Cedar Key Downtown

My first stop in Cedar Key's business district was at the Police Station for two purposes. I wanted to exchange patches, a quaint police practice, to add one more to our department's collection. My wife also wanted to know where we should have lunch, and there's was a very astute reply, politically impeccable in a very small town. Anywhere's good on Dock Street, they said or on the corner of Highway 24 and Second Street there is Tony's. So we socked Tony's away for consideration as Dock Street seemed to be the place tourists would flock to, and took a tour, bearing in mind some changes have been made to traffic flow.
My wife insisted Dock Street was two way from her more recent visit last winter so I pulled through the launch ramp area and dutifully stopped at the new No Entry signs. Oh she said and we turned around to look for somewhere to park, of which there is an ample supply in August in Cedar Key as there is in Key West.I found further evidence of the late lamented boom years in Cedar Key's fishing pier. This was an elaborate structure, a public work of surprising sophistication in such a small town. I was more convinced than ever that my wife's assessment was correct. Some expert grant writer had retired to Cedar Key and offered his/her services to raise money for city projects.Dock Street is a hundred yards long slightly offset from the rest of the island and joined at each end to the rest of the city by bridges. It is a row of wooden structures each involved in selling whatever knick knacks a tourist feels they cannot do without.It was never my intention to go shopping in Cedar Key but apparently I was alone in my eccentricity. People were on the hunt:These women stopped to ask me if I had seen Jack Riepe and I answered, No, why? What did he do? and my wife cuffed me. Not one of them offered to raise their shirts for me so I'm pretty sure I misunderstood them. Dock Street has some pretty corners.Tourism was not bustling, perhaps Europeans haven't yet heard of Cedar Key. The owner of this store was taking the time to refresh her display and appeared a little offended when I wondered if she might take a little time off in summer.With enough window shopping under my belt to last the rest of the trip we took off again to see what's what, and immediately hit upon another elaborate public works project. We parked alongside a golf cart at the city's swimming beach. The man resting in the background was renting out beach apparatus:

The waters of the Gulf Of Mexico are placid and warm (86 degrees) but they are very dark and tannin colored which makes swimming unappealing to me. And across the street we have what appear to be rental condos with rental golf carts all ready to...rent:The all purpose golf cart, gasoline or electric, these are the mainstay of the island:

I stayed at the Island Hotel on Second Street when I last visited Cedar Key almost two decades ago and I remember it fondly, with wide decks all round upstairs and rocking chairs to hang out in. It looks much the same today as it probably did when it was built in 1859.Cedar Key has the air of a small village and with a thousand full time residents that's hardly surprising. I guess I was a bit surprised by how parochial the place seemed. Cedar Key is pretty, and unsophisticated and very rural. It's part of Levy County which puts it in that northern swath of Florida that some people think resembles Alabama more than the Sunshine State. Which I suppose would be true if Florida were just the beaches and condos of the southern coasts. Florida is also an enormous area of open woodlands and fields, full of country people of conservative mien. Count Cedar key in with that lot and don't expect Fantasy Fest or gay bars to be on the itinerary if you come here. This really is isolated living at a slow pace. Even The Bank looks cute rather than simply purposeful: And there is a drive through window in case you were concerned about having to get out and walk:We usually stop in local grocery stores when we travel but we didn't bother for some reason this time. I limited myself to snapping a quick picture before we headed in to lunch around the corner at Tony's Famous Clam Chowder Place. This is Cedar Key's scooter rental fleet:Tony's looks the part in some sort of historic building, called the Hale Building and I am reliably informed it is a fresh young thing compared to the hotel as it was built in 1880 fully twenty years later.My wife and I have a habit of trying odd things on the menu when we come across them. So here we ordered deep fried green beans which were crispy and were offered with ranch dressing for dunking. My wife woofed all the spicy dressing and I left her to it as she demands peppers with almost anything. She left it to me to order the main dish, and as we didn't know anything about the place I/we went with something safe in a seaside town; a fish sandwich. And because she let me order the whole shebang I went with the weirdest side which were baked beans and didn't seem the least bit compatible with fish:
The grouper was fried but it was well done.The beans were rated excellent by my wife who thought they might actually be home made and so Tony's passed muster. Naturally I forgot to photograph our cup of clam chowder which apparently won first prize this year at some Chowder Cook Off in Newport Rhode Island, which is a big deal apparently. The soup really was good, all creamy and chunky and full of clam flavor as chowder should be. I guess it really did earn first prize. Because I forgot to photograph the white soup I had to make an artistic photographic effort to show the empty bowl and the delivery golf cart in the background.

