Gilbert's Resort, Key Largo

I was driving home from the mainland and for some reason I decided to stop my impetuous flight on Highway One and take a break. Actually Rusty hadn't stretched his legs for a while and he was the reason. I decided to take a tour without actually getting out of the car of Gilbert's Resort.

 

It used to be right alongside the Highway and there was this drawbridge across Jewfish Creek. I took this picture in 2008 as the new flyover was just being opened:

This used to be the main road and traffic was swept right pas the front door of Gilbert's. The future did not look bright when they took out the drawbridge and closed the connection to the other side of the creek. I figured people would be too busy whipping by on the bridge up above...

As usual my economic prognostications were all wet. Gilbert's seems to be doing fine thank you and it's not surprising. This is your first Keys encounter, a place where you can sleep, eat and drink right on the waterfront in a suitably tropic resort atmosphere. 

The motel itself is decidedly old fashioned...

 

 ...and the surroundings are only glamorous in the context of the traditionally run down tropical ambiance that visitors expect in the Keys:

 

A few coconut palms have grown up around the sign marking the turn off to Gilbert's, thus obscuring the view, but this 2008 picture clearly shows the height of the bridge over the resort;

It's a huge construction:

 

And you do get splendid views from on top of the  bridge. 

 

Of Gilbert's, open water, mangrove islands. Worth a view.

Women's Clothing

The thing about the Overseas Highway is that it rapidly becomes a way in and  a way out of the Keys, and like so many attractions around here one tends to overlook a  lot of stuff in the rush to get home or to get away... I think in many respects I have been mindful of this daily problem for all of us and I have gone out of my way to hunt down attractions in my own back yard and check them out.

 This isn't an attraction in any meaningful sense but it just strikes me as odd every time I drive by. It reminds me of that restaurant with the weird name : Ruth's Chris Steak House.  That apparently came into being when Ruth bought a Louisiana steak house called Chris's. Here I guess Anthony wanted to sell women's clothing and here it is, the Key Largo store of 13 across the state. Who knew?

Check out the building, which to my untutored eye looks like a 1950's motel lobby or something catches my eye every time I drive by.

I stopped at the next door gas station where they have cheap gas and spicy empanadas so I always stop there for gas. And  this time I wandered off with my camera and I said to myself I need to record this delightful building before someone tears it down for some impenetrable reason.

 Isn't it delightful?

 The swimsuits even match the decor.

There are tons of odd shaped buildings along the 120 mile highway in the Keys and I really need to do a better job of catching them. 

Anthonys website is worth a look if these things with a 30% discount works for you. I just like the building.

Key Largo Chocolates

The picture below is hardly unusual as we live in a society where fancy chocolates are popular and much enjoyed far across the fruited plain. I like chocolate so when my wife said "Stop!" we did just that, at Mile Marker 100 and-a-half.

WEBSITE LINK

This is a very wicked place and they treat unsuspecting new arrivals to a very cunning plan. They offer you tastes of their chocolates. After that it's all over. I am no fan of dark chocolate but these people make a type of dark chocolate I had never before tasted, it was smooth and creamy, not bitter and not grainy. If every piece of dark chocolate tasted like this I would be tempted to eat the stuff all the time. The white chocolate was just that, not a greasy lump of coca butter. I wonder what their secret is?

My wife was in charge of purchases reining in my natural tendency to overdo things so we never did get to try the fudge. It looked first rate, just like the ice cream at the opposite end of the room.

They also offer other stuff including the Key West Rubbers which is a rather tedious play on the -nudge nudge wink wink - sexuality that plays such a public role in advertising. Key West Rubbers aren't condoms goodness me no, they look like French Letters but they are packets of rub to make your meat ( wink wink) taste better. You're  welcome.

You'd think the  bright  colors would be like a beacon to passing vehicles but  until I was told to stop I had never noticed the chocolate place before. Perhaps because I am usually the driver (intent on getting home) or because I am an idiot. In any event they are here, as you can see.

This week's podcast at Travel and Safety features an interview I did with two young people from Colorado who got married last year and with their families' blessing took off around the world. They are still on the road and learning about themselves and the world as they keep traveling. Listen and rate by clicking the link. Cheers. 

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Entering The Keys

I had a few pictures left from my RV trip to the mainland.


Coming back on the 18 mile stretch I was in the privileged position of sitting at the desk the boys had custom built in their roving second home and I was looking out of the side windows when it occurred to me I had a rare view across the watery entrance to the Florida Keys.


I snatched the pictures as best I could as we flew along the elevated roadway.


These are the scenes so difficult to see in an ordinary car, and when riding a motorcycle one is not permitted to stop of course, to enjoy the views.


I wonder if people live on these boats?


It seems a strange place to live out the years of one's life, alongside the main road far from a proper center of life ashore.


Key Largo is a four lane highway of endless little shops and store fronts. There is no there there and perhaps for a first time visitor comes as a disappointment after the splendid aerial ride into the Fabulous Florida Keys. Keep driving south, where the views get better, as good as these across the watery sounds at the entrance to the Florida Keys.

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The Turquoise Bridge

Driving the 18 Mile Stretch one is struck by the road barriers painted to match the sky of south Florida and the waters of the Keys.


I generally don't drive Highway One between Homestead and Key Largo preferring the bucolic pleasures of Card Sound Road, less traffic more woods and if you need a cheesy introduction to Florida Keys tourist imagery you can stop at Alabama Jack's for some not too bad Conch Fritters, which are basically hush puppies with rubbery bits of seafood scattered in them.


These days if you come in to the Keys on Card Sound Road you are missing more than a mile of elevated driving into Key Largo at Mile Marker 108.


