The C.C. Chronicle: Key West

Key West was a very interesting (to say the least...drag queens and naked guys with bandanas...people living primitively on their boats b/c it doesn't cost anything to anchor...) little town...or island, to be exact. It had lots of history, ghost stories, lots of local artists, great places to eat, water, boats, shopping....and LOTS of walking. We didn't realize just how much walking we would do (my bum hip held up fairly well, surprisingly...but still hurt like crazy a lot of the time). It was around 2 miles just to get from our resort to Duval St (the main strip with everything) to eat...Duval St is 1 mile long...we ventured away from Duval to the beaches, to snorkel and kayak, etc so there's a few more miles...and factor in when you walk there, you have to walk back...sooo...you do the math. We check out the Shipwreck Museum and Mel Fisher's Museum (if you've seen Fool's Gold you are familiar the loot Mel Fisher found around shipwrecks since his story inspired the storyline for the movie). They were both great and interesting, but Mel Fisher's museum was incredible! Ernest Hemmingway, Audubon, and Truman-also used by other presidents (among others) had homes there. They say Hemmingway's home is haunted, Audubon is the lost Dauphin of France...and we all know about Truman and other presidents (Key West is conveniently located 90 miles from Cuba-hopefully you know your history from high school...). Our snorkel and kayak trip ended up being a private charter, which was fantastic. We kayaked over a couple of sharks around Mule Key (one of the "Mangroves" of Florida-quasi-islands made of mangrove trees), saw jellyfish with photosynthetic algae on it's tentacles giving the jellyfish food, birds, and fish. We snorkeled with fish, spiny lobsters, crabs, a random shark that swam under me (yikes! 10 or 15 mins in, so I had to swim away and watch my back), and a fully grown stringray (an hour later...that's when I decided it was time to go). The beaches were pretty, but not ideal for swimming because the reef catches the majority of the sand and keeps the waves down, so the beaches aren't super sandy like the rest of Florida. It's a trade-off...pretty, but rocky beaches for great snorkeling and kayaking. It was a good trip, but not somewhere I'm desperate to go back to.

At the Mel Fisher Museum...