Bahia Honda

There are two places above all others I like to walk. Bahia Honda is one of them, and the other one I want to keep to myself for now. The landmarks here are obvious and rarely Rusty and I walk alone. For me to have time alone in the woods in these ever more crowded islands is my privilege. That Rusty enjoys walking with me is icing on the cake and keeps me alone but not lonely.

I see a lot of people fishing around here and I guess they outnumber me, dozens of anglers to one photographer usually. Occasionally I see camera carriers with tripods and filters and serious looks hunting the ideal sunrise. The picture below I didn't clean up and you can see the ocean sliding off to the right! Drives me nuts but I'm not driven to complicate my walks with apparatus. The drive to overcomplicate things drives me equally nuts.

Rusty is out there somewhere and I'm strolling with a small black box around my neck relying on clouds and light to make the pictures interesting.

I know what I see but I wonder what they see. 

Do we see the same scenery? 

I have to suppose so. I wonder if when they go home they review their catch and ponder the beauty of the place where they caught it?

I post my pictures here but this really is a diary and when I look back, and I do, I remember the circumstances of the capture. I fish for pictures and use them to remember.

So many meanings in a lonely stop sign. I made this picture and thought of the prairies I hope to be crossing soon. This actually is the crest of the hill alongside Highway One and the stop sign is warning beach goers to merge with the traffic with care!

There is a cement block under the gumbo limbo that survived Hurricane Irma and is slowly growing back. The kudzu is spreading too fast for me to keep it completely clear but I stop by from time to time and clear it and sit and think and sometimes I just sit.

I didn't sort this picture out either so now the ocean is going uphill to the right! Life as it is lived.

Bahia Sunrise

If you get out of bed early enough you too can see the seven o'clock sunrise.

Cool breezes are blowing as usual in the Spring but skies have been cloudy too just like the moisture laden summer months. What makes it fabulous is that I get to walk around behind Rusty, under interesting skies and not all sweaty and wet. 

My work is overwhelming at the moment, endless days of showing up to answer 911 as staffing levels are dropping too low to permit much time off. It happens periodically in Key West but it hasn't been this bad for a decade and I'm 63 now so my resistance to sitting up all day juggling phones calls is less than it was when I was a stripling a mere half century old.

To walk Rusty and enjoy the colors feels like a vacation in and of  itself, a time away, surrounded by silence. 

The van is sitting in the drive waiting for another outing. These days I find myself sitting in it reading a book with the doors thrown open and Rusty sitting outside, like a child in a  tree house pretending I'm somewhere away.

And then there's the reality check: the really nice portapotty I found online has developed a slight leak in the single spot where it could possibly develop a  leak. A new one is in the mail. 

I don't mind dealing with our portable toilet, it's one of the weird quirks of my character that dealing with it doesn't bother me. Dealing with broken stuff is annoying but in this modern life an $80 toilet is easily replaced with a type getting better consumer reviews...so we do. 

I'm not Webb Chiles, an aficionado of ultimate simplicity, and even though my wife thought a model that uses a gussied up bucket might work. I nixed that over her protests on the grounds that it would get tiresome. I am traveling with a woman after all and she will lose patience with too crude of a set up no matter what she says right now. 

It's funny though how life looks so serene and colorful and a modest leak can perform all the functions of a fly in a jar of ointment. I took the toilet fiasco as a reminder that either I have chosen an excessively simple route that might involve breakdowns, or my choice of camping toilet may be inspired inasmuch as there is no plumbing and all can be fixed with no effort and not much expense. I'll bet boating stores in Buenos Aires will sell me portapotties should the need arise at some future date.  I anticipate future breakdowns on the road and might even have to fall back on a bucket in a crisis. My van could accommodate such a downgrade easily.

Meanwhile the world continues to spin, summer approaches and they talk already of an active hurricane season. Of course no one can venture a guess where the hurricanes might go if they even materialize in vast numbers this summer. The Keys could of course be targeted. 

I had nurtured a slight hope I could escape hurricane duty this year after sitting through every single storm since 2004 but our numbers are so few I'm not sure I can be exempted this year. I'd prefer an evacuation in the van with himself and herself into the mountains and let someone else eat Chef Boyardee in the wreckage. Hurricane Irma was quite the appropriate storm to take its's place as my last hurricane experience thank you.

