The one trip I ever took to the keys I made in a blood red Ford Mustang convertible. A couple of buddies and I
blew out of Miami and headed due South on the reckless whim that we’d be able to find a place to stay when we shoed up.
It wasn’t that easy, and we ended up in a rather grungy hotel in a cheesy part of town in key West. Strike
that….cheesy part of town is too limiting. ALL of Key West is cheesy. But hey, cheesy can be OK. And Key West was
fine. It was warm, the beer was cold, and I ate my own weight in conch fritters.
Now all of this is a lead
up to the piece I read
this morning over at the Washington Post about the keys. Now the writer here is far more adventuresome than I was
those years ago. She does some diving, ruminates on the hundreds of tarpon hanging around a place called Robbie’s
Marina, and generally explores many of the lesser known keys…something I wanted to do, but simply had no time for.
She also checks out the dolphin shows and runs into a charming 70-pound loggerhead turtle named Bubblebutt. So she
covers an immense amount of round in just four days in the Keys, which kinda made my trip those years ago seem kinda
weak.