Fort Zachary Taylor

Key West has had a habit of naming certain monuments after the strangest people. Mallory Square is named for the Confederate Secretary of the Navy who abandoned his Senator's allegiance to the Federal Government to join the rebels. Fort Zachary Taylor is named for the 12th US President a man who survived 17 months in office and was elected on the strength of his popularity as a wartime general. I found this very readable discussion about the President and the manner of his death: LINK 

Nowadays local people who make contributions tend to get named even before they are dead, but Fort Zach is a popular and worthwhile place to visit.

The fort itself is closed to dogs so I came earlier this week when I was in town without Rusty. It's $4:50 for one person in a  car or on a  scooter but walking or cycling will save you a couple of bucks.

I wandered around trying to close my ears to the sounds made by the only other people in the fort with a very loud child which set me to wondering why my very quiet well mannered dog (and his eveready plastic bag) is kept away... 

The views from the battlements are tremendous and it's odd to imagine how far out in the water the fort was located originally. It was an island approached by a wooden causeway but slowly the dredged materials from the harbor were thrown up around it and now it is set inland surrounded by a moat.  

 Captain James Brannan in charge of an artillery company in Key West in 1860 is held responsible for keeping Key West in the Union by stealthily marching to the fort in the night and securing it for the government. Thus despite huge pro-Confederacy sentiment among city leaders Key West stayed in the Union and was a very useful blockading harbor for the Federal Navy. There is a great description of those perilous times here: LINK  

In the end the fort never fired a shot in anger just like the larger but similar Fort Jefferson 70 miles to the west in the Dry Tortugas which became better known as a Federal military prison filled with yellow fever.

Fort Zachary was dug out of obscurity in the mid 20th century by a Navy employee and native of Key West called Howard England after whom the approach road is named. The path to and from the fort itself got a bit of a haircut but the trees are still there:

More suitable I suppose than the controversial president who got the bigger prize of the fort being named for him! 

 It's well worth a walk especially if you feel like laying around with your camera. 

 I wanted something more interesting to pop out of my lense but this is what I got, pretty much what you might expect from this location.

I tootled out to the beach area and found half the pine grove is open to visitors while the other half isn't:

The new plantings survived nicely and I look forward to the native plant forest throwing shade everywhere:

Hurricane recovery takes time and patience.

Curry Hammock State Park, Marathon

From March 2008,  six  full years ago on this very same blog:

It is said that when Spanish explorers found South Florida Indians living in the mess that they considered the Everglades to be, they asked their hosts, with some perplexity, where they slept. After all, the Spaniards, overdressed in rusting armor could not conceive of people living out their lives in the river of grass, as damp and leaky as it was then, and continues to be to a lesser degree, today. The Indians pointed to clumps of trees and said they slept in the hammocks, and the Spaniards who managed to cock up the meaning of just about everything they came across in their meanderings, thought the Indians were talking about the creepers they stretched between the trees to sleep in, hence the modern use of the word hammock to describe the contraption we use while on vacation to rest in. In fact the Indians were describing the small clumps of dry land which rose a few feet above the river of grass and allowed relatively spacious hardwood trees to grow and provide shelter for the Indians to live in. Thus it is in South Florida that hammocks are places where trees grow (and where for all I know tourists could also be slinging hammocks). And at Curry Hammock State Park one can wander a trail right through something resembling the original meaning of the word hammock.And we even found ourselves a meadow, though appearances can be deceptive.This meadow was covered in stout crab grass, not the lush soft grasses found in more temperate climes.

By some miracle of timing my wife and I both had a day off together and we had no chores to do. So it was only appropriate that we cast off our cares and take to the road, not, I am sorry to say on the Bonneville, but in the eminently more civilized convertible, which my wife converts all the time except when it's parked.

The state park isn't large where it sits on Little Crawl Key, (a name to conjure with) and offers visitors lots of access to the calm waters of the Straits of Florida, on the south side of the island chain. Apparently small children are encouraged to be off their leashes, discriminatory perhaps but rules is rules.

Curry Hammock lies at Mile Marker 56, technically within the city limits of the relatively new city of Marathon, which is no place much to write home about as it is a wide spot in Highway One about 12 miles long, and the second largest city in the Florida Keys. However it does contain more than one thing worth seeing and Curry hammock is one of those. The helpful information board near the sparkling clean, environmentally low flush restrooms, offers a list of the top ten things to do at the park, and I was glad to see "nothing" was rated number one. A piece of advice more than one visitor acted upon, vigorously:

Including the lucky few who filled the park's 28 camping spots next to the day use area:

The weather continues windy as we prepare for another cold front later this week and this state of affairs favored number 9 on the park's lists of activities: kite boarding.

