Morning At Mallory

I no longer have to be up at night which makes it highly unlikely I will ever see Old Town Key West at three in the morning ever again. I’d like to say I’m sorry but I’m fine being abed and Rusty never protests. 

Watching the sun come up over the harbor was early enough for both of us. 

I sat and watched people and boats and had a thoroughly peaceful time. Everyone else was being useful exercising or fishing or using their phones but as Rusty napped I watched the world, mostly rather empty and took some pictures from where I sat with my Lumix G95. 

What do you suppose future generations will think of this already quaint sign?

In the background, behind the fully equipped angler you can see the landing craft bound for Sunset Key with a work truck onboard. It’s how they manage the rather sterile and uninteresting retreat for the rich and famous where cars aren’t allowed (nor is much of anything else for hoi polloi). 

The ever lovely jet ski tours. These pests were abroad astonishingly early. 

The eight o’clock ferry bound for Fort Jefferson three hours away. It didn’t seem to be crammed with passengers. 

And so the morning drifted away. No rowdy homeless though there were a few tough looking characters sitting quietly alongside me doing pretty much what everyone does: checking their phones! A very nice morning. 

And so eventually we wandered off. Another lovely quiet Key West morning. 

Going Home

They ask me if I miss the Keys and the question provokes some thought! It’s not a “yes” or “no” answer for me. 

Once you have lived in the Keys you have a before and after split in your life. Some people leave resenting the fact they couldn’t hold on anymore while others are glad to be gone. I was glad to leave when my time came because much planning when into our departure but I am glad to come back as a visitor as that seems to be the best way to enjoy the good and ignore the bad. 

I was finishing up a delightful lunch visit at the Key West sailing club when I saw a former colleague backing up to the city fuel pumps. “How’s retirement?” Officer Hainey asked when he realized who had blocked him in. “Brilliant,” I said before asking the inevitable. “How long have you got?” Seventeen years he said and my heart sank for him. It’s not so long to retirement he said brightly and he told me his dream is Hawaii, a comfortable climate with mountains, how he remembered the place from his time in the military. It’s good to nurture that hope of a better place in later life even if not necessarily in the Keys. 

I last saw Jonathan in Sedgwick Maine on our way south from our visit to the northern tip of Highway One. His retirement plan is winters in Key West and he likes it. He bought a house in Old Town and fell in love with a local woman who happened to be a colleague of my wife the former teacher. 

He keeps a Stonehorse 23 at the Key West Sailing Club where we ate sandwiches and he reminisced about  his sailing life and talked about how the club has been restored and is busy teaching youngsters about boats. 

I used to be a member here for a while when I lived in Key West.  I sailed the motley crew of small boats around Garrison Bight for fun and to escape the city. It was a refuge for winter street people and car dwellers (the clubhouse has a toilet) and I didn’t make any friendships among the denizens of the club back then. But I did get to sail. I got a twinge of nostalgia seeing the place again. I was too busy working, walking Rusty and living on Cudjoe Key to spend time here lately. 

Rusty as usual ignored the two old men talking. Seeing Key West through the idle gaze of a man with time on his hands makes for an interesting view. We spent the night at Cracker Barrel in Florida City…

…so I could get up at three in the morning and leave the impromptu campsite that is the parking lot and drive unimpeded down the Keys. I usually drive Card Sound Road but at that hour The Stretch was empty: 

By five thirty I was ready to stop so we pulled off at our favorite beach stop at West Summerland Key just past Bahia Honda where I used to come on my days off to sit by the water. That was before hurricanes Irma and Ian which have ravaged the place. 

As Layne pointed out it’s nice to know these spots that aren’t obvious. I in turn issued a challenge which she accepted. When we get back from our drive to Argentina I want to see if we can spend a week stealth camping on the streets of Key West without getting busted. I think I have a few spots in mind where I could pull that off! 

On Sunday we leave for more island life this time a ten day house rental on Ocracoke in North Carolina’s Outer Banks. 

We haven’t been there in a while (Cheyenne liked it on our first visit) but we always thought a winter stay in a house with heat might be interesting. We have ten days booked so it had better be. 

I don’t think I will live on an island again but visiting can be entirely  delightful. 

Travels With Charley

I have been asked to mention books I am reading about my travels. Webb Chiles mentioned John Steinbeck’s travel book which set me thinking a while back. He didn’t talk of it by way of recommendation but I thought about it a bit and found a copy on my Libby app. 

Libby gives you access to your library account online so you can check out audio books or electronic books and read them on your device.  A lot of the value of the app depends on how extensive your home library is, and I’m lucky the Monroe County library has a wide range of titles. 

