Brad and I have spent some lovely times in Florida in the past, relaxing and enjoying the sun and warmth while New York is being battered by blizzards and winter-ness. The Florida of the road trip, however, was mostly garishness. We spent a couple of nights camping in the Everglades (free because it was the off-season!), where the mosquitoes had their way with me in the evening. I've never had worse mosquito bites in my life (easily 30-50 of them), and I spent most of our time in Florida in an itchy hell.
We visited Key West with the intention of taking a 4-hour road trip boat trip to Dry Tortugas, the most inaccessible national park in the continental US. You can tell that Key West was charming back in its time. Now it’s more Gatlinburg-esque and is crammed with cheesy bars and lewd t-shirt stores. It was a 3 hour drive just to get to this unpleasant town, and when we got there we found our that our Dry Tortugas trip had been canceled because of high winds (and after I'd already bought the Dramamine!). Rather than spend more time surrounded by ass shorts with Key West splayed across the butt, we turned around and headed back to to Florida City on the mainland where we were instead surrounded by strip malls.
It wasn't all terrible, though. Namely:
1) We saw some alligators/crocodiles, cranes, and silly birds in the Everglades
2) It was quite the novelty to use the air conditioner instead of the heater, and we welcomed the warmness after all the snow from the first part of this loop.
3) Ernest Hemingway's house in Key West is pretty awesome AND it's filled with six-toed cats! Ernest Hemingway collected six-toed cats because they are supposed to be good luck, and now there are a number of their descendants among the 40-50 cats who currently live at the house. The extra digit is an opposable thumb, which they can use to pick things up off the ground (creepy!). In other animal news, the old town also has a number of roosters running around as a result of a ban on cock fighting several decades ago that required owners to set the birds loose.
4) We went canoe-ing in the Everglades, where we got lost off the trail, but had fun paddling around for a couple hours.
5) On our way out of Florida, we got to have lunch with Brad's mom and stepdad and visit for at least a little bit before heading north.
-M
Key West is terrible.
-B
Dave was so glad to hear that you got to see the six-toed cats. We also got your postcard yesterday. Lil G loves it and she keeps saying "Cat!" and pointing to it. Mosquitoes love me, too. Misery. xoxo, AG
ReplyDeleteWe really loved the Hemingway house, it was one of our favorite places, so thanks for the idea. We'll try to find more postcards that Lucy can point to ;)
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