Travel Magnets - Key West Roadtrip 2023 Edition

What?!?  You thought we wouldn't get more travel magnets on our recent roadtrip?  Of course we did.  We did keep it more under control limiting the number to sixteen new magnets.  Actually, we could have bought more.  We never got a Florida, Tennessee, or Missouri magnet (we did get an Arkansas one).  We didn't get any in Mobile or Birmingham (we did get a few in Memphis).  But we did get a few cool magnets this time around.

Hemingway House.

My favorites include the Hemingway House, Key West, and the Lorraine Motel.

A nice piece of Key West art.

The semi-3D Lorraine Motel magnet.

You can find these and other travel magnets in the Travel Magnets tab at the top of the blog.

P.S. You can also find a magnet from the Historic Park Inn Hotel where we stayed last December.

Key West Roadtrip 2023 - Epilogue

I enjoyed our roadtrip but it was tough, emotionally and physically.  There is no way to visit three Civil Rights Museums without being torn up emotionally.  These are not happy places.  The rest of what we did - Key West, manatees, NASA, diamond digs, visiting family - didn't quite balance it all out.  It's hard to balance so much injustice.

Our roadtrip felt a lot harder physically than other roadtrips we've done in the past.  This one was 4,360 miles (7,016 km).  The longest, probably our Route 66 trip, was longer but not by much ... 300 miles or so longer.  That one went from Omaha to Chicago to Santa Monica, CA to San Francisco and back to Omaha.  I don't remember it feeling as hard as this latest roadtrip did (this could be selective memory's doing).  Part of it may have been age ... Route 66 was almost twelve years ago ... but I think how we arranged activities and driving was a major part.

On this trip we arranged the activities for the mornings and saved all the driving for the afternoons.  I think this made the driving portions too long.  If we did it again, planning the activities for the early afternoon would work better as it would split the driving into morning and afternoon legs.  The activities, be they digging for diamonds or visiting a museum, would break up the long and tedious driving.

There is evidence for this.  The days between Birmingham, Memphis, and St. Louis were all shorter than four hours driving and none of them felt terrible.  It was the ten, eight, and seven hour driving days that exhausted us.

Things don't stay the same.  We are getting older.  What was once easy may not be so easy anymore.  Live, learn, and adapt.

I've gone back and updated the Roadtrip posts.  I added pictures to a couple and altered the text a little bit on a few more. I added pictures of the mangrove kayak and the manatee snorkeling to my 2023-01 Key West Roadtrip Google Photos album.

Key West Roadtrip 2023 - Day Seven - Key West (Part Two)

UPDATED 02-04-2023

Sailboat.

Today was a day of relaxation.  We really only had one thing planned for the day and that required zero effort on our part.

The day started with a flash.  My alarm went off.  I turned it off and got back in bed.  We both just laid there with our eyes closed trying to decide if we wanted to get up when we both saw a flash.  Since our eyes were closed we have no idea what the flash was.  The sliding glass door was covered with a heavy curtain and the bathroom door was closed blocking the only other window in our room.  We both got out of bed but saw nothing (no sparking or scorching) and smelled nothing (no smoking electrical fire) so we decided it must have been Robert the Creepy Doll's fault and we got dressed.

Which way?

We stopped in Marathon, Florida at a place called Porky's for breakfast.  I had pulled pork for breakfast for the second time ever.  Not sure I'm convinced that anything with BBQ sauce should be considered breakfast food.  It was good though.  (The first time I had it was back in July in Gorham, New Hampshire before my Appalachian Trail hike started.)

From there we went to Fort Zachary Taylor Historical Park ... not for the fort but for the connected beach.  We spent four hours sunning ourselves.  Well, the Wife sunned herself.  I sat in the shade of a rented umbrella while I read my book (My feet and calves were exposed and they did burn to a crisp).  It was a bit windy but it was a nice 85℉ (29℃).  We had some rain yesterday and there is rain in the forecast tomorrow so things worked out for us.  (Thank you Robert?) 

How I spent my Key West vacation.

Tonight we went back to the Florida Boy Bar and Grill for dinner.  The food was good the last time we ate there so why risk a bad meal somewhere else.  My meal was ok - BBQ short rib grilled cheese - but there was fennel in the bread which I do not like.

Tomorrow we drive to Titusville, Florida where we will be close to some space age entertainment.

Photos can be found in my 2023-01 Key West Roadtrip Google Photos album.

Key West Roadtrip 2023 - Day Six - Key West (Part One)

UPDATED 02-04-2023

We got up early and drove to Stock Island which is right outside Key West. Here we got in our two person kayak and joined our guide and fellow kayakers on a tour of the mangrove forest. This turned out to be pretty cool. We kayaked through natural trails through the forests that build islands over the centuries, provide habitat to numerous wildlife, and protect the islands from hurricanes. We saw tree crabs, cassiopeia jellyfish that live upside down on the bottom of the shallows, sea hares which are shell-less snails about six inches or more in size, starfish, and nurse sharks. I will add some pictures of some of these creatures when I get home and can process my camera pictures.

Kayaking through the mangroves.

Southernmost point.

After the kayak we drove into Key West proper and tried to find a parking spot.  The first parking lot was full but, to our surprise, I managed to find a spot near the southernmost part of the continental United States.  We stopped at the Southernmost Point Bar for some lunch before exploring the town.  While we ate under the umbrella it poured rain.  Fortunately it was nearly over by the time we finished lunch.

First stop here was the Southernmost Point Marker.  Not much to see here really except a large painted marker.  Still cool though.  So far we have been at the most southern, western, and the most central part of the United States on our travels.

Next we walked to the Hemingway house and learned about the writer, his life, and his wives.  We saw the famous Hemingway cats - there are now fifty-seven of them - who are famous for having extra toes.  One cat we saw had one extra toe on the front paws and two extra toes on the back paws.

Where Hemingway did a lot of his writing.

Our next stop, not on our itinerary, was a lighthouse across the street from the Hemingway house. From the top of the eighty-eight steps you could see all of Key West and it was an interesting vantage point.  (I may be sore tomorrow not only from the kayak rowing but also from the stair climbing.)

Robert the Doll.

The Tennessee Williams exhibit that was on our itinerary was not open so it got skipped.

We returned to our car and drove to the Fort East Martello museum home of Robert the Creepy Doll. This museum actually was fun. We usually don't like museums but this was an eclectic mix of all sorts of random stuff including Robert who was, in fact, a very creepy doll.  The scary music right out of a bad horror movie set the atmosphere perfectly.  We also saw junk art and a few iguanas sunning themselves on the fort grounds.

We ended the day with a relaxing sit on out back porch watching the sun go down over Duck Key.

Tomorrow we return to Key West for some beach sitting and, perhaps, a few more stops in town.

Photos can be found in my 2023-01 Key West Roadtrip Google Photos album.

Sunset over Duck Key.