Key West & Learning About Tides

We were up surprisingly early today in spite of the long day yesterday. When we looked out it was partly sunny with a few clouds and already quite warm. So we decided to head off on the two hour drive to Key West. On the way there we passed through all of the other keys and will go back to visit one or two. As you get closer to Key West, there is more water and a lot of bridges and causeways.This is the 7 Mile Bridge that I'm pretty sure was used in the movie True Lies.

Once we got to Key West, we decided to head for the most touristy spot to get it out of the way. This is the marker signifying that one is at the southernmost point of the USA. There was a line of people waiting to pose with the marker. Not doing that. I waited for a slow person to replace the previous person and managed a clear shot. Done. 

Our next destination was the historic port district. It has a lot of interesting history that we weren't aware of. Of course now, there aren't a great many of the old buildings left among the condos, resorts and restaurants. 

Here are a few shots of the harbour area.

We kept walking and found some new piers and walkways around the resorts. There were not as many people as I would have expected, which was good! 

This is a part of one of the resorts. I expect it was out of our price range.

This guy was throwing a net to catch little silver bait fish. I asked if I could take his picture and he agreed. I did a series that captured the whole throw but here are just a couple.

And this is the little green heron that was waiting patiently to eat the fish that he dropped!

We did stop for lunch but I got distracted by the beer and the memorabilia in the bar, called Sloppy Joes, and forgot to take pictures! They wouldn't have been that great anyway as we had fish tacos and a sloppy Joe. I did get a t shirt with a picture of Ernest Hemmingway on it. He was apparently a friend of the original owner of the place and had a few drinks there in his time. 

After lunch, we walked around the town some more and looked at some of the old and new buildings.

I know, this first picture isn't a building. It's a bunch of chickens or maybe roosters. This is for Carrie who wants to start a farm at her place in the city. 

At the Historical Art Museum they have an installation of statues that are people creating art. You can see this guy is painting some giant nude women. Interesting.

At the front of the building there was a really big couple dancing. 

Here's another museum and you can also see the Conch Train that some people ride around town. Marilyn said that you learn a lot of history on the train but I don't ride little trains. 

On the way out of Key West, you pass through a zone where there are endangered Key Deer. The limit is 35 mph and they enforce it seriously. We didn't see a key deer but we hoped they were all ok!

In Key Largo they make BIG deal of the fact that the actual boat from African Queen is parked right near our hotel. It's supposed to offer canal rides so we figured we'd check it out. Well, it's basically a wreck. As you can see the engine is taken apart and it doesn't work. There are no rides. And it's a lot smaller than I expected. I need to watch the movie again to see it as it was.

Now on to dinner and the tide lesson. Last night, we had a great dinner on a deck overlooking the gulf. We wanted to do that again tonight. We went to a place called Jimmy Johnson's Big Chill and I was thrilled to see that the deck was empty a half hour before sunset. The air conditioned room attached to it had quite a few people. As we were being shown out to the deck I asked the server what was wrong with all those people who didn't want to sit outside. All she said was, "Low tide." Then she opened the door to the deck and I found out what low tide smells like. Not nice. We joined the people on the inside. Dinner ended up being great even though we weren't starving. We had what they called an Italian Fisherman's Pizza. It had a nice tomato sauce topped with crab, lobster, shrimp and clams. On top was home made mozzarella and parmesan. When we make it at home, I think I'll add scallops too. 
Mmmmmmmmmmmm... Erik, this one's for you!