I decided to break my travel plans of moving every day in order to give myself a break, and perhaps have a little more time to experience Key West. It is clearly a different sort of place that requires a little more time to get the feel of it. Actually, it would take a LOT more time for that. I will just be scratching the surface.

I realized that I would be missing a lot if I didn’t take in at least one beach side restaurant. Therefore I went to Dog Beach which has free beach side parking. I parked at a memorial beach honoring AIDS victims, which was right next to a slave cemetery. The sign on the slave cemetery told about a pre-civil war situation where a couple of American ships were illegally bringing in loads of slaves. The American navy caught the ships and rescued the people on board, but conditions had been so bad on the illegal ships that something like 300+ men, women and children ended up dying from illnesses they contacted on the journey. Those people were buried on this beach. The remainder were cared for in the hospital on the island and eventually returned to Africa – but not necessarily to where they had been. Yet another sad chapter in the story of American enterprise.

Next to these two beaches is a “garden club” garden located in an old brick fort. Beautiful garden, well laid out and signed. Finally I came to a beach side restaurant, and took a table facing the Atlantic Ocean.

After lunch I headed back to my hotel, stopping at an old fort that had been made into a museum. The museum had some interesting displays concerning Cuban refugees from the past sixty years or so. Other than that it was the normal collection of old pianos, old tools, old cannons – old stuff. The evening I hung out near the hotel pool and met a couple of very interesting people. In a place such as Key West perhaps the interesting people are the “tourists” – they come with interesting tales of their lives. One of the guys I met is an ex-marine. Finally having gotten his fill of the adventures that come with carrying guns into war zones, settled down, had children and is now one of huge “army” of utility workers re-wiring America. He was in Key West working on that project. Another guy that I met was a commercial airline pilot but got into a horrible automobile accident that put him on the injured-retired role. He now just travels to interesting places, having been in this hotel for about two months on this trip. There were other, much briefer, discussions.

I am going to spend another night in Key West, meaning another day. I am not sure what I will do with my time, perhaps go to some other keys and poke around a bit to see what I might see. The weather has been good; not too hot, mild breezes, almost bearable humidity, and no rain.