Sombrero Beach, Marathon

Cheyenne and I lived alone for more than two weeks while my wife went to see friends in California and spent half a week in New York city with her sister. It was tiresome living life alone, frankly, doing chores, going to work, and even looking after my dog. One tends to forget how organized one must be to live alone. 

But I was never properly alone with those two brown eyes following y every movement and a large yellow tail wagging wildly when I got home at the crack of dawn...So on my day off last week Cheyenne and I took a drive across the Seven Mile Bridge, me to shop at Publix in an effort to keep the kitchen stocked with vaguely edible foods, she to check out Sombrero Beach. Her program was more interesting so I went with her.

I was last here three years ago (!) but I first came with my camera in 2008 and brilliantly messed up my Picasa account and lost some of the pictures...It hasn't changed much over the years and it is still one of the best beaches in the Keys. It's a sad fact that in a world filled with information a lot of people still come to the rocky narrow Keys expecting to see this and being disappointed:

Of course one byproduct of living alone is I am totally disorganized and I did not bring a swimsuit for some reason that escapes me, so we wandered around leashed together like a couple of overdressed idiots on a hot July day. Luckily the park behind the beach is properly shaded, grassy and comfortable. 

Cheyenne felt the need to check all of it out so we did, one flower bed, one pavilion at a time.

 The toilets are vast spacious buildings large enough to rate as McMansions almost, in Key West:

There is a children's playground, there are information boards all over the place offering inquiring minds all sorts of news about the creatures that call the Middle Keys home. 

 There is a certain amount of whimsy here too.

The beach at Bahia Honda State Park is about 45 minutes north of Key West and it is usually where people go for a day at the beach as there is actual sand there. Very nice it is too. However this place is free, dog friendly which Bahia Honda beaches are not and you can eat out, go shopping and even see a movie in town if you feel like it. All modern conveniences in Marathon, the second largest city in the Keys. 

People were in the park exercising alongside my dog and I ambling. The need to carry potable water at all times (no exceptions) might lead you to think this town is a desert but it's not and I am reliably informed water may be obtained in more than one place in the Middle Keys if a passer by is struck by thirst. I am not fond of carrying water as it is heavy and wet and tastes less than delicious when warmed uniformly in my hand.

 I got this rather impressive aerial view of this lovely beach from Marathon's expansive website.

Shopping done we went home, Cheyenne more interested in cleaning her feet than posing in some cute manner for my camera. Irritating dog.

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Sombrero Beach

It was a dark gray day yesterday over the Middle Keys and I was looking for somewhere to walk my dog. Sombrero Beach in Marathon is an oldie but goody so off we went. They've cleaned the place and tarted up the street since I was last here. I like traffic circles but impish they'd use them instead of traffic lights, not as a turn around for a dead end street.


The parking lot is huge and brilliantly laid out alongside the park so for people who are naturally averse to walking, that would be most Americans, cars are never too far from an entrance to the gated park and beach.


And dogs are welcome. Cool! It's too bad owners have to be reminded repeatedly to pick up after their animals.


The sandy beach is decidedly not appetizing on a rainy summer morning but when the weather is right this place will be packed on a weekend. It's got nice swimming and there is a child's playground and the whole thing is wide open and free to all.


The restrooms are clean and there are lots of them. They even provide facilities for the dogs.


The park is nicely laid out with winding paths and mature trees and looks good to the eye.


This is a really nice park in a town with not much going for it visually.


Marathon's coastline is pretty severe and uninteresting. There are no indentations or islands you can call destinations or even lumps of land to break up the skyline. Look out to sea and it's all water. Except for this thing:


Sombrero Beach is full of signboards explaining and illustrating wild life and attractions. There's the light house on the horizon, barely breaking up the straight line.


Sombrero Beach is full of landscaping and care, something that is horribly absent from the rest of the city.


Marathon is a wide spot in Highway One, ten miles of no landscaping, urban planning or any sort of eye catching beauty. It's miles of strip malls, light industry and giant cement poles carrying the electricity from Miami to Key West.


There's a Publix, a K-Mart, a fabulous city marina and Sombrero Beach, the nicest public park and free swimming beach in the Keys. Why no one in Marathon wants the rest of the city to live up to the promise of Sombrero Beach is beyond me.


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Sombrero Beach

Marathon is a city I have wanted to photograph but I have lost my nerve. I don't know it very well, I don't eat out there much or shop, I've been to the movies there a couple of times. I guess its greatest draw for me is the convenient layout of the Home Depot and the grappa I can buy, Italian brandy, from the super slick deli and liquor store wedged between the gym and the Post Office on Highway One. Because we work in Key West even though my wife and I live equidistant between the two cities, we shop mostly in Key West, not Marathon.The fact is, Marathon lacks the cute factor, as you can see in the photo above. It's a city incorporated almost a decade ago on a wide spot along Highway One, a four lane strip mall with none of the Old Town, greenery, or big city pretensions of Key West. It is an excessively long strip mall and compressing an essay about it into 20 pictures is more than I can manage. So, I have decided, like the man faced with the problem of how to eat an elephant, to chew it off one piece at a time. First the beach, later the highway:

Sombrero Beach Road runs due south from the city's main traffic light on the Highway, there is a Bank of America on one corner and a Tom Thumb inconvenience store on the other, and from there its a two mile ride through Marathon's more chic neighborhood, past the High School to the beach.

The road dead ends into a large parking lot lined on one side with massive homes:

And on the other by the beach itself and it is a fine beach, by Keys standards:

In creating this recreation area Marathon has gone all out, including lawns, picnic areas, clean usable toilets and its even dog friendly, provided they are leashed and you clean up after them. Its filled with environmental messages about turtles and it offers views out across the Straits of Florida, almost to Cuba. Little wonder its a popular place, with young people:

Older people, or perhaps just more restful people we might say:Residentially challenged people:And swimmers:

So all these Middle Keys people are enjoying all these rather decent amenities in a free park the like of which Key West cannot boast:

All of which is a tremendous encouragement to stay and linger awhile, which I may well come and do later when school is back in session. Instead, photos taken, water fountain drunk from and its back in the saddle again to the next self imposed assignment:

Under a sunny August sky.