Key West

 2/15- Homestead to Key West to Homestead

   We got up early and hit the road only to find that there were plenty of other people with the same idea. We turned down good old Route 1 as it is the only road into the Florida Keys. Almost as soon as we got on the road the traffic dragged to a halt. Again I was simply amazed at the number of cars on the road. We poked along until we passed over the bridge into Key Largo. Route 1 is a very old road and it has always been very commercial and here it was no exception. Swim with the dolphins , $20 please. Hand feed sharks that would be another $20. Boat tours, snorkeling tours, fishing tours it’s all there for you to purchase along this road. It wasn’t until we got about half way out that the crass commercialism slowed down. 

    We stopped for a bit in Marathon to check out the marina there. The moorings are all full and it was a month wait to get on one. The anchorage looked to be pretty full itself. I was surprised by Marathon as I had thought it to be a smaller quainter place. It felt like a big community but it was spread out along the road. 

  We managed to get to Key West and had to drive around a bit to find a parking place. Key West really surprised me. I expected more of a quiet almost backwoods kind of place. Wrong! There were people staggering all over the place carrying their drinks at 11:00 in the morning. Then throw in the people biking for the 2nd time in the last twenty years and the rented scooters buzzing around. Now toss in people tooling around in their golf carts after a few mimosas and you have what can only be described as chaos. I was fooled by how big the town was and the sheer number of people milling around. There was a line waiting at the marker for the southern most point to take your picture with it. We walked on the beach a while ( I have now been  swimming in the Gulf of Mexico).  It does seem like it would be a fun place to hang out for a while until you got tired of the constant party atmosphere. 

    We split from there after a while and headed back. Again traffic was just nuts and we were reduced to a crawl for long distances. We stopped to eat in Key Largo hoping the traffic would diminish. We had no such luck.

    It was a good adventure but I am very much looking forward to getting back to our boat. While the bed didn’t move much last night the floor wobbled all over the place when I tried to walk in the dark. 

   I have no idea who these people are but I’d be damned if I would wait in line to take my picture with it.





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