We Lost our Favorite Bridges

 

Florida Keys (high 81, low 68)

 

The March winds continue to blow.  It looked like it was finally going to lay down yesterday, but wouldn’t you know it, another cold front came through bringing heavy, but short lived rains.  Once the rains pass, the winds come back.  The good news is we know that typically April is a much better month.

Since we haven’t been boating, we’ve been doing happy hours.  On Friday night, we went over to a new restaurant/bar called Springers.  It’s down the road and near our new home in Venture Out.  They have good happy hour specials.  Al got wings and I got jalapeno poppers.  Yummy….and no, not very vegan, are they?   Two beers, two mixed drinks, wings and poppers are less than $20.  They were supposed to have had karaoke, but for some reason that didn’t happen.

After the happy hour specials at Springers, we headed down to Boonedocks for some live music.

Friday night Howard Livingston was playing.  He’s a local who writes and sings his own music.  He reminds me of Jimmy Buffett.     Some of the titles of his songs are:   Six Pack and a Tan, Magic in Key West,  Peeing on a Coconut Tree.   If you feel the need for the feel of some tropical sunshine, and good “Keyish” type music,  click on the link here and listen to some of his songs for free.  He has a band with him and they are very good.

Saturday night, we repeated our happy hour schedule, starting at Springer's, then going down to Boondocks for a 60’s tribute band called Orange Sunshine.   They were very good and we enjoyed trying to remember the names of the songs and the artist who sang them.    It seemed most of the people there were doing the same thing.   We enjoyed watching a guy who hasn’t yet left the 60’s.   He had very long hair and looked like a typical hippy.  He was really enjoying the band, and we enjoyed watching him enjoy it. We stayed until about 8pm then headed back up to Sunshine Key.  We got home just before the rain started.  We had a few strong gusts of wind and brief lightning, but it passed quickly.

It’s cloudy out now, but we’re seeing some bits of blue sky, so hopefully the sun will be back out.   We don’t expect the wind to die down, so we’re thinking it might be a nice day to go to Key West.   There’s always “Magic in Key West.”

I’ve mentioned before the fishing bridges on both sides of Sunshine Key.   They are very popular for fishing, walking, or just looking down into the water.  We often see sharks, turtles, fish and spotted eagle rays.

Imagine our surprise when we discovered they had closed down both fishing bridges for safety reasons.  The fishing bridges are the old Henry Flagler railroad that was mostly destroyed during hurricanes in the early 1900’s.  Some pieces have been kept and used for fishing/walking bridges.  I guess it won’t matter too much to us when we move down to Venture Out, but for now, we’re missing them already.

Here are a few past pictures taken from the bridges.

This is Al looking down at low tide.

This must have been taken at happy hour.  That is Sunshine Key in the background.

 

The snowbirds are packing up and getting ready to head out for the mass exodus on Tuesday.  It typically gets pretty crazy on April 1st.  It will get pretty quiet around here after that……until the “summer program” starts.   I’ve posted what goes on in the summer with the summer program, but until you’ve been here, you really can’t imagine.   Sunshine Key is a nice place in the winter, but it starts to look more like a slum in the summer.   I’ll post some pictures later.   We understand management is trying to make some changes, but it seems they are not interested in enforcing any of the rules they already have.  You can make all the rules you want, but if you don’t enforce them, it really doesn’t matter.   It won’t matter to us this year, since we now have our own lot in Venture Out Resort.