They even ship their chowder if the destination is further than a golf cart can manage. And across lay the street the store of my dreams: However the grand curmudgeon himself was not in residence. A neighbor saw me looking in at the windows and came over, small town style, to kindly let me know he probably wasn't coming back as his wife had had a major operation.
The bottom of the sign carried a message advising that he thought his wife's illness was more important than his business. Which seemed like such an obvious message I wondered why he had to mention at all. Perhaps he has a truly monumental reputation as the curmudgeon to end all curmudgeons. I hope his wife has solid health insurance.

And so, full of chowder, fish and beans we took off, heading south this time as Cedar Key had been our northern terminus in the Grand Florida Tour of 2009.

Cedar Key Streets

Cedar Key has a population of a thousand people, which is rather fewer than the 25,000 permanent inhabitants of Key West. The city is two square miles, where Key West is twelve. And yet the proportions offer similar variations on mainland living. Here one is asked to share the road with golf carts:The homes remind me of the wooden cabins of the Pacific Northwest, under the arching oak trees:

It's hard to say what this town would be like in winter, busier no doubt, but on an August Sunday morning Cedar Key was as quiet as the grave and quite delightful. These streets are set on a small rise, this is a hilly town by Florida standards, and covered in greenery:

On the waterfront the stilt homes sprout and they are quite tall, even by keys standards. Cedar Key has had some notable hurricane strikes over the years, battered in 1950 by the misnamed Hurricane Easy that wouldn't make up it's mind to make landfall. The waters of the Gulf of Mexico get pretty hot in summer and this coastline is a hurricane magnet.

A lot of people think the Keys are vulnerable, and so they are, but the Gulf Coast is like the bottom of a bag to me, the place where storms land when they are at their strongest. In the end of course it just takes one storm to ruin your life. But there are some hardy survivors around:And Cedar Key is not apparently immune to the heady developments of the boom years, with it's own share of McMansions:

There is no getting away from the water even if one wanted to on this sized island:"Look!" my wife said, "there's a monster." And so there was:

In Key West rental bicycles and scooters are identified by the placards they carry on their baskets. In Cedar Key rental golf carts have signs on their roofs:And they can be seen all over the island:We drove from one end to the other, which is a about two miles. In the middle there is a bridge off to the south...
...which leads through the sandy pine trees......to the George T Lewis Airport. Which looked pretty much like the Sugarloaf Key runway to me. I suppose it was too much to hope for a terminal and a control tower:
I expect it's a great convenience for snowbirds and their private planes:This Key West mansion is for sale, stilts and all, for nearly $700,000 with an open water view:

And a neighbor who is clearly not someone who has read the sixth verse of the sixth chapter of the Gospel according to St Matthew.Thus it is that Cedar Key's downtown is the last piece of the island to reveal itself... next.

Tropical Storm Ana

It's been a few days that stuff has been churning in the Atlantic basin, though finally this morning I noticed the National Hurricane Center has upgraded an on-again, off-again depression and called it a tropical storm. The yellow blob to the left of the map is an "area of disorganized cloudiness" according to the National Hurricane Center, but from where I'm sitting it looks organized enough and very wet:

Of course this is my weekend off work, in my alternating life style, so we shall be staying indoors, not melting and wondering why it's so dark inside our little house. In fact the little red cross marked "THREE" is much more interesting on the hurricane tracking chart. Checking my link "Hurricane Center" on the left hand side of the page, Low Number 3 shows potential to wreak much more havoc on Florida than does little Tropical Storm Ana at this stage. Even though, if disorganized weather can bring wind, thunder and copious rain, enough to wash the car...

