Some people keep whining about how Key West is changing. Well, I'm pretty sure change has been happening all the time on this tiny island, and I've read the old newspaper reports of peoples' apprehensions about the railroad coming in 1912, and again when the new road was completed in 1938. Both events were going to change the island forever- and they weren't wrong on that! I'll bet the residents were none too happy when the US Army decided to throw together a pile of bricks at the entrance to the harbor and call it a fort. By the time the Civil War rolled around Fort Zachary Taylor was a well established island hanging just off the city of Key West itself.
Back then, the fort was actually much more like its bigger counterpart called Fort Jefferson, some 70 miles west of Key West, because Fort Zachary was also built out on the water yet connected to the main island by a very long wooden causeway. Nowadays we are used to the fact that Fort Zachary is surrounded by dirt, even if it is only fill, lumpy rocky dredged materials from the harbor bottom mostly, that have been built up and around the fort itself. That expanse of weedy lawn is all rubble, added long after the Fort sprouted here.
Fort Zachary became home to a company of Union artillery at the outbreak of the Civil War and when Tallahassee seceded, the officer in charge, a Captain James Brannan surreptitiously marched his 44 artillerymen across from the town barracks to the Fort and they locked themselves inside the building and kept the flag flying for the Union. That was it for Key West and the city, despite some Bubba grumblings (notably the still extant Bethel family), they stayed with the Union for the rest of the conflict, helping support the blockade of the Confederacy. 
However its Rodman smooth bore canon never were fired in anger and today they lie around looking good and adding to the ambiance. As do their balls, as it were:
Fort Zachary forms part of the State Parks system and there is a fee charged at the entrance, which is why I have an annual pass, I like coming down that much. Sunsets are beautiful here illuminating all the components of the Fort no matter how obscure their purpose, like this fixed pulley with no ropes attached:
And the buildings themselves glow, as with pride while the dying sun slips them into darkness:
Visitors get the run of the place, nominally till 5pm but if its just a matter of climbing the steep stairs to view the sun plunge into the straits of Florida that's what these walls are ideal for:
Visitors can wander the parade ground and imagine themselves in here in the Spring enjoying a concert under the stars, perhaps. Most likely not as freezing cold as it was for the wife and I, last time we tried that about a year ago. It was great fun despite the bone numbing cold of the north wind whistling across the infernal parade ground! We huddled under inadequate blankets and listened to Arturo Sandoval blow his heart, and his cheeks, out right here:
In the distance one can spot the sterility of Sunset Key isolated across the harbor, another new arrival, much newer than Fort Zach, in the town of Key West. These days the Fort provides a breath of fresh air for city dwellers who can wander the grounds at will in perfect safety and enjoy the paths that loop mysteriously giving the place the air of being larger than it is, a necessary attribute for a park on a small island-within-an-island:
And in between the trees and the shrubbery the park service with an impish sense of humor allowed some pirates to take root, rejoicing over their booty, just outside the walls and the moat of the old Fort. Clearly someone got the Black Spot!
The Fort's walls are impressively thick and no doubt in the era before rifled cannon would have done a fine job. The moat too, but as it is the defenses now make the place look gorgeous in the dying light of the sub-tropical day:
Outside the fort's domain the 21st century intrudes with sunset cruises, ferries and private pleasure boats rushing back and forth across the entrance to the harbor, under the watchful eye of an iron statue on the ramparts, as well as a couple of tourists.
And eventually a ranger comes by in his golf cart as the sun starts to truly disappear, to remind us that in "ten minutes" the park will be closing, and reluctantly we pile into the car (we have friends visiting and the motorcycle is on hiatus for the weekend: dreary but necessary), and we leave behind a place silent and dark and cold enough to house the Prisoner of Zenda, or a man or two in an Iron Mask:
This is your friendly neighborhood Fort, a place to meander and meditate, to bring a picnic, or a bottle of wine as Key Westers would in defiance of all and any rules, to sit and to think, or not to think at all and just to enjoy. What a great place to be a kid again, Fort Zachary Taylor, far and away the best, most imaginative place to spend an evening's sunset in Key West.
I was determined to make the ride to Pure Triumph 170 miles north, a fun trip, a relaxing excursion instead of a road pounding punishment. Which meant a stop at Denny's Latin Cafe next to Starbucks on Key Largo.
Chorizo and eggs and loud Latin music while I read my daily Citizen. I confess I lingered over the con leche and only eventually got out to bask in the sun's warmth which basking led me to remove the liner from my mesh armored jacket. The roads are straight but South Florida in January is hard to beat. 
