Fort Meyers

 Florida Keys   

Off to the primary destination of this trip...   The Florida Keys...   Marathon, Key West and the Dry Tortugas...  Places that we have been looking forward to seeing for the past few years...  The best destination for our first major trip!!

But on the way down, we had to stop at the "Robert is Here" fruit stand.  A special fruit stand that was founded in 1959 when a young boy started selling fruit on a corner in Homestead Florida...  Still active today and well known in the media it is a great stop on the way to the Keys.  

Just a little bit out of the way, but well worth the slight detour. 

Famous for their exotic fruit, milkshakes and... we particularly like the salsa...   great salsa...  

Marathon

We based our Keys exploration out of Marathon, and stayed at the Jolly Roger RV Resort, right on the sea wall.  A great site!!  

And some great sunset views from the trailer!!!    

Key West

And, of course the ultimate destination was Key West...  and the furthest most southern point in the continental, publicly accessible United States.   There really is a location a bit more southern, but it is part of the Naval Air Station, Key West and is not accessible, without military ID...    and...  since Hawaii is really further south, this is the continental United States!!, but it is famous enough to have it's own marker...

 

 

The buoy sits right down the street from Milepost 0 on the first road in America, US Route 1.. Route 1 extends from Key West to Maine, running close to the eastern coast.  We spent more than a couple of miles on Route 1 from Florida to South Carolina on this trip.

A while back, Albert Key welcomed everyone to Key West by blowing on a Conch shell, and yelling "Welcome to the Island!"..   He was Key West's unofficial ambassador and is remembered by a statue right next to the famous buoy marking the furthermost point in the US (kinda...).

 

 

Key West infamously contains a fairly large free roaming rooster  population..  I am not sure they could be considered "free range" roosters, but they appear everywhere...  These unusual inhabitants are descendants of fighting roosters bred in Cuba and the keys.  and now they are an integral part of Key West.... 

Pan American Airways first flew from Key West to Havana Cuba...  and established the first international scheduled air service.

 

The Key Lime pie was first made in Key West...   We can personally assure you that the unique Key Lime makes an excellent pie...   often imitated...  In our case, desert for more than a couple of meals came from the original Key Lime pie bakery.

 Key West Lighthouse

The key west lighthouse was a bit of a climb at 88 steps and 73 feet, but it is not the highest lighthouse we have climbed. It is right in the middle of old Key West, across the street from the Hemingway house.  We stopped here and paid the exorbitant daily parking rate to see a few of the sites...    As usual we were not able to climb all the way to the top and get near the lights, but there was a first order lens in the museum / gift shop from the Sombrero Key Lighthouse...  at eight feet high, the first order Fresnel lens is big hunk of glass!! 

  

 

 

Dry Tortugas National Park and Fort Jefferson

The highlight of the trip was the seaplane ride to the Dry Tortugas National Park. 

We took the seaplane from Key West out to the Dry Tortugas, landed in the water and taxied to the shore...   There are two ways for tourists to get to the Dry Tortugas islands, by seaplane or ferry.  The "Yankee Freedom" sails daily to the Dry Tortugas with up to 175  people and returns. Traveling this way gives you almost five hours on the island with lots of time to visit Fort Jefferson, swim, snorkel, and generally relax.   We opted for the seaplane, because...  well...  after all....   we had never flown on a seaplane!!!

Besides, with the seaplane, we left earlier and arrived before the ferry, and had some time in Fort Jefferson with 175 fewer people on the island!!  

We wanted to see the fort, hang on the beach, swim and snorkel a bit...   The fort was great, hanging on the beach was good, swimming was a bit cold, there was lots of seaweed, and the snorkeling was not super impressive.   I guess it all depends on your perspective, remember we went snorkeling off St. John's in the Caribbean on our honeymoon, and have been reef diving in the Caribbean a number of times...  so snorkeling off the Dry Tortugas was nothing to compare...  regardless of the tourist hype...

 Visiting the largest brick structure in the Americas of more than 16 million bricks, and occupying over 16 acres was a once in a lifetime visit.   Fort Jefferson was built between 1846 and 1875 and never really was completed.  The fort was built to help monitor and control ship flow between the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico.  As is typical of forts built of brick and mortar in this time period, advances in rifled cannon technology made the forts susceptible to long range artillery attack.  Technology continues to win battles.

Adding to the problems of building a sustainable permanent fort on an island of sand 70 miles west of Key West were structural design issues.  How do you build a heavy brick structure on sand that is but a few feet from a dynamic ocean current?  Fresh water was to be held in cisterns in the base of the brick walls, but with the exception of one cistern, leaking salt water through cracks made drinking water scarce.  Thus the name change from the Tortuga Islands to the Dry Tortugas.

We opted for the full day stay on the island, giving us almost seven hours to play....   and that turned out to not be a good thing.  A half day of four hours might not have been long enough, and the additional three hours was a bit long.  It was hot, there was very little shade anywhere on the island, and there was not a lot to do... so we thought that seven hours was too much... 

But, do not be mislead...   we had  a GREAT time visiting one of our most remote national parks!!!  It was  a great day...

In and Around Marathon

Marathon Florida is in the central part of the Florida Keys, almost exactly between Key Biscayne in the north, and Key West on the southern tip. 

As usual, we looked for some interesting out-of-the-way sites and found some interesting things...  

Flipper

Remember Flipper?  The great dolphin from the TV series back in the 1960s???   His grave is inside the Dolphin Research Center in Marathon.  A few yards from our RV Park, we elected not to pay for the whole tourist experience in the center, but we did stop for a picture of the large dolphin in the parking lot!!

"Mount Lushmore"

On the outside of one of the bars in Marathon, the Overseas Liquor Store was a one of a kind mural of famous folks that drank liquor in the Florida keys.  (At least we think so)...   Hemmingway, Roosevelt, and Al Capone...  Who are the other two?    We have no clue and Google did not help much...  Perhaps on our next trip we will ask...   Stay tuned!!!

Florida East Coast Railway

Opening the Keys to tourism, business and other travel was the construction of the Florida East Coast Railway.  Henry Flagler, one of the famous industrialists of the early 20th century was the founder of Standard Oil and the key developer of the east coast of Florida including Miami, Palm Beach and the Keys.   Key West appeared to be a great place for a coaling station to supply the expected sea going ships traveling through the Gulf of Mexico and the about to be newly opened Panama Canal.  He built the Florida East Coast Railway from Georgia to Key West, completing it in 1912.   Although he passed away in 1913, and the railroad was severely damaged in the great Labor Day hurricane in 1935, the railroad still survives today.

In Marathon, a rescued train car now serves as the offices of Crane Point Museum.

Bahia Honda Bridge

After the great Labor Day hurricane, the State of Florida bought the right-of-way, and all the bridges, and started building the Overseas Highway.  By 1938 the road was open from Miami to Key West.  

Over the bridge south of Bahia Honda Key, the railroad bridge consisted of a number of trusses supporting the tracks.  The trusses made it too narrow for two lanes of automobile traffic...  What to do?  Build the highway on top of the railroad bridge trusses, of course...   I wonder what it was like to drive a car across the top...   

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