through scenery familiar and enjoyed noting changes as though we had been gone a generation not just a year.
To return from where you started is bound to cause you to think about the intervening time in a different way. What if we had stayed?
Key West was a great place to have a job and to earn a pension and we fell into it at the right time for us. I doubt I ever could have held down a job that long anywhere else. So it is right to be grateful to the Keys for the freedom from obligation I now have but I don’t want to go back. I want to spend time with some people and then get back to the business at hand: overlanding.
We weren’t alone on the beach. Two Cuban couples set up a tent and were fishing nearby. A greeting in English got a blank stare so we reverted to Mexican travel mode to get a response and later as we prepared for bed the music cranked up. Ah yes, just like any Saturday night on a Mexican beach. They were rank amateurs though as they soon packed it in where Mexicans would have kept going till four in the morning at least. We slept.
It was a good wild camp spot and ideal to decompress before we dived into the Lower Keys. Breakfast for dinner with a side order of blood sucking mosquitoes so we buttoned up and turned on the air conditioning.