This is a strenuous pastime and doesn't allow for much time to read apparently.There were several brightly colored kites buzzing dementedly back and forth along the waterfront.They were controlled by some very determined men in wetsuits who spun across the horizon doing pirouettes while the older, more sedate visitors stumped around onshore providing a serene foreground for the waterborne madness.And from time to time they would pop up like jackrabbits out of the water and change their direction of travel as though pursued by a farmer with a shotgun.

I thought the kite boarding was an excellent sport, silent, non invasive, non polluting though probably ruinous for their backs when they get to middle age. There were also a few people interested in the more traditional sports associated with Florida Parks. Pastime number five for instance, on the park list:

And though best friends are welcome, on leashes, they aren't allowed on the modest sized beaches, thanks to owners' habits of not picking up, if you follow my drift and leaving unwelcome surprises for bare feet in the sands that mask all defecation:

And thus, tour completed, sunshine enjoyed, water drunk, back to the main road of life, our life in the Keys.

Long Key State Park

First posted in April 2009 still worth a visit! And I drive by it quite frequently and don't take/have the time to stop! Silly me.

Were I to ask someone to name three state parks in the Florida Keys, I have an idea the answer might be, Bahia Honda, John Pennekamp (especially if they dive) and most likely Fort Zachary Taylor if they frequent Key West. I use the annual State Parks Pass to explore as many of the parks as often as I can as it allows free access. It costs something like $85 per calendar year for the pass while a day ticket for one person is $3.50 at the park entrance or $6 for a car. Ironically two people on two motorcycles thus cost more than four in a car!The Monroe County stamp on the pass is applied by parks in the county to allow free entry to the parks in the Keys because that stamp on the pass costs five extra dollars. If you have a parks card without the stamp you pay 50 cents to get into Monroe County parks. Aren't we special in the Fabulously Expensive Florida Keys!Long Key State Park is at or around Mile marker 67 just south of the City of Layton (see my essay of January 17th 2008, http://conchscooter.blogspot.com/search?q=layton), and it is in the pantheon of second class State Parks in the Keys just because they tend to be less well known. I like it a lot and on my first visit to the Keys in 1981 I stayed at a campsite on the beach, such as it is and used it as my base for exploring further. Probably one reason why Long Key suffers second class status is because it doesn't have a beach though it has a massively extended waterfront for a park a thousand acres in size.The park is long and thin like it's namesake key wedged between the Straits of Florida and the Overseas Highway. The park promotes birds as one its major attractions including "herons, egrets, willets, sandpipers, plovers, terns, and seagulls," which should be enough for anybody. Additionally there is canoeing on the Long Key Lake in the middle of the park and there is camping in the slice of parkland alongside the Overseas Highway next to the water:

The day use area has a small slice of sandy beach for people riding motorcycles or with picnics:Which was where I spotted a piece of artwork as I ate a granola bar and emptied a thermos of tea for lunch:For some people standing at the water's edge and admiring the view is an entirely satisfactory activity:For others the way to pass an afternoon is to stand thigh deep in salt water water to try to catch fish. This dude was quite a ways out proving that my little pocket camera has quite decent reach with the built-in telephoto, and also that the water shelves very gently along these islands:Some people enjoy cycling the roads inside the park, a way to enjoy pedaling and not get run down on the highway:For myself the plan was to take a walk as I haven't been out in the woods for a while, so I headed down the main road......to the boardwalk at the head of the main trail which heads towards the beach:I found a chair parked rather mysteriously in the shade as though someone enjoyed taking in nature's glories in comfort, so much so they dragged their own chair to that very spot:Along the way our thoughtful Park service puts up little notices describing flora, fauna and sights to left and right:There was also a sturdy observation platform built above the mangroves but the view was I have say, somewhat less than enthralling:My goal was the main circular trail through the back of the park on something they call the Golden Orb Trail which is named for a spider and is about a mile and a half long. The helpful signs suggest a leisurely hour long walk and even though I was wearing motorcycle boots and long pants I covered it in a little less than that.
The second half of the trail after I crossed the plank bridge shown above, is described as a hammock environment, which in South Florida means an area of raised dry land above the water level such that trees can grow in real dirt. Only thing was, this was the first sandy hammock I had seen. It reminded me of chaparral seen in western states:And I was not entirely alone. I met another walker, rather more suitably dressed than I, and we played trail leap frog, exchanging remarks while not willing to impinge on each other's privacy too much:She was a visitor to Florida and spent more time than I on the useful little signs along the way, though we exchanged a few comments as we passed each other.Closing in on the parking lot, where the Bonneville was parked in the shade, it being that warm, the trail started to get the mulching treatment a sit passed trough buttonwoods that look more like a "proper"hammock to my untutored eye.

Thence home, leaving unexplored the canoe launch and the Layton Trail, across the Overseas highway. The good thing about a parks pass is that it encourages return visits.