Key West and Coach Repairs

 

Cudjoe Key, Florida – Venture Out Resort (high 79, low 71)

 

We had pretty sustained 30 mph winds yesterday, so a day in the boat didn’t seem like a good idea, so a trip to Key West was in order since it was nice and cool.

It was a beautiful ride the 20 miles down.

Sue told us of a good place to park and after she mentioned it, we remembered parking there as well.

We drove around all over trying to find this place.

We came across some interesting things while looking for a place to park for free.

We stopped at the beach to use the restroom and saw some interesting things.

This guy was standing on a platform that was held up by water.

He would literally rise right out of the water.

I’m sure it took a lot of skill, but he made it seem easy.  the winds were whipping too, but it didn’t seem to bother him.

I’m not sure what you call this thing.  It’s different from the one where they wear a jetpack on their back.  This must be something new.  Al found something online called a “flyboard”, but it wasn’t quite the same.

We also noticed the shrimpers were out in force.  There must have been half dozen shrimp boats out working.  Maybe it will bring down the price of that wonderful Key West pink shrimp!

The beach wasn’t terribly crowded.

 

Our goal was to stay away from the downtown area where all the tourists congregate,  and walk some of the streets that are a few blocks inland.  There are some lovely old homes.

The problem is finding a place to park. 

We ended up right in the midst of the touristy downtown area by Duval Street and Mallory Square.  

Of course, you see all sorts of interesting things.

Everybody wants to be the “southernmost” something.

There is always something interesting to photograph.

How cute is this golf cart?

Here is another method of transportation.  You can have this guy ride you around town, for a small fee.

We finally gave up on the free parking lot and went to our old standby lot down by Mallory Square.  It costs $4 an hour, but by this point we didn’t care.

We walked around and saw some interesting things.

I didn’t get a picture of the building, but evidently Ernest Hemingway wrote Farewell to Arms here.

There are some lovely old homes that have been converted to Bed and Breakfasts.

Al is famous for walking in front of me when I’m trying to take a picture.  This will teach him a good lesson.  :)

We stumbled on this place that from the street looked like a secret garden.

We saw nothing saying no trespassing, so we wandered in.

Notice the colorful bicycles parked on the left?  It was like they were part of the colorful design.

It turned out there were little bungalows on both sides of the walkway.

There were groupings of a few bungalows surrounded by a small swimming pools.  I didn’t get more pictures because I felt like I probably shouldn’t be there and was trying to be discreet.

It was lovely.  Cool, shady and private.  Al picked up a brochure on the way out, but the prices were unclear.  They ran from $275 to $620 in high season.  I’m not sure it that was weekly or daily!   It looked like it would have been a wonderful place to stay for a few days.

Another problem with Key West is lack of public restrooms, so after walking for a few hours, we decided to head back to where we knew we could find a bathroom.

We went back to Duval Street.  This building actually houses three of the many bars on Duval.  The famous Bull, The Whistle Bar and on the top is the Garden of Eden, which I’m told is a nudie bar.

After that, we decided to go on home.  We had started the day with a bike ride, big lunch at the Square Grouper, and a stroll around Key West, so we were a little tired.

 

When we got home, I noticed I had no water pressure at the kitchen sink.  Al checked and found the problem was only at the kitchen, so he decided to check the filters in the kitchen faucet to see if something was clogged.  We have a single handle Moen, with a pull out sprayer.   He started taking it apart and then the hose fell down into the handle and the end got caught.  Long story short, we ended up having to dismantle the entire damn thing to retrieve the hose, and there were a lot of pieces.

When we bought our Monaco, the salesman told us about a special feature it had where you can turn off the water to each area of the motor home and not to the entire coach.  He made it sound like not all rv’s have this option and that it is a good thing.

We found out last night how good of a thing it actually is.  Al was able to turn off only the water for the kitchen sink and ice-maker, so we still had water for the rest of the house.

It took us a good while to get it all put back together, but by this time we were pretty tired, so we decided NOT to turn the water back on last night.  JUST IN CASE!   We were too tired to deal with any more issues and we had the fear we might have a flood.  I know, no confidence in our repairs.  :)

It was nice that we still had a working toilet and water to the rest of the coach.

 

It’s still windy today, so boating is out.  We plan to stay here and maybe try out the pool and hot tub.  It’s time for a little cleaning too.