The funny thing about Libby is that you can only borrow books as they become available just as though you were picking up a physical book at your branch. However this app is just another of the incredible tools that make nomad life so enjoyable and remarkable in the 21st century. 

I do carry a couple of paper books for the pleasure of reading but an electronic Kindle is essential to me. We use Express VPN when outside the US to make it look like we are at home and thus have access to books and movies through our home accounts. We don’t make money off the internet so we haven’t yet bothered with the Starlink connection, especially as it has very limited service outside North America and Europe. WiFi and cell service works just fine aboard GANNET2.  

All that by way of explanation but as far as Travels with Charley goes I am quite surprised how relevant the story is. Steinbeck grew up in Salinas California, a region I am very familiar with as I lived almost 20 years in Santa Cruz on Monterey Bay, but he moved to Long Island away from his home town critics, in an act of mutual rejection. By 1960 he was ready to explore his homeland and he took to the road in a pick up truck with a camper shell. Oh and a dog called Charley. Does this remind you of anyone? 

The astonishing thing for me was how similar our rigs are! He ordered a complete camper from the dealer and as you read the description in the book you discover not too much has changed fundamentally between now and then. Give some latitude for improved technology and of course electronics and the way he traveled that Fall of 1960 isn’t so different from how we travel aboard GANNET2 in 2022, sixty years later. For details about the vehicle and it’s restoration follow this link to a superb description: 

http://www.thecamperbook.com/man-saved-john-steinbecks-van/

I have read some of his novels -and watched the movie versions of his stories. I read his other well known travel book set in the Sea of Cortez and I think among Nobel Laureates (1962) he is among the most readable. Many of the prize winners  I try and find them impenetrable. Steinbeck is very approachable and this story is funny and incisive and meditative by turns. I have felt exactly as he has felt during our recent tour of the United States aboard GANNET2. 

Modern academics dissect the book and argue over the truthiness of the stories contained in his travel stories. They debate the veracity of his descriptions of people met along the way and how much of the conversations he made up and they forgive him because he was a writer and a novelist and he is allowed much latitude. I don’t care about all that intellectual debate. I can tell you his story of driving across America rings true to me, details be damned. 

I see so many of my thoughts and opinions about the road, the general state of the country, the joy of travel reflected in Steinbeck’s writings I find it hard to believe he made the trip in 1960. I empathize with his occasional pursuit of hotel rooms for hot baths ( we use modern truck stops! ) and I rejoice that I have Google maps to stop me getting lost all the time like he does. 

I am astonished to find a brother on the road in John Steinbeck. Webb Chiles pointed me there so I shouldn’t be surprised. You might enjoy his story too.

NOLA Art

With Laynes’s declared remission from arthritis, and the subsequent long path to vaccination stability we can at last date to behave as though Covid may not kill her. The New Orleans Museum of Art seemed a good place for a first cultural outing. 

Charles Giroux, a Louisiana road scene from 1875. 

There is a remarkable amount of art packed into the heart of City Park in NOLA (New Orleans, Louisiana) and we took two weekdays to Cody the sculpture garden one day and two more hours the corridors of the museum itself. Photographing art is a skill I don’t possess and therefore neither the tools so in reproducing the pictures I offer only a faint outline of the richness within. 

My favorite room and the one I returned to contained the snapshots of Louisiana captured in the last decades of the 19th century. The paintings offer a glimpse into life of the era but don’t hint at the controversies and social miseries of the time. They are street views in the style of the time not exposes or social commentary. 

South Shore Lake Pontchartrain 1880 by Marshall Smith. 

The boats, the human and animal figures set in the darkened landscape  set me to wondering who lived there and how they coped. I can’t imagine the agony of life before DEET in these boggy places or the awkwardness of unremitting poverty to the passerby. And yet as I stood there I saw the reality depicted reflected in my own recent travels in Mexico land of stark social contrasts. I stood in this room a long time. 

And then the full on Frenchness of France dominated the room next door. A female portrait painter…revolutionary…

And then suddenly the exhibit of instant photos of artists in the city by a photographer well known in the city but unknown outside. 

The simple equipment: 

The man himself not portrayed in the exhibit but whose portrait I found online. The article at Go Nola is well worth a read: 

https://gonola.com/things-to-do-in-new-orleans/polo-silk-the-picture-man

There was so much more in the building, furniture jewelry and all the objects that create beauty in the home.  It was overwhelming for a one day visit. 

Oh and let’s not forget the dog stealing lunch at the French Market. 

Outside the Besthoff sculpture garden glowed in evening sunlight. I hope the pictures give an idea of the pleasure of the walk. Admission here incidentally is free. I’d spend a piece of every day passing trough if I lived here. We walked only half of the entire outdoor art museum here.