A week in the Keys

We decided to rent a car for a week so we could get all of the Christmas stuff done and not wear ourselves and the bikes out.  It has been really nice to have a car.  Both Michelle and I thought that it would be difficult to drive, but it really was not an issue, it was harder driving coming back from driving for years in Europe than not driving at all for a couple of months.  We took a night and went to Key West, staying at the Westin.  Its right in the heart of old Key West, and could not be nicer. 



View from our Hotel Room

 We had a sloppy joe at Sloppy Joes of Hemmingway fame (just like every other bar in the world).  We saw the sunset at Mallory square, along with all of the street performers.  It is considerably better than the one in Clearwater. 

We then topped off the evening with a nice glass of wine in the hot tub.   We went to the "little white house" which was interesting because I had just completed the Candy Bombers, a book Mary bought me about 5 years ago, about the start of the cold war and the Berlin air lift.  They talked about the little white house several times in the book.

We also toured the Mel Fisher museum, he is the man that hunted down a sunken treasure ship, where he found about $400 million in treasure, which the government promptly claimed as theirs.  He fought them in court, and got it all back, including what he had given to them to preserve.  Good to see the little guy can win.

During one of the windiest and perhaps coldest days on record, the film crew and actors filmed a portion of an episode that I believe will air in January of the Amazing Race.  They came in on speedboats at the fuel dock of the marina we are in, and ran down the dock to the end of the road.  My understanding is that the majority of the episode was filmed on Pigeon Key, which is about 2 miles from here, you can almost see it from our slip.  Michelle and I may be in the background, but we did not have a camera with us to take pictures.  All of the marina staff had to sign secrecy agreements, and could not say a word, not that anyone would have come out in that weather anyway.

We got the engine seal leak fixed and began stocking up for the Bahamas run.  We met up with Texas Dreamer again, they are here in Marathon.  The marina they are in had a big grill, so we bought some ribs and had a cook out.

We were able to get up in the middle of the night and watch the lunar eclipse, I did not have the excuse that I had to work in the morning.  For those of you that did not see it, it was pretty incredible.

We took the new dingy out to the seven mile bridge where I caught a mango snapper and some other very ugly fish that jumped off the hook right as I got it next to the boat.  I'm glad it got loose, I would have hated to try and get the hook out of that thing.