...then a Tropical storm has the capacity to inflict damage. I find people often get too hung up on the diagrams and the projected paths and all the science of hurricane prognostication. Anyway it's all too early to tell, but this is a reminder that this really is hurricane season and even though the Pacific Basin is up to the letter G (Guillermo) we are still only looking at Ana. As my buddy Robert says, this year, so far it's the Pacific Basin's turn to be Nature's kicking boy. Personally I like the respite from watering...

...even though this is the time of year the garden is fallow. Hurricanes or not we are humans and we have made plans, my wife and I and we have five Earth Boxes ready for planting, after Hurricane Season. From her lips to God's ear.

Marshlands

Florida Highway 24 runs straight as a die for twenty eight miles (42 kilometers) from the hamlet of Otter Creek on US Highway 19. The road runs between massive forests and looks far more lonely and isolated than US Highway One. This sense of isolation makes Cedar Key seems like more of an island than any of the island sin the Florida Keys, and even though the distance run isn't that far, for some reason it feels much further as the car purrs along well over the 55mph (90km/h) speed limit.
The sense of isolation here is accentuated when you learn the story of the Rosewood massacre, a story that was fictionalized in a film titled Rosewood, based on the story that took place in the early 20th century. There is no sign of the African American town destroyed by rioting whites who razed the community in response to an alleged rape of a local white woman by a black man. Google maps shows Rosewood and Sumner, the location of the sawmill that was a base for the attacks, but neither place appears along the Highway. A colleague of mine from Gainesville reminded me this was the location of the incident and he says there is a plaque marking the incident. At the time I drove by I had no clue. Cedar Key is actually a group of islands apparently, and the whole place is on the end of a short causeway from the mainland. The city is 2 square miles in size (5 sq/km) of which half is apparently water,the other half is a grouping of sandy hummocks. That half the city is water is easy to believe as you approach the town.
Clamming is the fishery around here and there is lots of real, commercial fishing underway. The local boats, designed to navigate the shallow, reed filled estuaries around cedar key look very unusual to my eye. They have steep pointed bows where the helmsman stands, and right behind him is the large outboard motor which drives these contraptions through the water. The back of the boat is dedicated to fishing equipment:

The view across the waters surrounding cedar Key is completely different to what I am used to in the Keys, the waters are protected by all the outcroppings of land and marsh, and on a sunny day the view is quite delightful:There is one road onto main island and from there one can take a turn into downtown or a right turn into the hinterland of the island. The streets are definitely not tropical looking:

The highest point in the city is 28-feet (9 meters) and once included a prehistoric burial ground. Nowadays the city cemetery is a charming, oak and pine covered hill:The view from the cemetery is worth a stop as from here one can look back across the water at the houses of the little city:

They make viewing the inland waters around the city easy with a massive new boardwalk across the marshes:It was hot as blazes out there, and no trees grow in the water so we found relief at the far end where a few scrub palms were growing out of the sand. I can only imagine how popular this place must be in the winter months: My wife's shoulder was in the early stages of recovery from her surgery and she was walking around with a big furry sling which didn't help keep her at all cool. One of the least appealing parts of Cedar key for me is the color of the water. It looks pretty enough in pictures but the water is actually a dark muddy color form all the tannin and if, like me, swimming in the relatively clear Keys waters is appealing, this estuarine Gulf water color is off putting.

It's nice to see that the magnificent views around here carry their own blight, just like at home. I've heard people wonder why abandoned boats don't get removed and the problem is one of cost. Its expensive to remove them because then they have to get cut up and put in a landfill. Then some other dork abandons a boat and the never-ending cycle continues. It's also time consuming because the authorities can't just grab the boats, they are private property and there is a long and involved process to have them declared abandoned. So there they sit:Not all boats are dumped though:

I quite liked the look of this round house especially as lawn care seems likely to be at a minimum:

For a town of a thousand inhabitants cedar key must have some pretty capable grant writers volunteering with the city.The level of public works infrastructure is quite surprising. There was some label about death and destruction and hazardous behavior to do with this structure. We ignored them.

We took a quick gallop back to the car, cranked the air conditioning and cooled off with a quick tour through the cemetery.And from here we headed into the bright lights of the City of Cedar Key.