Key West Visit

Several days ago we became dirt dwellers, took a bus to Key West and spent three nights in a very nice B&B on the quiet end of Duval Street. We had terrific weather for our trip and attended one sunset celebration in Mallory Square, had some great restaurant meals, took a fast ferry to the Dry Tortugas, and visited some museums.

The highlight of our visit was the 70 mile boat ride to the Dry Tortugas. There is little out there besides the amazing coastal fortification "Fort Jefferson" and some great snorkeling within the ruins of old coaling docks.

According to our guide, Tortuga Jack, Fort Jefferson was built over many years as a response to the war of 1812 and the perceived need for coastal fortifications to protect shipping lanes. It was hard to visualize any real usefulness for this fort being out in the middle of no-where, and in fact it was most useful as a prison during and after the civil war. It has the distinction of being the largest masonry fortification in the world and the masonry is extremely well executed and preserved. Tortuga Jack provided a colorful description of the life of the workers who built this huge structure. Perhaps you can detect the color change in the brick in the photo of the front entrance to the fort. The lower light color bricks were made in the Florida pan handle and shipped down the Gulf of Mexico by sailing vessel. The darker red bricks at the top, were added during the civil war and were shipped by sailing vessel from New England!

The Sunset Celebration is a must do at least once in Key West. There are street performers, bands, and lots of people crowded onto the square to view the sunset. I managed to hold my camera high and get a picture as a sailboat cooperated by passing in front of the sun.

The tree in the picture is one of Key West's several large Banyan Trees. The picture of the butterfly was taken inside the Butterfly Conservatory. I was learning how to use the manual focus provision of my digital camera, a process hampered by the fact that my camera has spent the night in an air conditioned room and the conservatory was controlled to be both hot and humid. So there was lots of condensation on my lens for a while. We saw some spectacular butterfly's but the one shown here was the most in-focus shot I got.

We just paid for an additional month here in Marathon. We probably won't stay until March but the break even point on the monthly rate is two and a half weeks and we think that it will be at least that long before it is warm enough to head north.