This backroad, photographed in October shortly after I got the Bonneville, winds through tall greenery with sweeping bends, the surface is smooth and police presence is rare so 70 or 75 in a 55 is entirely doable. A refreshing interlude before the hum drum 50 miles of turnpike to Fort Lauderdale, which I took mostly at 80 or 90 miles an hour with one notable burst just clipping 100 on the optimistic speedo. At those speeds the Triumph was perfect, smooth stable and still very responsive. It may be designed as a head-turning tourer but this retro rides the freeway very comfortably.
I actually had a good time at Pure Triumph- they took the Bonneville I sat around for a couple of very relaxing hours sprawled on a leather couch reading English motorcycle magazines (Bike isn't too impressed by the Bonneville in hard riding twisties, but they are hooligans anyway) until it was time to fork over $317 and get going again. 
All bad things eventually come to an end and the four lanes of Highway 27 soon opened up to me, straight of course, across the edge of the Everglades where development hasn't yet quite reached and sugar cane remains to the north. Highway 27 eventually branches onto Krome Avenue:
And the theme of lonely marshy highway continues south:
Then we had the second chaotic moment of the day, inbetween the nurseries and market farms and isolated homesteads and gas stations, a wreck. 
I was stuck at a light thinking about how people around here grow palm trees for sale and what do they do with them when they get this big, and this many, when I realised we were being diverted around a problem up ahead. 
The diversion led us to the edge of the known world and after we were back on Krome Avenue I stopped to wipe some of the dust off my freshly cleaned Bonneville. 
The Rescue guy was telling Univision two pick ups hit head on at 1:30pm probably driving too fast. 
Yeah, no kidding, from my amateurish standpoint I'd say speed was a factor in this vehicle compression. The whole interview scene made me glad my days as a reporter are long over. Talk about trivialization. I mean this is the day Raul Castro outpolled his brother in Santiago de Cuba, and I'm guessing this story came first in Miami's local news. Another reason I don't have TV at home.
There is for me something fascinating about the agriculture along Krome Avenue. The state is threatening to widen the highway and if people insist on disassembling their cars like this I suppose the state will have no choice but to do it. I like Krome as it is, a straight shot through the lives of the Mexican and Central American fieldworkers, a place of abundance- of vegetables if not wages, all on display, impossible to avoid unless you stick to the freeways and turnpikes.
Also one might miss a hand written sign offering Central American lunches, and this stop was just what I needed to push back the thought of wrecks, fieldwork and a hot sticky helmet.
A pupusa or two, a Salvadoran lunch of a thick tortilla filled with cheese or meat grilled till molten and eaten with a mayonnaise-free coleslaw.
Salvadorans eat them by stuffing the slaw inside the pupusa, but me, I'm a "gormet" and I like my flavors separate on the fork...a plate for $5 and all the shade I could use. Enough to make a tired motorcyclist feel like a capitalist exploiter of the toiling masses.
Onward ever onward and a couple more irritating traffic lights and I'm on the main drag through Homestead, a pretty little town with churches, doctor's offices and restaurants, looking like a palm filled Midwestern burg. I shall have to come up and spend a day here with my camera. Meanwhile its back to Card Sound Road and the Florida Keys. Back where I started, sunup to sundown.
I survived, I thrived, on another trip to the crazy mainland.
My wife and I frequently bring guests to this area to check out the Key deer which lurk around here in relatively large numbers. They like to cross the main road, weirdly enough, at the "Deer Crossing" sign on the street. When we brought Bruce and Celia to this area the deer stayed away so we took a walk instead down this path I had never previously visited. 
It was most pleasant strolling in the sun, mosquito-free and ambling while talking and peering into the undergrowth checking desultorily for elusive deer. After a while my wife cried uncle, her arm in its brace was giving her fits and that left Bruce and I to trudge on like the intrepid explorers we would like to be. As it was Bruce yielded next, anxious to return to the women resting in the car, so we turned back before the trail was done.
There were signs of life- human life at least, as marked in the mud. When the four of us were walking we saw some tread marks in the muddy spots, which appeared to be bicycle treads but I was pretty sure there some fresh marks and they looked like those left by an all terrain vehicle, and they hadn't been there when we had walked en masse.
I might have expected to hear the sound of a motor, or voices or smelled exhaust but the day was unsullied and untrammeled by human intervention- except mine! I walked and I walked, turning corners and forgetting to check how long I'd been gone, but I guesstimated a mile and half walk to the end which came upon me suddenly in the form of a wide open space bathed in sunlight:
There was remarkably little trash along the trail anywhere, which one would like to think indicated a high level of consciousness among hikers on No Name Key, but rather I think, speaks to the low volume of traffic around here.
