Day 9: Key West and the sickness....

I didn’t mention it yesterday but Papa hasn’t been feeling great. We are hoping he just needs to eat healthier and doesn’t have a bug that will pass to the rest of us. Jess woke up last night with ear pain so bad she thought she needed an ER (most everyone knows how much we like to check out the local ER’s when we are on vacation), but alas, after two ibuprofen she woke up feeling better. We are keeping our fingers crossed on that one. Katie wasn’t feeing great this evening and now I’m feeling a tummy bug coming on. Let’s all pray it’s just all the great food we’ve been eating.

Today we checked out of Key Largo and trekked 2.5 hours further southwest to the island of Key West. We saw so much along the way! I thought the islands would be more sandy but they are actually covered in trees called mangroves. So most islands just look like huge forests. Very few actually have sandy beaches. But they still provided for a beautiful drive. The water is a beautiful shade of blue and teal. Amazing.

Along the way we saw the remnants of the old bridge you can see in the picture above off to the right and what was probably the original train line. I’m not sure if they plan to dismantle it or not but right now it’s a cool historic thing to check out. We stopped along the way at Sombrero Beach. It was a beautiful beach with white sand and it looked like a great place to relax for the day...but we were only an hour southwest and still had another hour to go. So we jumped back in the car after snapping some pictures.

Do you see those dark clouds above our heads? Yeah the climate here is similar to Hawaii - if you don’t like the rain just wait 5 minutes. So west we went for another hour and I’m sure Todd has a million pictures of the drive, but as the driver, I listened to a few chapter of my newest audiobook. We stopped for lunch on Marathon Island and found a very cool spot called Dave’s Big Mouth Eatary. Everyone seemed to enjoy their food and I did too...but as I sit here with a tummy ache I’m hoping it wasn’t my lunch. The BBQ chicken flatbread was soooo good!

We had some time to kill so we went and checked out Fort Zachary Taylor. He was out 12th president and this fort was built before the Civil War. When Florida seceded from the union in 1861, one Captain named John Milton Brannan marched to the fort and held it in union hands so the confederates couldn’t use it. During the Civil War, only three southern forts were held in the union’s hands, and we will visit one of the other three on Saturday (Fort Jefferson).

A fun historical walk around and we jumped back in the air conditioned van. Have we mentioned that we hate the humidity here? Yeah, we live in California for a reason. Dry heat!

Before checking into our next Airbnb, we stopped at the Southernmost Point in the continental US. This is the furthest south you can drive in the states. And there’s a line to take a picture there...so Katie snapped this one and we moved along. We don’t wait in lines unless there’s a Disney ride at the end of it.

The condo is a condo and nothing fancy. I’m glad to be able to afford to stay in this part of the Keys. This time of year most Airbnb’s are over $800 a night and one was even a boat for that price. I don’t know about your grandma, but ours isn’t sleeping on a boat for four nights.

I’m laying in bed with a stomach ache, Katie just threw up so she’s feeling better next to me, and I hear Wheel of Fortune in the living room while the healthy people eat dinner. Sometimes vacation feels just like home. Dinner and tv. Chatting and playing cards. We are in a different place but the day to day stresses of normal life don’t follow us on vacation. And that’s probably why we vaca so much. That, and you can’t take the money with you! Live life! Do the things! Explore the vast world around you - you might even learn about the 12th president Zachary Taylor.