Key West Mobility

Wandering around downtown I was thinking about how people get around in Key West. Years ago I was getting on my scooter on Duval Street and some  loud person was telling out of town friends that all you need to get around in Key West is a scooter. Which strictly speaking is not true if you have any desire to go anywhere out of town...but there are lots of them parked everywhere and for free, so they are a good deal.

There are some people who pack their life onto a bicycle or onto a trailer and tow it with a bicycle. Bicycles are popular too of course on a flat island and as you can see pretty much ignore the traffic rules as often as they can.

There are bike racks all over the place and they are often filled with bicycles that to all intents and purposes appear abandoned, rusty, flat  tires, missing seats and stuff like that. And some sport fancy luggage racks, fresh from the winery:

I noticed fancy new street painting in front of the Half Shell Raw bar. Cheyenne seemed intent on inspecting it but that's just how she walks:

The other way to get around, nit surprisingly is by dinghy. For people who live across the water from Key West the dinghy docks at Key West Bight near Turtle Kraals are indispensable. They pay a small fee by the day week or month and have a relatively safe place to leave their boats:

Some people park them behind the mother ship:

Re-cycling at Key West Bight, a play on words when taking pictures of cycles...

Another Key West recycler, not as efficient as Cheyenne but still:

Like I said the bike racks get pretty disheveled in daily use:

Don't do what locals do, is what I keep telling visitors, as you never know what privileges they have that you don't. Case in point:

And if all else fails walk around key West and when at Publix you can get one of these oddities as you walk round the grocery store:

Frankly I think walking is one of the best ways to get around town as you will see more and be truly free of traffic constraints. 

Long Key State Park

First posted in April 2009 still worth a visit! And I drive by it quite frequently and don't take/have the time to stop! Silly me.

Were I to ask someone to name three state parks in the Florida Keys, I have an idea the answer might be, Bahia Honda, John Pennekamp (especially if they dive) and most likely Fort Zachary Taylor if they frequent Key West. I use the annual State Parks Pass to explore as many of the parks as often as I can as it allows free access. It costs something like $85 per calendar year for the pass while a day ticket for one person is $3.50 at the park entrance or $6 for a car. Ironically two people on two motorcycles thus cost more than four in a car!The Monroe County stamp on the pass is applied by parks in the county to allow free entry to the parks in the Keys because that stamp on the pass costs five extra dollars. If you have a parks card without the stamp you pay 50 cents to get into Monroe County parks. Aren't we special in the Fabulously Expensive Florida Keys!Long Key State Park is at or around Mile marker 67 just south of the City of Layton (see my essay of January 17th 2008, http://conchscooter.blogspot.com/search?q=layton), and it is in the pantheon of second class State Parks in the Keys just because they tend to be less well known. I like it a lot and on my first visit to the Keys in 1981 I stayed at a campsite on the beach, such as it is and used it as my base for exploring further. Probably one reason why Long Key suffers second class status is because it doesn't have a beach though it has a massively extended waterfront for a park a thousand acres in size.The park is long and thin like it's namesake key wedged between the Straits of Florida and the Overseas Highway. The park promotes birds as one its major attractions including "herons, egrets, willets, sandpipers, plovers, terns, and seagulls," which should be enough for anybody. Additionally there is canoeing on the Long Key Lake in the middle of the park and there is camping in the slice of parkland alongside the Overseas Highway next to the water:

The day use area has a small slice of sandy beach for people riding motorcycles or with picnics:Which was where I spotted a piece of artwork as I ate a granola bar and emptied a thermos of tea for lunch:For some people standing at the water's edge and admiring the view is an entirely satisfactory activity:For others the way to pass an afternoon is to stand thigh deep in salt water water to try to catch fish. This dude was quite a ways out proving that my little pocket camera has quite decent reach with the built-in telephoto, and also that the water shelves very gently along these islands:Some people enjoy cycling the roads inside the park, a way to enjoy pedaling and not get run down on the highway:For myself the plan was to take a walk as I haven't been out in the woods for a while, so I headed down the main road......to the boardwalk at the head of the main trail which heads towards the beach:I found a chair parked rather mysteriously in the shade as though someone enjoyed taking in nature's glories in comfort, so much so they dragged their own chair to that very spot:Along the way our thoughtful Park service puts up little notices describing flora, fauna and sights to left and right:There was also a sturdy observation platform built above the mangroves but the view was I have say, somewhat less than enthralling:My goal was the main circular trail through the back of the park on something they call the Golden Orb Trail which is named for a spider and is about a mile and a half long. The helpful signs suggest a leisurely hour long walk and even though I was wearing motorcycle boots and long pants I covered it in a little less than that.
The second half of the trail after I crossed the plank bridge shown above, is described as a hammock environment, which in South Florida means an area of raised dry land above the water level such that trees can grow in real dirt. Only thing was, this was the first sandy hammock I had seen. It reminded me of chaparral seen in western states:And I was not entirely alone. I met another walker, rather more suitably dressed than I, and we played trail leap frog, exchanging remarks while not willing to impinge on each other's privacy too much:She was a visitor to Florida and spent more time than I on the useful little signs along the way, though we exchanged a few comments as we passed each other.Closing in on the parking lot, where the Bonneville was parked in the shade, it being that warm, the trail started to get the mulching treatment a sit passed trough buttonwoods that look more like a "proper"hammock to my untutored eye.

