A Day in Beautiful Key West

 

Cudjoe Key, Florida (high 80, low 65)

Our cool front has held but it looks like we are returning to more normal temperatures.  This time of the year the high is usually 80 and the low 70.  Day after day…

We’ve been busy settling into our new home.  More about that on another post.

Key West is the closest place for us for shopping, so we’ve been there quite often for one thing or another. There is a lot to buy when you’re setting up a new home.   If you missed my last post, it explained about our new home in the Keys.

Yesterday morning we headed there to Home Depot to pick up a freezer we ordered last week.  That will be covered in a later post as well since that didn’t turn out quite as we had expected.

After Home Depot, we grabbed a burger from McDonalds and parked by the dog park to eat and watch the dogs.  We miss our puppy friends from Quail Run Rv park so we decided to get a puppy fix.  Actually, we found there were more dogs in Home Depot than at the dog park.

Later, we walked over to the Key West Garden Center which is in the old Martello Fort.  It was one of three that secured Key West and the Gulf Coast after the war of 1812, and after the British burned DC.

The garden club keeps the grounds up and offers free tours.  It’s a lovely place to spend some time on a hot day.  Isn’t this a beautiful entrance?

 

 

This “tree” is apparently just a Strangler Fig which at some point must have strangled the tree it was attached to because we could see no tree. 

 

There are paths around the gardens, some of which give you a beautiful ocean view.

 

In the following picture is a Key West Red Frangi Pani tree which is also know as a Plumeria. There were a few blooms on it, but in a few weeks it should be covered with flowers.  We made a note to go back then.   These flowers are the flowers on a Hawaiian Lei.  They are beautiful and smell wonderful.  Here is a picture from a previous visit. 

 

 

 

This next picture shows how large it is.

 

Frangi Pani grow very well here in the Keys.  The last time we were here, two years ago, we got two small cuttings and  stuck them into the ground and  left town a week later.  They were ignored for two years and when we came back, this is what one of them looked like.  The other cutting must have gotten knocked down or run over because it’s just a broken stump in the ground.

 

Caladium

 

Ginger

Apparently the garden club holds there meeting in these beautiful rooms.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our next stop was to Higgs Beach and the White Street Pier.

The pier is a good place to watch sunrise. It’s quite a popular place and you never know who or what you will see.  Yesterday, the most interesting thing was a guy on a very speedy motorized skateboard.  He had some great balance to stay on that thing as fast as it was going. The girl on the bike must have been with him.

 

This is the pier.  To the right you can see part of the AIDS Memorial.

 

 

Higgs Beach is a lovely beach with a lot of hotels overlooking the Atlantic.

 

 

 

People were enjoying water activities.

 

That water is too cold for me!

 

AIDS hit Key West particularly hard and they did a nice job on the AIDS Memorial.

All the black granite blocks have names of AIDS victims on them.

There were a LOT of names carved into the granite.  There were a lot of men who died here during the AIDS epidemic. 

 

On another part of the beach is the African Cemetery.  It is another place that is very thought provoking and sad.

There were 294 men, women and children who were rescued from slave ships bound for Cuba, but later died from illnesses from being held captive in deplorable conditions on slave ships.  It was another nice, but very sad memorial.

 

We didn’t make it to the newly completed Viet Nam Veteran Memorial, but will get back there another day.

After finishing our errands and sightseeing, we headed home to put groceries away, then back to Key West for the nightly sunset Celebration at Mallory Square.

Unfortunately, March and most of April if I remember correctly is spring break.  That doesn’t mean there are thousands of drunk college kids (although they are here) there are just as many young families with children.  It seems to be a popular time of year for Asians as well.  The point it, Mallory Square was unusually crowded.  We were unable to find a parking place in our favorite lot.  We finally found another place to park, and walked down to Mallory Square which was back to back people who lined up by the pier for a view of the setting sun.

This is all we got.

 

 

The usual street performers were out.  The sword swallower who we met on a bus one afternoon was performing.  Unfortunately, the battery on my camera died.  I took pictures on my cell phone, but for some reason I am no longer able to down load them into my laptop.  I used to be able to, but for some reason, I can’t anymore.  If anyone has any suggestions, I’m open to help.

 

We strolled along the pier and looked at some of the beautiful and interesting things the vendors were selling.  There were some beautiful framed photos that would have looked nice on a few open walls in our new fifth wheel, but we’re over budget now. 

 

As we walked back to our car, we got behind two young guys, either college or high school. It was hard to tell which was the drunker of the two and which was holding the other up.  We found out a few minutes later when one was laying down on the ground passed out.  We walked right on by.  They’ll have to figure out how to handle the consequences of their own behavior themselves.  I bet they had a big hangover this morning.

 

I think today will be a stay home and work around the house day. Maybe another venture into Key West for sunset tonight…or maybe not.  We’ll see how the day goes.