They spent something north of $260 million re-doing The Stretch and they haven't quite finished it yet. Some dude living nearby suggested they paint the median barrier a nice shade of turquoise which everyone resisted. But it seems he insisted a lot and finally they said why not? The result is as you see it and I like it.


The thing about the re-do of The Stretch, all 18 miles of it, is that they didn't rebuild it in four lanes which was an option. There are a couple of passing lanes but in winter especially when you get a few slow pokes holding up the caravan some people get rather impatient, so be warned, that's when you want to use Card Sound Road. Or you can get stuck at 42 miles per hour on the Turquoise Road.


The reason for the two lane new road was hurricane evacuations. Yup, hurricanes! You know how they say the Keys live south of reality...The story is that the state requires the Keys to be able to evacuate residents in the event of a storm approaching within certain limits, twenty four hours I think. The idea was that if they made the stretch four lanes wide more people could be evacuated faster and more development would follow as night follows day. So they made the northbound shoulder wide enough to take traffic in an evacuation and we residents got stuck with a two lane stretch for normal use. Well, bugger.


If you see impatient people passing slow traffic using the special turn lanes you now know to blame hurricane evacuations. So there.

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Mysterious Valois Boulevard

The location of the incident mentioned in this morning's essay is actually quite scenic and pretty, which was why I chose to take a look and bring my camera along. I came across a magnificent four way stop just yards from card Sound Road and to my delight there was a little bridge and a canal dug out of the living rock. Plus a bird (an ibis perchance?) was keeping an eye on things from an exceedingly awkward perch all the while.There was one rather bizarre looking but very functional apartment building overlooking the canal to the north:To the south the canal went sort of nowhere.I couldn't imagine the amount of work that went into digging this massive piece of engineering, and then ending up with no development to justify it. I stumped through the dry grass and spindly trees, wishing my dog were there to enjoy the fun, and reached the edge of this imposing waterway. The bridge to the left is Valois Boulevard while the waterway to the right reaches the tidal waters of the Straits of Florida. Of Houses along its banks there were none to be seen at this end. It seemed deserted.The corner was built up in an extraordinarily elaborate way. It looked almost like the haul out space of a marina or boatyard.So it was I got back in the car and drove to the end of Valois Boulevard where I walked along a little trail to the end of the canal which it turned out was completely closed off from the ocean by a cement barrier."No Fishing In The Canal" was the message stenciled everywhere. Clearly there's no boating and swimming would be an exercise in drowning as there was no way up or down the tall stone walls.The fresh breeze and open waters beyond the cement barrier looked doubly entrancing, liberated from the confines of the mysterious and blocked off canal.

Dagny Johnson Dawn

I discovered this place before I picked up Cheyenne but with a dog this sideshow of a state park is even better. And early on a Spring morning it is truly excellent.There are myriad rules of course. I had roused myself from a fractured slumber before five o'clock that morning and found myself driving through the night to meet a friend suddenly arriving at the Miami airport at a most unfriendly hour. Cheyenne however is the one that needs a walk, and deserves to walk so we stopped our headlong flight at the best place I know in this part of the Keys.It was seven o'clock and the sun was up though not high enough to penetrate the undergrowth of this leafy park. Dagny Johnson has a weird ambiance to it created in part by the wide highways and this bizarre circular gazebo piazza, the creation of someone presumably Dagny, with lots of money and too much time on their hands.I confess, mea culpa, it was the dog's fault I dare say, but we took a trail designated back country permit only. And we had no such permit.
A fine specimen of a yellow Labrador waiting impatiently for the idiot with the camera, but without the permit. This shortcoming weighed heavily on my mind. The place we found in the middle of the woods was as serene as could be, barely illuminated by the sun, the sky a deep cloudless blue.

Cheyenne loves her wilderness puddles and here she was, figuring how to get down to the shore from her rocky promontory. To me it looked like muddy water. To her it looked like a lake of beer.I myself was starting to look like a rather tasty bottle of beer to some of the residents. I killed a few but they leave no welts and barely bother me with their slight stings.I am no longer young, my skin is not elastic. Cheyenne is though, and the eight year old Lab had scrambled down the rocks and was fulfilling all those drinking dreams she had when she was in captivity with her former owners, before they unceremoniously dumped her at the pound.

These fresh water ponds are created by quarrying activities years ago when such environmental degradation was not only permitted, but encouraged.For some reason these wooded scenes put me in mind of the descriptions I have read of Civil War battlefields in the early hours of the morning, the peace and serenity that come before battle. Even though I could hear the occasional car passing on Card Sound Road I felt like I was transported to an earlier century, before the advent of infernal combustion.

And as the sun came up over the trees, dissipating the uncertain early light and replacing it with a golden veil over everything , I thought: "Shit! The airport!"And I looked at the time jerked awake from my reverie and realized we had plenty of time, if we hiked.

So we plunged into the greenery, the sun in our faces, pushing aside the branches and following an indistinct trail through the un-permitted wilderness.

I felt I was marching to the Battle of the Wilderness on this cool fresh morning and it was wonderfully restorative for a drive to Miami. We met other dogs out enjoying the start to the day, more conventionally on the main road through the park.

We chatted about the pleasures of getting dogs from shelters and she remarked on the absence of people usually, so I did rather feel I interrupted her private off leash moment. All dogs were relaxed, (they usually are when not being yanked on by a fearful owner transmitting their fear to the leashed animal who reacts defensively) and the encounter put a final touch on a fine 45 minute detour.Much better that than this:But I got the job done eventually and if I was late to the airport I blame the traffic, not the dog.