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.
