Low Key Day

 

Today we explored the Keys! But first, when we came out of our hotel room in Florida City, we saw a huge turkey vulture on someone else's car.

We also saw a cute little woodpecker that didn't look anything like the ones back home, pecking on a palm tree, but Travalon didn't have his good camera because we were just going to get breakfast.

Today we drove Highway 1 south to Key West. Our first stop was at Windley Key Geological Fossil Reef State Park, where we took a long hike. Here is a photo of the old coral quarry.

These reddish trees have a name as cool as their appearance: Gumbo limbo trees!

More ruins from the old quarry.

This is just some cool roots from an uprooted tree.

And there was some beautiful Spanish moss, which is actually not a moss but a tiny bromeliad.

This tree was labeled "Milkbark," which sounds fairly anodyne.

I did remember hearing that there was a tree in Florida that was poisonous to touch, and the fruit was so toxic that it would kill you, although birds could eat it. Here it is! It's called poisonwood.

White-crowned pigeons, which are endangered, eat the fruit. I didn't see one at the park; later I saw one on a telephone wire in Key West, but Travalon was driving so no photo.

It was so gorgeous driving Highway 1, both very maritime and very tropical. The water was my favorite color, where blue meets green.

There are all sorts of palm trees in the Keys: silver, date, thatch, and of course coconut. A coconut almost fell on me as I walked by, so I took it. Not sure what to do with it, since we don't have a machete with us.

On Key West we had lunch overlooking the water at the Mellow Cafe. We could see floating tiki bars, but we didn't charter one.

Inside, they had a swing at the bar!

We went to the southernmost point in the Continental US. There was a long line to have your photo taken in front of the marker, so we cheated and took our photos from the side.

Then we went shopping on Duval Street, and Travalon had a locally brewed beer. It was a honey blonde ale, and it was really good!

We saw this house with a Cuban flag near where we parked.

We didn't have time to go to the Hemingway House or do a glass-bottomed boat tour, so we just headed back north on Highway 1 before it got dark. We saw this blimp floating over one of the keys, and at first we assumed it was a real estate advertisement, but it doesn't have any words on it. Maybe it's actually some sort of weather measuring apparatus?

We decided to take a quick detour to No Name Key, which is not very developed. On the way there, we saw Key deer, which are tiny, about the size of a cocker spaniel.

We saw more on No Name Key.

As we were leaving No Name Key, we saw this gorgeous sunset from the bridge.

We could see our buddy the blimp in the distance.

The only thing is that where we were, we couldn't see the green flash from the sunset because we weren't in front of open water. Maybe I will never see it. I have watched many sunsets from cruise ships and never seen it, but apparently you can only see it from the beach, not a ship. No idea why that would be.

On our way back, we made brief detours onto Knight Key and Duck Key, which were to the side of the highway. You get to drive on a lot of islands even if you don't leave the highway. I saw a sign on one island that said: "Welcome to the Low Keys," which inspired my blog post title tonight. It was almost as pretty driving back in the dark, because we could see all the bars and restaurants and resorts lit up. For some reason one stretch of Highway 1 had red streetlights instead of white ones. Then again, coming into Florida City last night from the Everglades, we drove a stretch that had alternating white and lilac-colored lights. Apparently they don't like to do boring white streetlights in Florida. 

For dinner we stopped at a restaurant called the Cracked Conch Cafe on Vaca Key. It was perfect: we had conch fritters for an appetizer, cracked conch with conch chowder for our main course, and I had a slice of key lime pie. A true Keys dinner! Now we are staying at a resort on Key Largo, and it's the first place we have stayed without a desk, so I am blogging at the kitchen table. It makes sense - this isn't a place for people to stay who are traveling for work, so it has a kitchen area but no desk. They said the outdoor pool was heated, but it wasn't, so I just went in the hot tub for a bit. The air is very cool tonight. Travalon enjoyed the hot tub immensely himself, but I can only stay in those for a little bit before I'm too hot. Still, it did feel good with the cool air.

Famous Hat