Thence home, leaving unexplored the canoe launch and the Layton Trail, across the Overseas highway. The good thing about a parks pass is that it encourages return visits.

Pennekamp State Park

Originally published in September 2008. I really should go back

On my recent jaunt up the Keys I stopped off at the John Pennekamp State Park on Key Largo. This is probably the most well known state park in the islands, and the fact that it has received awards is duly noted on a signboard at the entrance. This was my first visit to the park since I had sailed there in 1990, ducking out of strong winds while on my way from Key West to Bimini.I recall a rather unpleasant stay on a mooring buoy in the lagoon, bouncing around and bickering as we waited for the weather to ease up and let us go on our way to the Bahamas. Ours was an under equipped expedition in many respects and i don't believe we went ashore as we lacked an outboard to propel us back to the boat from the little beach in the park. Our relationship was doomed by these inadequacies and my inexperience to lead us to foreign shores. She still loathes me to this day, and i don't think therapy has helped her either for which I am sorry. I got it right later and the woman who spent a couple of years sailing with me through Central America is still married to me, and calls me daily from Turkey making sure I am eating right and getting enough sleep. We live and learn.Reminicences aside the Pennekamp park is best visited not in September, I believe, because it is hot:

Up North I read people are already observing the shortening of the days, changing of leaves and colling of temperatures. Down here September is the cruelest month, not least because a person raised in a temperate clime in the northern hemisphere has a right to expect the weather to start cooling off. Not a bit of it.Rain clouds built up overhead but yielded nothing in the way of cooling raindrops. Nevertheless, here I was two hours from home and determined to enjoy this park, whether I got heat stroke or not. It was ninety five degrees (37c) with humidity to match but there was a mangrove trail to be explored, so by God, off I went, down the boardwalk.It's not like I haven't seen a mangrove swamp before but I find the light and shadow of these forests to be particular and in some way always varied. In California I used to like walking through redwood forests and their similarities to cathedrals were too obvious for them not to be pointed out by anyone and everyone. I find mangroves, with all their subdued activity, and silence to have a similar effect on me and I tend to get contemplative:And of course I was denied the chance to climb the observation deck and look out across the greenery. The path was gated, presumably to allow rangers the time to repair damage to the boardwalk, which was a disappointment:But from ground level, or as close to ground level as one can get in a forest of trees growing out of saltwater I did get to see a boat chugging by, or at least I got to see part of it:African Queen ain't in it...Back at the visitor center and aquarium they had a little window dedicated to life an death in the mangroves which in some ways looked more active than real life:

This end of the Keys is where several of the 500 or so remaining American crocodiles reside, and I peered about looking for them but they didn't show. I don't suppose park people would encourage them to show up in the middle of the human madness of the park. A couple of witless young females nearly wet themselves and deafened me with their screams when they stumbled across a small squirrel minding his own business outside the gift shop. I dread to think what a Crocodile would do to their tender gray matter. Of course I forgot to photograph the squirrel, a mammal not yet found in Key West, happily but I did get some other wildlife:

That last was actually a group of humans at the beach evading the sun. The Keys I never hesitate to point out are not endowed with sandy beaches, which some ill informed tourists expect to find when they arrive. Thus it is people who long for sand take it where they find it on their days off. and haul grandpa down to be propped up in the shade of a palm tree:

I am not much of a beach goer and all the paraphenalia of family picnics makes me cringe (tote that bale!) but this small stretch of sand brought pure delight to those using it. I parked the Bonneville in a spot where I hoped I could return from a short walk and not burn my backside through my pants:

The park is a haven for flora and fauna and the park needs to be there to allow things to grow unimpeded by human interference and development:

The rest of Key Largo is along suburban tract, houses, businessesand roads everywhere, and as it's Spanish name implies it is the largest Key in the chain, so it's landmass gives the Pennekamp park room to breathe. It offers small marina with room for some boats to dock and take tourists out to the reef, which is actually what the park is famous for. The Bonneville is a great ride, but it doesn't ride at all well on water. Luckily there is an aquarium at the park:I continue to insist I enjoy the heat and solitude of summers in the Keys, but that is not to say I don't like the cool refreshing blast of air conditioning too, and the visitor center did a good job of cooling me down while the Bonneville rested in the shade:I don't go to zoos, I don't like to see animals locked up, but aquariums generally don't seem so bad, perhaps because I can't empathise with fish. I did wonder about the little nurse shark though, hiding his nose as though to make the world invisible. A small boy nearby was learning all about the fishes and stuff, and I suppose this was really his classroom, not mine:One last stop to tank up with a bottle of refreshing water and I would be on my way. I wanted to be cunning and dropped two dollars in the machine outside (I was still refrigerated from the aquarium visit) in order to avoid the lines inside. The machine ate my money and just to prove I am a slow learner I had the same damned experience in Marathon when I stopped for gas and the soda machine failed to cough up a bottle of water for my money.The shoppe had stuff to sell and one interested window shopper caught my eye. My thighs are nothing to write home about but I do keep mine covered in public and don't go shopping in my underwear. He should follow my example:

So we close with a little thank you to Mr Pennekamp, a Miami newspaperman and outdoor enthusiast who pushed and pulled his strings to get the park created. He was successful in 1957 and there is a photo of him happily casting, on the wall of the visitor center. I think he would be pleased to see the park still there. I am.