 The
keys is a good half day drive from where we live in south Florida, at least
to the lower keys where we were going. Especially if you stop along
the way to check out interesting stuff. It's a long little chain
of low islands it is. Imagine, Caribbean islands you can drive to
in your car. I was volunteered into driving one of the vehicles once
we got to the keys. I had to stop and check out the giant lobster
in front of some place that was closed. I forget which key this is
on, somewhere in the middle of the chain.
Key is a corruption of the spanish word cayo, which roughly means little island. It's similar to the British cay. |
 A
bit farther down the road we stopped at a museum and nature center.
Sorry, I don't remember the name. Like most everything else on most
of the islands, it is on US 1 so it's hard to miss. Inside the smallish
museum building were some good exhibits, pirate treasure, geology exhibits
and such. There was also this board of artifacts from the Calusa
indians. The Calusa were one of the original tribes of Florida.
Those original tribes aren't very well known, especially the tribes in
the less hospitable southern part of the state. All the original
Florida tribes were destroyed, or in the case of the last few hundred in
north Florida, shipped to Cuba when the Spanish left. The Seminole
came later as refugees from the southern U. S. tribes, along with some
escaped slaves, maybe a few white misfits in the mix too. |
 Outside
the museum building they had all kinds of stuff to see, including this
cockatoo. |
 There
were some trails to walk, with an old Bahamans style homestead, a bird
rehabilitation place, some nurseries and planted areas, and a lot of native
keys vegetation. I thought the seed pod of this vine looked cool.
The keys have some unusual vegetation. That reminds me, I still have
yet to go to Lignumvitae
Key Botanical State Park. Maybe this year. Anyone care
to join me? |
 Cousin
Heather knew the keys better than any of the rest of us, so she took us
to a few places on Big Pine Key after we set up camp and had dinner.
The first was a place called the Blue Hole. It's like a fresh water
pond, which is rare stuff in the keys. I think one of the signs at
the little parking lot there said something about it being an old quarry
or shell pit. You can walk the trail around it and look at the plants
and critters and things. |
 We
even saw one of the key's freshwater turtle there. The keys have
their own kind of fresh water turtle, which seems so unlikely as the other
body of fresh water (not counting swimming pools) I have seen there was
a shallow little pond, barely more than a puddle, at the museum.
So they can't be many of these guys. So I was happy to see this one. |
 Then
we went past some houses down some road till we got to a big long dead
end road with no buildings or houses. There were key deer swarming
everywhere. These people are illegally feeding them. Heather
wanted to turn them in for it, I don't know if she ever did. The
key deer are considered a sub-species of the whitetail deer. As you
can see they tend to be kind of small. |
 Jen
and I went back to camp and the rest to their motel. I stayed up
a while to watch the stars and listen to the waves on the shore, and watch
the lightning storms over the ocean. Mars was especially close and
bright in the sky. It is the big red dot. I was closer to earth
than in a bunch of years. There were many many more stars than at
my house in the stinking city with all it's horrid lights. |
 It
rained a lot that night. I was pleased to find the tent did not leak.
This is the "front yard" of the campsite, looking all stormy. The
campsite itself was across the road, cut into the thick salt pruned vegetation.
Lots of privacy at this campground the way the sites are carved into the
vegetation. There is another camping area there that is more like
a parking lot. Avoid it. |
 There
were a couple of pelicans fishing for their breakfast for me to watch as
I waited on mine. We were waiting to see what the others wanted to
do for breakfast I think, and they took a long while to get to camp. |
 Such
goofy looking birds, but boy can they catch the fish. They fly along
so gracefully, then seem to just crash into the water. There were
also some gulls who would land on the pelican's back if they saw that they
did indeed catch something and peck them in the head trying to steal the
fish. |
 So
we ate breakfast and made our way to Key West. You might think it
is the westernmost of the keys, but that's not exactly true, and that's
not how it got it's name. It was originally Cayo Hueso, or Bone Key.
Early explorers found a bunch of human skeletons there. For many
years it was Florida's largest and wealthiest city. Now it's a strange
and wonderful little town with limited parking. So we found a parking
spot and started walking. We ate at some motel. Then we hit
the Key West Aquarium. They had these nurse sharks in like a little
wading pool. Some guide type person started a tour, and one of the
first things they did was feed the sharks. |
 The
main part of the aquarium has several pools like the one with the sharks,
and a whole bunch of smaller tanks in the walls of the main building.
Some of the tanks have fish, and some have corals like this one.
It was kind of dark in the main building, so it was easier to photograph
the slow moving corals, easier than the more active fishes. Plus
there's some other areas outside. It isn't a big aquarium like Sea World
or anything, but was very interesting |
 They
had some pools outside where it was brighter, including this one with some
sea anemones. |
 After
the aquarium we walked around a bit and wound up at Hemmingway's house.