On my way out of this entanglement of mud, dead twigs and copious cobwebs I found the elusive Key deer. Actually she found me, and started back into the bushes with a most un-deer like thundering crack of breaking tree limbs. Then she paused to take in some refreshment and I nailed her:
Returning to the theme of human intervention this area was where Alpha 66 trained for the Bay of Pigs and I wondered if they might have been doing their military shenanigans right here. It had always struck me as preposterous to think that the counter revolutionaries could train in these flat lands for an invasion of a mountainous island like Cuba, but funnily enough I was reminded of a spot on the north coast of that island where my wife and I were blown in my sailboat by a storm on a trip from Mexico to Key West. The dogs didn't much enjoy it but I took them for "walks" through the mangroves in areas that looked just like this:
Those prickly nematodes sticking up out of the mud were just like those of the black mangroves in the offshore islands of Cuba. Well, its a tenuous connection but it seemed significant while I was there, in the middle of nowhere in No Name Key. 
When Bruce and Celia came back to the Keys for a weekend visit they were most keen to sink their fangs into a cheese toast once again at the Five Brothers Deli on Ramrod Key. I was attempting to record the immortal moment on my Nikon and got a pretty poor shot of Celia. Bruce started laughing, pointing out how she looked like someone caught on a security camera; with that thought in mind I present the image here, as unflattering as it may be hoping earnestly Bruce gets into trouble:
Bruce and Celia are easy guests and fell comfortably under the spell my wife's latest incarnation, that of tour guide. So off we went at breakneck speed revisiting Bruce and Celia's old haunts from when they lived on their sailboat in Key West. First the Arts and Crafts Fair on Whitehead Street:
Which was where my wife snagged a couple of earrings and a picture frame and Celia bartered her life for a watch band. As Celia wandered from booth to booth it was Bruce's turn to look gormless.
We tromped across town and tried the new Indian place on Duval, lacking in ambiance perhaps but the food met our standards. We skipped across the street from India Cafe and laid into the almost thirty flavors offered by Flamingo Crossing. Celia looks a good deal less gormless when she's lapping up a chocolate laden cone, than she does when impersonating someone caught on a security camera.
Then with sunset rapidly approaching we took off for the southernmost point-the one at Fort Zachary is as good as any other point:
Our little tour of the Fort inspired me to wander off and take a few pictures for a future diary entry.
The entourage apparently didn't miss me: 
Then we dragged B and C to Seven Fish which dinner went across a treat and from there to the Waterfront Playhouse for a drop of play acting by pros of a Saturday night. Tuesdays with Morrie was the offering and I found myself a tad disturbed to realise I had most of Morrie's life lesson already worked out on my own. It was an affecting performance.
Then we repaired to Stock Island for lunch at Hog fish where we took a drive and admired the state of deshabille of this island nearest Key West. Bruce depressed me as he checked out the impending development: he decided immediately the City of Key West will be annexing Stock Island and I suppose he's right, only I fear annexation as it would make my job harder. It's all about me, face it.
From there we lined up in a howling north wind to partake of a fundraiser for the Monroe Association of Retarded Citizens, known as the Marc House. The event was held at the Pier House in lovely waterfront sunshine chilled by the blisteringly cold wind:
A dozen chefs cooked like crazy for us and we ate and voted and ate some more. Robert, occasionally mentioned in this blog was among those standing around in the cold. "Oh Robert," Celia said as I introduced him. "You really do exist!" And so, here he is stuffing his face on a chocolate burrito from Finnegan's Wake:
I quizzed our guests and we got enough votes to bring the tour to a close with an unplanned trip to the Tropic Cinema:
Where we were met by a warming cup of Zabar's coffee in the lobby (Bruce is the one with the hat, shading him from...the indoor sun?) followed by a showing of Atonement, a film Celia fondly expected to be a nice heart warming chick flick.
Not exactly; this was a British take on love and misery and death, a suitable follow up to the saccharine story of Tuesdays with Morrie. From there home to bed, cowering under the blankets as the persistent north wind howled and temperatures plunged to around 64 degrees.
Its weird to me, to want to retire to a place that freezes regularly, that is colder than hell and that exists around 7,000 feet above sea level. "Its dry" Bruce says mouthing off all the time about how humidity is bad for him. It must be true even if he is full of crap, they seem to be thriving on a diet of New Mexico. Which is all very well, but it's Key West that has chickens in the streets, not snow: 
and Celia is so sweet and innocent she actually clucks at the chickens and finds them charming. She should have taken a couple home with her, they'd probably be smarter company than Bruce who forgot his shoes on my porch.
How do you take off for a day of travel across country without your shoes? Only God and Bruce know the answer to that. I'm sure he'll make up some totally unbelievable crap about why they got left behind probably because its not cold enough in Santa Fe to require footwear. He really does believe his own crap where I refuse to no matter how funny it may be.