——This was my final post as a Keys resident. Click the title at the top of the page for my latest entry. I’ve posted here since 2007 and still post here most days from my life on the road. Cheers Michael ————
Monday 25th October 8:00pm
Rest Area in Alligator Alley I-75
As you read this I have left the Florida Keys and Van Life begins. I am happy about this change in my life, this page therefore is no longer a diary about a place or fulfilling other people's fantasies but a true record of where we go and when and how we make the journey. I used to laugh as I slipped under the toll booth awning at Alabama Jack's, in the days before they automated the Sunpass toll into the Keys. The Keys I shouldn't forget! It will be difficult to do that.
I prefer Card Sound Road to the idiocy of the two lane Stretch between Homestead and Key Largo. The state decided to keep The Stretch down to two lanes in order to lengthen potential hurricane evacuation times. This would supposedly hold back development as the Keys have to able to be evacuated in 36 hours under threat of hurricanes. By creating a no passing two lane road the idea was evacuation times would take longer and fewer homes could be built. The net effect is road rage, illegal passing and tail gating as cars hurry to get to the next passing zone as quickly as possible. My last piece of Keys advice? Take Card Sound Road and pay the Sunpass Toll around a buck and enjoy a laid back drive.
The Seven Mile Bridge, my wife's commute for many years, is the goal of anyone who drives the Keys, and you can wave at Fred the wild tree still flourishing on the old bridge. I shan't see the Christmas decorations this year but I am fairly certain a boatload of pirates will sail to Fred and light the lights.
I hate to say it but at this point it can be said: Highway One has become over trafficked and is struggling to handle too much traffic. The new road has served since 1982 but the Internet allows anyone to work from home, to live where they want and everyone with money wants a slice of the safe tropics. That means too many people which means slower travel times which is okay if you are new because your expectations are what you find. Year round tourism is new and tiring.
Our escape pod is a slow moving box that will take the right lane and pull over for following cars. No schedule, destination uncertain, speed not fast, 60 miles per hour to save gas and wear and tear. Frequent stops, so we step aside to allow those with deadlines to get where they are going. In Michigan this had the unfortunate effect of nice people pulling alongside instead of passing and asking us if we were okay! Dirt roads are in our future, lots of exploration, wild camping, street parking, boondocking in the manner of 21st century nomads.
Young Rusty has new horizons and a familiar home. I can't wait to share it all with him and with you, if horizons beyond the Keys hold any interest. Many of you have said they do! I promise frequent updates, lots of pictures and places you've never heard of. I told you of my former neighbor who wrinkled his nose when he asked where we were going and I said Patagonia. Where's that? he said. I've never heard of it. He'll see it in glorious technicolor if he stumbles across this page. Fingers crossed and off we go. First stop: unglamorous St Petersburg for the first of some non Keys goodbyes (Webb will be next). Rusty is enjoying van life, new smells on new horizons.
I stopped this Monday afternoon briefly to take a couple of pictures, my last in the Keys. Layne was driving the Fiat 500 to it's new owner in St Petersburg so Rusty and I were alone, and he took the co-pilot's seat.
"Thanks for Visiting the Florida Keys" the sign says nowadays but still I promise not to forget my Keys. They were a good time, a special time filled with friends and things to see and photograph. Like one reader said this stage of my life resembles the last frame in the Calvin and Hobbes cartoon strips of very fond memory. This is cheerio, not goodbye for ever. Lots to see in the meantime.
I hope one day to see the Registan of Samarkand too but that will be a much later story.
We travel not for trade alone
By hotter winds our fiery hearts are fanned
For lust of knowing what ought not be known
We take the Golden Road to Samarkand
James Flecker
Posted with Blogsy
I put this picture on the ADVRider forum thread titled "Old Structures" and somehow it generated an enthusiastic response from some dude who had actually stayed at this place in his youth during a crazy mid winter trip from Up North on a farting Bonneville that dragged him, somehow, to Key West and back in 1984. Quite delightful to hear from another geezer gumming his grits under a snowdrift somewhere, recalling his impetuous youth. I quite recommend ADVRider if you like pictures of faraway places (the occasional burst of juvenile "humor" can be an added "bonus") especially if you spend hours sitting in a room waiting for disaster to strike, as I do.
Anyway this entry is obviously a product of last week's rip snorting ride through south Florida and I was moved to stop on my way home because Dade County has been making noises about abolishing the community at Card Sound and I wanted to take a few pictures before change catches me by surprise.
Most people who climb in their cages and decide to drive to Key West arrive in Homestead from the mad rush that is Florida's Turnpike and find themselves funnelled onto Highway One and just keep going, which works fine, but there is a Better Way. Card Sound road starts just past the Last Chance Saloon, a dubious establishment offering the last chance for a drink in 20 miles, and aside from that attempt at humor the place looks like a pit without the allure of actually being in the Keys.
Card Sound road is 25 miles long and is thus a few miles further than the direct 18 Mile Stretch, as Highway One is known between Homestead and Key Largo, a place where impatient drivers are constantly hitting each other head on. Granted this is the bucolic route, but thats not to say you can't get up a nice head of steam on the long straightaways of Card Sound Road but the speed limit as you approach the fishing shacks drops to 40 miles per, which you would do well to observe as life is lived rather literally close to the edge on this road.
As the Internet, Satellites and Nextflix penetrate every corner of our modern world people keep nattering on about the good old days, and to hear them you'd think it really was Paradise Lost. If you want a taste of life lived close to the edge stop in Card Sound and take a careful walk along the roadway.
Or not, as the case may be:
While their neighbors tout for business:
If you speak Spanish around here you will do better. Card Sound might once have been a place where English was the premdominant language but not anymore, except perhaps across the county line which marks the end of Dade County and the beginning of Monroe County. 
Alabama Jack's touts in English and offers what it hopes is your first al fresco Keys dining experience. Its not real waterfront dining, because the eating area is on the roadside and the waterfront is a bit...derelict? which you'd think would qualify it as being Keys-funky. Some people claim the food's okay and it offers people a place to stop so I guess they do pretty well by calling their decrepitude "funk."
I hope Card Sound survives a bit longer. It may not be to my taste, being as how I don't care to fish, or to sit in a boat and drink, but it isn't to my taste either for people to get steamrollered out of their lives just because they are too funky, or too poor or simply too bloody minded. I like to take Card Sound Road to avoid the maniacs on the Stretch but also to give a tip of the hat to a bunch of survivors who happened to erect their fish camp on the wrong side of the County line of toleration.
Had they built decades ago just 200 yards to the south they would have been in the Keys, where anything still goes, if you have the fortitude to resist the blandishments of the Almighty Dollar. These guys seem to have what it takes to resist anything, for now.