Driving Up The Keys

I spent my last day in Florida in the car, I said goodbye to Key West with a coffee and sandwich at Kim’s Kuban on North Roosevelt, 

…and meandered my way out of town, and I was sorry to be going so soon. There is always some nostalgia for me in thinking about the place that has come nearest to being home for me in a life spent traveling. I like Key West and I’m grateful to the city for giving me a place to call home even if I can’t afford to live in a town that keeps creating more limitations in an effort to cope with its popularity. 

Indeed it seemed sensible to drive north early for a late night flight on Saturday as Highway One on the weekend could easily suffer any kind of road closure or accident. I remember when Walmart threatened to show up here and I was certain the garden center wouldn’t survive. Happily I was wrong:

This relic of a bygone age has survived too, always there when I rode in to work of an evening for night shift:

And this restaurant that I never seem to see open. I used to meet a friend here for lunch quite often but only when Robert met me there did I find it open. Weird that. 

I remember too the NIMBY fuss residents made in Big Coppitt when Habitat proposed building a few stilt homes for low income people.  The homes got built and there they are and Big Coppitt is none the worse for them. 

The Circle K used to be open  twenty four hours before Hurricane Irma landed in 2017. I used to stop there sometimes to take a break in the middle of the night when I worked a half shift on overtime. Two o’clock in the morning on warm tropical nights and no traffic on the highway, just me and my Bonneville motorcycle. 

I took my Cuban sandwich and coffee to the beach at Boca Chica next to the Naval Air Station runway. 

Irma did a number down here but the trees have grown back and it’s a nice place to admire the water which is too shallow for swimming. People living in their cars spend days here too, moved along at night as sleeping isn’t allowed of course. 

Suburban living in Tamarac Park. 



And the Highway One launch ramp flooded of course. 

Key Deer habitat extends to within 17 miles of Key West on Sugarloaf Key so they are doing well it seems. 

Rusty and I used to come down here quite a bit on old State Road 939 past the Sugarloaf KOA, now a spiffy hotel and campground resort built up after Hurricane Irma.

The owner of a large estate at the end of the road used to go ballistic if people parked where the signs say “no motorized vehicles” so they started a campaign to block the turning area. I never parked down there anyway and Rusty and I would walk past the angry man’s mansion wondering at how much stress it takes to live like that. Nothing much has changed, at least outwardly except the rocks are bigger. 

Fat Albert still monitoring the skies and waters toward Cuba. 

And the end of Blimp Road on Cudjoe at the boat ramp near Fat Albert is also pretty damp this time of year. 

Our old house off Spanish Main used to be all pepto bismol pink and the new owners are seeking a more tasteful gray and white look. 

The old Bahia Honda Bridge is doing a titanic and is crumbling steadily into the salt water and it’s a shame. Inevitable I suppose but there it is. I drove across it on my Vespa the first time I visited Key West. 

Seven Mile Bridge fishing. 

The new adult education building in Marathon was promised after Hurricane Irma and in a fine sense of ironic timing it was opened on Layne’s last day of teaching before she retired. It’s a lovely corner of the public library and is quite different from her warehouse classroom she used to teach in at the high school. 

I had decided to spend my afternoon in the Everglades so I stopped in Florida City at my favorite fruit stand. 

A strawberry milk shake to fortify me for a potentially wet afternoon in South Florida’s swamps. 

It didn’t look promising but fortune does favor the bold and my rented Nissan Sentra had excellent windshield wipers. 

Miami And Packing

I went to Miami yesterday, and yes it was another drive to the storage locker. I took a few photo albums, some books and our supplies of hurricane dried foods, the disaster foods that you keep when you live in a disaster prone area. Our idea is to have them available should we have to do some van hunkering at some distant point. I'm counting on Covid burning out it's welcome by next year. I suppose there might be another lockdown about something else at some later date. Color me cynical but having long life food on the shelf just seems sensible these days.

After the storage locker my wife sent me to Trader Joe's to drop off some overbought food. She was organized until our planned departure next April but when we moved the date up we found ourselves over stocked so she said get some money back, there's no room for all of it in the van. Boy I got told off as the manager said normally they don't take back stuff that was "overbought" but I guess he took pity on my helplessness and this once I got $54 back on my credit card. Jolly good.

Going to Trader Joe's is a a bit of a pain most of the year as they don't have much parking in Miami but a weekday in September is a good time to go as the annoying snowbirds are still Up North, probably enjoying green woodlands in places like Michigan in 70 moderate degrees. Bastards.  I don't envy them one bit even when I'm dripping sweat for the mere crime of breathing in Miami  this time of year.

Next stop wa picking up my glasses in The Falls shopping mall.

I like the tropical walkways but I am not a fan of shopping malls in general. I left home at 5:30 in the morning, abandoning my disconsolate boy watching me mournfully from the car port,  and I got here just after they opened at ten so I was doing well for time.

I walked the length of The Falls as my wife wasn't there to point out the best parking spots but I enjoyed the stroll, even past the empty children play area. I don't think the poster was meant ironically but it looked kind of funny to me stuck outside the playground- precisely the place to get just such a bump.

A proper tropical mall:

I was really dim the first time I came to drop off my glasses as I forgot to drop off my spare frame...so I got that done this time! I guess I'll be back in another week to pick them up! Nothing like creating work for myself...

The long walk back to the car...

Followed by the long drove home, following lines of slow moving cars, dodging thunder storms and ready for lunch by the time I pulled off onto Spanish Main and a small brown dog waiting in the car port for me.

Up next: getting ready for the yard sale this weekend. Oh boy I am such crap as a salesman I'd prefer to be flogged with barbed wire than to sell stuff. Maybe I do miss sitting at the 911 phone waiting for calls...

Underneath The Arches

The pigeons looked like they were having an important meeting thus ruining my plan to take a walk on an Old Flagler Bridge alongside the main highway. I hustled Rusty under the bridge.

I do this from time to time when I feel his walk has been inadequate or I want to see if I can find a new perspective. If there is a bicycle parked nearby I don't bother as I don't feel like shuffling through some homeless guy's living room.

The big white pipe alongside the 1982 bridge is the water pipe from Homestead bringing reliable water supplies to the Keys. In an effort to reduce salt water intrusion they mix 4% seawater with the fresh water pumped out of the Florida Aquifer. You can't taste it but the idea is to reduce consumption or fresh water which would make way for the ocean to penetrate Florida's fragile fresh water table. With so few people in the Keys it hardly seems worth worrying about compared o the millions on the mainland but we must all do our bit, I suppose.

Crawling out along the pipe is discouraged as you can see in the picture above.

Next door the cement bridges built for the 1912 opening of the railroad from Miami are still standing. They are restoring many of them to create a bike path and fishing bridges the length of the Keys.

A houseboat tucked away in the sort of perfect solitude some people hope for in the Keys:

An isolated house on the western side of Crane Boulevard on Sugarloaf Key:

Stout rails designed to stop cars plummeting off the straight level well marked highway. They do that you know, from time to time people drive into the mangroves, too many hours at work, alcohol or marveling at the scenery off they go for a drive in the bushes...

Gratuitous Rusty picture, actually my hand, but there he was looking for land crabs and happily not finding any. They hurt when they pinch your nose..