Key West and Windley Key

We woke up in time for the sunrise. I had my time wrong and the sun was mostly up by the time we got to the beach near our condo but it was still beautiful. It’s chilly out here today at about 65 degrees.

We spent Christmas Day in Key West. With all of the tourists around I figured there would still be lots open there. We drove around a bit looking for a parking spot. We planned to go to the southern most point in the continental United States but believe it or not there was a long line to see it. Plus parking was kind of a nightmare. So instead we headed for the Shipwreck Museum. As we were approaching we saw this sign…

Asa Tift, famous shipwreck captain. This was going to be fun!

So it turns out Key West’s main source of income in the 1800s was shipwreck salvaging. They would watch for shipwrecks on the coral and then the whole town would go and salvage what they could. Then they would get to keep a portion of the goods (the rest was returned to the owner). They built lookouts to watch for ships that were in trouble. Asa Tift owned a warehouse where they would split up the goods.

Apparently Asa was a popular name. Here we see Asa Tift and Asa Weatherford.
Portrait of Asa himself. The whole museum was practically dedicated to him.

Below you see the route the ships would take. It was dangerous with lots of reefs to get caught up on and hurricanes to blow you off course. In the 1900s they built the overseas railroad and stopped using ships as much. Then the shipwreck industry died out too.

After the museum, we walked around looking for a restaurant.

Esme saw a face in this tree. Do you see it?
There are chickens running around wild in Key West. We found out that they’re adoptable as pets to take back to the mainland as a way of population control.
At first we were excited to eat somewhere with the first and original sloppy joes but it turns out it’s a bar with no food service.

We ended up at Caroline’s Cafe and the food there was great.

We should have probably stayed longer in Key West because we had come so far to see it (about 2hrs from our condo) but I wasn’t super impressed by it (tons of tourists and bad parking). It was fun to see but I’m glad we were staying on Key Largo where it’s touristy but not crowded. So we headed back, stopping to see these fiberglass statues in Marathon.

The now non-functional overseas railroad.
Overseas Highway

With the extra time we had, we stopped at Windley Key Fossil Park. This used to be a quarry for coral gravel (used in the making of the overseas railroad) and later for coral slabs used which were polished and used to decorative purposes. You can see many coral impressions in the quarry. No fish or other animals but it was still interesting to see.

This type of tree is called Gumbo Limbo which the kids loved saying and ended up turning into a sort of monster story. “Gumbo Limbo is coming for you!”

We went for a short hike on a trail in the park.

Above and below are mushrooms found by Cal. The top one almost looks like it grows upside down. The bottom ones were black and very sinister looking.

We ended the day with Chinese takeout for dinner. It doesn’t really feel like Christmas here with no snow, no party, and no presents but we have all of that waiting for us back in Wisconsin.

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