Key West vs. Sugarloaf Key

Tuesday 8 March 2011
You learn so much when you travel. The Greeks taught that you were not really educated until you toured the world. I learned that Key West is beautiful but way crowded with tourists and traffic, at least on Fat Tuesday otherwise known as Mardi Gras. I've spotted the same kind of thing at Sun Valley in Idaho, and certain villages in Maine. It is a sort of pattern that wealthy easterners like to descend on quiet little towns and make them tourist destinations with too many beautiful people crowding the shops, the tours, and the streets in a crowded pedestrian/auto traffic jam. A lot of good looking girls and guys are showing off their gorgeous bodies in nothing but bikinis and bathing suits in Key West. There are also a few old guys like me who go without shirts and thus commit crimes against humanity. During his most productive period Earnest Hemingway lived here. That connects him with both Key West and Sun Valley Idaho. Maybe that is why the wealthy easterners like to crowd together in search of Hemingway in places like this. BJ always gets on edge in crowded places like this. I love to people watch, especially how the beautiful people live.

BJ has always wanted a conch shell horn. In a tourist shop at the far end of Key West she bought one. This is particularly appropriate because the name for people living on the Florida Keys is conchs. And in 1982 they seceded from the United States, created the Conch Republic, declared war on the United States, broke a loaf of hard Cuban bread over a cooperative U.S. Naval officer' head, surrendered a few minutes later, and applied to the United Nations for a billion dollars to help rebuild their devastated nation. This was all because the U.S. border patrol put up a road block near the only bridge to the keys and searched everyone coming off the keys. This backed up traffic for miles and for weeks and got the mayor irritated. He said if the United States wouldn't treat conchs as equals they wanted out. Having a conch from the Conch Republic is way cool. She picked one the size, shape and color she preferred.

Somehow I'm not interested in collecting those kinds of "things." I figure I only have a few more years left in this mortal coil, and since I can only take the things I have learned, and the relationships I have formed, it is only the memories and my family that are precious to me. But BJ wanted to see some old shops at the marina and so did I. It makes me happy when she is happy. I showed her a bumper sticker that said, "We don't skinny dip, we chunky dunk," and BJ giggled about that one most of the way back to our camp.

In driving to mile marker 0 on Highway 1 you reach the west side of Key West. If you want to go farther west to the Dry Tortugas it will cost you a $160 ferry ride. On this drive we learned that there are only two or three smallish towns on this string of Florida Keys. They are all very low lying barrier islands (see image above). The weather is warm with a cooling sea breeze. I'm at the KOA on Sugarloaf Key. BJ is doing laundry, I'm typing this blog, and this evening we will probably go swimming in the Gulf of Mexico. The campground here is crowded with RVs for a KOA, but it is peaceful and relaxing with that wonderful sea breeze. Many of the shops in the Florida Keys are named "Southernmost" and sure enough, our KOA on Sugarloaf Key is called the "Southernmost KOA."

Rock Reef Pass elevation 3 feet

Monday 7 March 2011
The Everglades in March are not the soaking wetlands I expected. It is the dry season and there are certainly gator holes, ponds, and sloughs, but the majority of the park is covered by dried out saw grass about four feet high. BJ took lots of alligator, and water bird pictures at the Royal Palm Anhinga Trail. But the state bird of Florida should be the ubiquitous black vulture. BJ and I sat on a bench a few feet from two of these cheeky birds resting on the bank of a slough. It wasn't long before they started eyeing us in such a way that we decided we needed to "look alive."

The Everglades and all Florida are VERY flat. When the high point of the day was a pass all of three feet in elevation you might begin to picture how incredibly flat it really is. Most of Florida is a limestone table about one to four feet above sea level. But the stands of trees will fool you. Any place that can rise a few inches higher than the surrounding land becomes a tree colony. In one place it might be mostly tall pine trees. In another it might be bald cyprus, and in another it might be mahogany trees that dominate. During the rainy season the Everglades is covered by a sheet of slow moving water. Where the trees are clumped together soil builds up a few extra inches and a sort of island of trees is formed above the sheet of rainy season water. This island is called a hammock. The American Indians formerly lived on some of these hammocks and built their villages on some of them. There are hundreds of these elongated hammocks all pointing downstream from the very slow moving current. In some places they are separated by a few hundred yards, in other places by miles of saw grass plains that become a wetland water sheet in rainy season May to November.