As it is summer will come inevitably and rain and clouds and humidity will follow of course.  I see in Europe there is much excitement about re-opening the continent to summer travel and normal lives. 

I feel lucky to have not been deprived of these views and these walks.

This is where I come to escape work and stress and endless hours immersion in life lived by stress. Without these socially distanced walks I don't know how I would have coped.

Or how he would have coped. As it is he too is enjoyed the cool breezes and the last gasp of high energy before summer's heat locks us down.

Barricades

The Florida Keys by their nature offer limited opportunities to spread out on land. When you live near the end of a 120 mile chain of narrow flat islands you aren't going to have many wilderness hang outs. I have my favorite on West Summerland Key in sight of the Old Bahia Honda Bridge, a location that shows up frequently on this page. I was there yesterday thoroughly enjoying the sun and a cool breeze and I was not alone.

I have spent the night along the seawall and enjoyed the relative quiet even though I slept just below the highway, pretty much out of sight and at peace with the world. The track became viable after Hurricane Irma tore down the trees and the state decided to build up the wall with rip rap and gravel which anglers drove out on and flattened into a bumpy but viable trail.  Some enterprising folk then drove all the way out to the point and left some rather ostentatious campsites with fire rings and the usual trash...

I knew it wouldn't last...it couldn't last and this small privilege has come to an end of course. You won't see pictures of Gannet 2 here again:

I wasn't therefore shocked when I came back and found these cement barricades, a stock item used by county and state governments in the Keys to close off the few dirt trails to all terrain vehicles seeking some off road fun.

For someone like me (and Rusty) who like to walk the barriers will actually work to our advantage as most people seem to find locomotion too arduous and now that motors are effectively banned we will be alone out on the point. In fact a fisherman did just that yesterday, parking his truck here and venturing no further on foot with his rod.

I would also like to think we will walk trash-free. I take pictures and leave footprints and I carry a bag for those occasions Rusty feels moved to extrude an egg or two. Like the half-wild dingo he is, he likes to dump on the edge of the trail, unobtrusively, and leave little trace which I have to find and remove, not always easy. 

I confess I was surprised to see tracks coming straight down off the highway here a couple of weeks ago. I guess I wasn't alone in my astonishment because they aren't doing that again!

It seems as though the state had barricades to spare as they put them everywhere, carefully butted up to impenetrable tree trunks where possible. 

This one surprised me, carefully placed between two trees to avoid end runs by determined drivers, on a trail that didn't exist last year. Somone checked it out, someone else followed and then the trail was marked and became, as you can see, established.

I used to walk out here picking my way through the grasses until this freeway was trampled through the grass.  I also found some graffiti, high flown sentiments written in indelible marker on a plank. I took the picture and moved it back up out of the way where I found it. 

The great thing about this spot is that there is no beach, no sand, no attraction for people to come and feel like they are in a postcard. To me that makes it doubly attractive as people stop their cars, take a look, walk a bit maybe and then take off again. 

Rusty enjoyed his walks and then took a philosophical approach to change in the Keys. Change is inevitable he said and its rarely for the better when too many people want to jostle in too little space. He has a point.

Old Bahia Honda

In my continuing effort to hit all our old favorite haunts, the ones I can reach by rolling walker I made a point to haul Rusty to the Old Bahia Honda Bridge. 

Which it turns out is about 45 minutes from my current home in Key West. It takes a certain commitment to drive this far for Rusty, especially as Layne has brought him here on her way to work. 

 It was a good morning for it, as the clouds were dramatic and I had hopes for a sunrise. I got lucky enough.

The bridge is continuing to crumble and It's a shame. Inevitable but it would make a superb bike path right into the state park at the other end. 

There is a filter setting I'm coming to terms with on my big camera called "Old Days" and I like the effect:

 So I played with it for a bit.

 There was dew on the grass; it must be winter.

 The new bridge isn't picturesque but it does the job.

 Rusty trotted out and back but I could only get so far on the gravel. We called it a day.

And stopped at a launch ramp on the way back. It's another of those free access to the water ramps scattered up and down the Keys. 

In the distance I could barely make out the No Name Key bridge as the sun had disappeared and rain was closing in again.

 It was beautiful. I love these spots.

 Rusty was having fun in his own way.

It was a good morning and worth the drive.