He used to live in Key West. The descendants of his cats still do.
The cats are famous. My sister and my mother spent hours petting
them. Sis even tried to pet the mean ones. That's mom in action
there. |
 So
we walked around some more and looked at people's yards and stuff.
Then we got hungry again. So we went to this building at Mallory
Square with a bunch of Cuban stuff in it, including a Cuban restaurant
with excellent ropas
and Cuban coffee. I also picked up a psuedo-Cuban cigar at the cigar
shop for later that evening at camp, and a ceramic parrot at the bodega
for James. My baby sister posed by the
building after we were done eating and shopping. |
 Key
West is a wholesome family town, especially if you are the Addams
family. OK, they're a bit eccentric down there. One of
the weird things they do is to have a sunset celebration every night at
Mallory Square. The vendors set up early to part the tourists from
their money. My aunt Helene got this royal poinciana flower for trying
a silver ear cuff. |
 There
was a big motel there with this way cool little ruin of a building beside
it's parking lot. I was wandering, waiting for the shows to start. |
 Around
sunset the acts start. Several happen at once, all free, kind of
chaotic. This guy juggled fire, rode a unicycle and made jokes about
burning children. He was very good. So was the guy with the
flying cats. |
 Then
they had the actual sunset. It got dark and we went back to the hotel
and the camp. |
 The
next morning the spider lilies were blooming. My sister and I wanted
to go snorkeling on the reef, which involves a boat trip several miles
out. Fortunately the concession there has such a trip. But
we had time to kill, so I took a walk around the island to see what I could
see before the snorkeling trip. |
 These
are silver palms, Coccothrinax
argentata, a keys native. They are pretty rare in the wild
since their territory was small to start with and has mostly been turned
into homes and parking lots and shopping centers. The state park
is one of their last strongholds in the wild. Actually in the US
wild, it's doing fine in the Bahamas. Or of course it could possibly
be one of the other thatch palms native to the keys - Thrinax
morrissii or Thrinax
radiata . It's not radiata, but morrissii does
have silvery leaves, but supposedly only on the underside. But, I
remembered it looking like the silver palm, there were exhibits and examples
of all three at the museum we visited the first day and I attempted to
get the differences set in my mind, and like I said the park is noted for
them. |
 Here
is a section of the old bridge that used to connect Bahia Honda to the
next key. The lower portions are the railroad bridge built by the
evil oil baron Henry Flagler I think. He is the guy who kicked off
the over-development frenzy along Florida's east coast that continues to
this day. He had a mansion that you can visit called Whitehall
in Palm Beach. A bunch of workers were killed by a hurricane
in 1935 working on the railroad, but not at this section. They hadn't
gotten this far yet. The overseas highway car type roadbed
was added to the top of the trestle bridge later it looks like. Or
maybe not. Then they moved it, you can see the newer bridge in the
background. For some silly reason they cut it near the island (probably
for boring old "safety") but you can still walk up the first part and get
some good views of the area. |
 You
can see some of the small sandy islands from up on the bridge. This
one had some people kayaking out to it. A lot of the islands aren't
so sandy though. Many are low muddy mangrove islands with no dry
land at high tide. But this one was going to be someone's private
paradise for a little while. |
 Also
from the bridge, you can see all of the island of Bahia Honda. That's
the Florida Bay side beach in the foreground, and the concessions.
The Atlantic side beach is toward the top of the picture. The Keys
generally have sorry beaches, but this island is the exception. The
keys are more about diving and fishing. For the pretty wide white
sand beaches and the fun to play in waves head north along the mainland
southeast coast. |
 This
is the Geiger Tree, another native. It gets it's name because it
is highly radioactive. They concentrate radioactive elements found
naturally in the soil so their flowers literally glow, and will set off
a geiger counter from 100 yards. No, just kidding, I doubt they are
particularly radioactive, and they don't glow in the dark. I did
see some roach like bugs at the camp one night that did glow in the dark
though. I don't know how it got it's name. But they are awful
pretty. |
 In
the evening we walked a short nature trail. We saw this cute little
snail in the forested part. |
 Then
the trail looped out onto the beach where these sea oats were growing. |
 Our
hike ended with this sunset. |
|
After one last night camping we headed north to Miami and the Metrozoo, where we spent the day before returning home. Metrozoo deserves it's own section, it a a fine big zoo. I didn't photograph much there because I had taken close to 150 pictures at the zoo on a previous trip, so I had pictures of most of the animals, excepting some of the non-descript antelopes. And the birds at the new aviary since the aviary wasn't finished on the previous trip. Then we returned home. |