June 9
June 10
June 11
June 12
June 13
June 14
We got up a little earlier today. Breakfast was at the Beach Café again, same as always. We actually almost finished breakfast before the tractor started raking the beach...
We walked back to Southernmost Point marker for a picture (the one on the left) - got to be a tourist at least part of the time!
Then back to hotel where we packed up and checked out. We stopped in to talk with the concierge again to see about the tours of the town. He talked us out of the Conch Train and into the Trolley instead.
So, we rode the Trolley, a 90 minute tour of town. It was worth the trip, very interesting, but we didn’t see anything that would make us extend our stay.
Among the factoids we learned on this trip:
Houses in Key West (in the old section) are required by law to have a metal roof to help prevent a recurrence of the great fire which destroyed the town in the 1800s.
US Highway 1 starts in Key West at mile marker 0 (photo to the right) and ends at the border of Maine and Canada.
Houses in Key West sometimes have unpainted wood exteriors. Taxes were not assessed until a house was finished. Since painting is the final step in building a house, it was left unpainted to legally avoid taxes. I understand this loophole has since been closed...
Once upon a time, one could board a sleeper car on a train in New York City, arrive in Key West a day and a half later and a crane would swing the car onto a ship which would float you across to Havana, 90 miles south. You could travel from New York City to Havana, Cuba, in two days and never get out of bed!
The ceilings of several porches are painted light blue. The usual explanation is that wasps think it's the sky and won't build nests there. Truth or myth?
The three photos above were taken on our trolley ride. The leftmost and center photo show a display of lobster bouys, sponges, and fish net floats in a kiosk near the wharf. The photo on the right shows the berth for the schooner Western Union, the last wooden boat of this size built in the Keys.
The photos above were also taken on the trolley ride. The one on the left shows the upper story of the first schoolhouse in Key West, with its old school bell. The photo on the right shows the facade of one of the Flagler hotels with a Royal Poinciana (or Flame Tree) growing in front of it.
We arrived back at the hotel about 12, so we had lunch at the Beach Café - tropical grilled chicken sandwich, which we split.
We were soon on our way up the coast. Once we reached the mainland, we took the Florida’s Turnpike until about Boca Raton, then popped over to I-95 to find a hotel for the evening. We wound up at a Comfort Inn someplace called Lantana, FL??? We got hit by some small squalls along the way, but they didn’t last long.
On a whim, we popped onto the internet to see if there was a Sweet Tomatoes within easy driving distance. There was - just 12 miles north of where we stopped, which is also where the next Comfort Inn was located. If we had kept going just that much farther, we probably could have walked to Sweet Tomatoes!
After dinner, we drove back to the hotel to collapse for the evening. We wound up watching RV with Robin Williams again. The room had a jacuzzi, so I tried to use it. After pouring tons of water into the thing, I finally turned the tap off and heard the water running out almost as fast as it had been pouring in... No wonder it never filled enough! Oh, well.