We have come to camp at Flamingo about as far south as you can get on the mainland of Florida. It also happens to be the only place in the whole world where alligators and crocodiles live together. I haven't spotted any crocs yet. But from where I'm sitting I can see Florida Bay which separates the mainland from the Florida keys. Before today I thought the keys were a string of islands ending near Key West. I learned that any coastal island in Florida, including thousands on the Gulf Coast side of Florida are also called keys.

Lions and alligators and bears

Sunday 6 March 2011
Oh, my! We saw a stuffed Florida panther way bigger than any Utah cougar I've ever seen. Alligators were sunning on the bank of the Myakka River and BJ got some pictures. We saw a bear crossing sign on the highway which struck me as odd because we were in the middle of nearly endless orange groves. BTW, orange groves have a really nice fragrance. And the bees splattered on our windshield have very clear see-through guts.

We spent some time at the Myakka River State Park and visited the Canopy Walk Nature Trail. This was about a half mile trail through a mixed oak and palm, and palmetto forest. About 100 feet of the trail was on a raised suspension bridge at tree top level. At the end of the bridge was a tower about twice as high as the bridge, way over the canopy. We didn't see much in the way of critters but we saw forest as far as the eye could see (and one high voltage power line set). Somehow I had failed to realize there could be forest with about half the trees being palms or palmettos. The nature trail signs explained that in the summer this whole area is flooded. After climbing this tower both BJ and I agreed our leg muscles were sore, but would have been much worse if we hadn't been exercising them with long walks at amusement parks.

The Venice, Florida Ward where we started the day is friendly and I liked most of what I heard. The nice folks there had a testimony meeting that went about ten minutes too long, and then Sunday School went too long, and by the time we got to Priesthood Meeting after announcements there was only three minutes left for the lesson. The smart teacher summarized in three minutes and did a good job.

Tonight we sleep near Clewiston, Florida, and the evening breeze carries the scent of orange blossoms. Clewiston is south of Lake Okeechobee, the source of much of the Everglades water, so you could say we are in the Everglades except we are among too many people here. But tomorrow . . .

Dali Museum

Saturday 5 March 2011
Salvador Dali was for awhile the surrealist artist extraordinaire, or just a little eccentric. BJ and I both agreed the best painting of his in the museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, was Columbus and the New World. Actually, I thought most of his stuff was mildly boring. His life was crazy but he was good at self promotion. He liked to do things with his thin little moustache such as wax it into a figure 8 or straight up to the level of his pupils. We saw lots of melting watches. I was surprised to learn he turned away from modern art as to lacking in spirituality. His last works were more theological in tone. He also had a very interesting portrait of Abraham Lincoln that at first glance was a scantily clad young lady, but if you stood way back, squinted, and allowed for pixilization you could actually see Honest Abe's portrait. But we are now out of Orlando and meandering our way toward the Florida keys. We are camping in Venice, Florida tonight and it is hot.

Rango

Friday 4 March 2011
We returned to the Wild Kingdom in the morning and BJ took hundreds of pictures this time. She took some great rhinoceros and some good bird and tiger pictures. The only rides we went on were the ones we had to go on to take animal pictures.

In the evening we went to see the movie Rango and it was totally bizarre, much more so than Raising Arizona, and pretty clean as far as I could tell. I absolutely loved it. It was obviously making fun of lots of things in the movie industry. But they had "The Spirit of the West" which looked and sounded an awful lot like Clint Eastwood with a serape driving around a white golf cart in Rango's dream sequence. Ahhhh it is fun to be on vacation.

Our dinner was at Golden Coral.

A peck for Minnie

Thursday 3 March 2011
Waiting for the Epcot Center to open this morning Minnie Mouse came out to entertain the crowd and invited me to plant a peck on her cheek. I saw lots of fun things today but kissing Minnie was the most memorable. We saw Spaceship Earth, Ellen's Energy Adventure, The Seas with Nemo, Living with the Land (saw a really interesting "tomato tree" plant where the Japanese pulled tomato vines off the ground and held them in the shape of a tree which produces thousands of fruit for nine months), Mission Space, Test Track (longest ride in Disney history), Oh Canada, British street theater, Impressions de France, Moroccan belly dancing, Japanese beautiful store (BJ bought some bowls), American Fife and Drum, German chocolate store, Reflections of China, Maelstrom (Viking boat log flume ride), and Mexican boat ride with the three caballeros (Donald Duck and two other birds).

Good eats

Wednesday 2 March 2011
We took a "day off" to rest. We skipped a kingdom and just went to Downtown Disney today. This is mostly shops and restaurants. The Earl of Sandwich makes a good hot sandwich. (Image: BJ at Vicksburg)