Destin to Key West

When we decided to do the Destin to Key West trip, we didn’t think that it would take as much time as it took to get from PA to Destin, or Orlando. And we definitely didn’t factor in that Destin and Key West were in different time zones, which Kacie mentioned in the last post. The place we were staying in Key West really wants you to get there by 10pm, presumably so that their manager can leave at 10. We could call if we would be later, but we really wanted to get there before 10. And since we would rather get there a bit early, we thought it would be a good idea to get up at 4am to leave Destin on Monday morning. Then it would take between 12.5 and 15 hours, depending on which way you went and how much traffic there was in each city we had to go through. We did get up at 4, begrudgingly, and picked the route that followed the west coast of Florida and went straight across the Everglades. This route still went through Tallahassee and Tampa, but at least we didn’t need to go through Orlando and Miami. It would take a half hour longer, but it was worth it to skip those two cities, which in my opinion, are up there with New York and LA for traffic. Florida drivers are also some of the craziest in the country. Once we started out, around 4:30am or so, the GPS said we’d arrive at about 8:30pm.

We had filled up the tank the day before, and packed as much as we could the night before, so we just hit the road. I drove first for a couple hours, but was fading fast. Kacie is way more used to driving in the morning, so after the first couple hours we decided to switch, and get a couple Dunkin Doughnuts. Once Kacie took over I was out. She got us through Tallahassee and Tampa herself. Just after getting through Tampa, I was awake for that at least, we grabbed a few McDonalds burgers and gas. We switched once we got gas and I drove the rest of the way down. Shortly after we switched, the GPS asked again if we would like to take the quicker route, which was the turnpike to Orlando, then over to 95 and down through Miami. We did not. So we kept going south from Tampa through the various cities of the west coast of Florida. The west coast is very nice, but I has only been to Tampa and Clearwater, never south of that. I can’t say there was much difference between any of those cities from the highway, but none of them were nearly as crazy as the east coast 95 corridor are. So we made a good call.

The cool part came once we were told to make a hard left just south of Naples and shoot across the Big Cypress and Everglades to Homestead, which is pretty much the last decent sized town before jumping on 1 and heading to the keys.

Before the Everglades, which we really didn’t see much of, was Big Cypress National Wildlife Preserve. The road is almost totally a straight line across the state, mostly one lane. We followed the same truck the whole way, literally. Luckily, he stayed 10-20mph over the speed limit the whole time. Not too slow and not too fast, so we could still take it all in. It is a very different world out there once you get deep into the middle of the state. Obviously gators and snakes are everywhere, but periodically we would see signs saying “panther crossing”. I did know that the panthers had made a comeback, but Kacie was pretty surprised. However, we saw nothing but birds and swamps after getting out of the pine forests. Kacie kept an eye out for anything, and I was happy to follow the truck knowing that he would clear the way if any crazy predators were around. It was the middle of the day, so I wasn’t surprised that we didn’t see any panthers, but I did think a gator or two would be around. And the probably were, we just didn’t see them.

Along with the lack of wildlife, there was the lack of civilization through here. There were the occasional places, like the Skunk Ape Research Headquarters and a few airboat ride spots, but when there are no power lines and you know they didn’t bury them, you are out there. We did get to see Alligator Alcatraz, or at least the road to it, which I didn’t think about until we were there. I can’t find it on Google Maps, but we saw it, I know it’s there. And it’s in the middle of nowhere in a swamp. You couldn’t see any buildings from the road, but there was a sign and a truck with a guard in it just off the road. I’m sure they were monitoring the area. Who knows how close we were to some pretty bad guys…

Another unexpected part, at least unexpected by me, was all the Indians. But if you think about it, most of, if not all of Florida is Indian territory, or it was. And down here, they do call themselves Indians, none of that Native American crap for them. That’s northeast white people talk. Every 10 or 20 miles for a while we would see a sign for Indian Village. We saw them a lot right after. As with out west, there was always a decent building or two, presumably where the “elders” stayed or did business, surrounded by a ghetto of little run-down houses and half-abandoned building and cars. White people’s stupid renaming of them not withstanding, it’s a bitch what our influence has done to tribes across the country. They finally get some kind of compensation from us for taking all of their lands, and the elders or whatever they call the big wigs in the tribes steal the money to build casinos and whatever. Then they keep the majority of the profits and give the descendants of the tribe just enough to live in poverty. We hide from it by saying that these Indians can govern themselves however they see fit. It’s way way worse out west like in Pine Ridge, but you could see it here too. And none of this would be going on unless some higher up Indians learned greed from us, knowing that they could get away with it. But I digress…

Along the way, once we were through the meat of Big Cyprus, we would also see random compounds here and there. These weren’t Indian compounds, they looked more like cult compounds. A couple acres, or it looked like it, with multiple buildings, surrounded by a 10ish foot solid fence or wall. You could see in here and there, and we could see what usually was a nice modern house, with multiple run-down or purposely crappy buildings scattered around. Now some of these “compounds” could’ve been nice, but the ones you could kind of see into were all about the same, very culty. And to be fair about the walls, most of the wildlife out there wants to kill you, so I’d have a wall too if I lived there.

As we got close to civilization again, now in the actual north Everglades, we had to drive through 10 or 15 miles of construction. It seems that we are destroying more and more of the untamed land. The first thing we saw as we came up to the first traffic light in hours was a giant 20+ story hotel/casino with the usual commercial areas around it. I assumed we would gradually come into civilization, but no, right to the giant money generating building. Oh well, that’s what happens when the whole country tries to move there in a short period of time. I can bitch about it, but there’s nothing I can do about it. I’d move down here too if I could.

From there we made another 90 degree turn south to Homestead. Unfortunately, we hit the evening rush and every traffic light was backed up. This must have been nursery row, everywhere we looked there was a nursery. It all looked like landscaping plants, presumably for new homes. So that took a minute to get through. But we pushed through and finally got to route 1. This is the road that goes the whole way through to Key West. Once we were on it, there was barely a car to be seen. Not a lot of tourists heading to the keys on Monday night.

We were getting hungry again, and although we were finally getting close, we decided to stop at a Wendy’s in Key Largo. It was a ghost town. We were the only ones there until one other guy came in. But it was good, we don’t have a Wendy’s close at home and I still think they have the best fast-food burger. We hammered a couple burgers down quick and decided that we might have accidentally timed it just right to see the sun set as we drove over the 7-mile bridge. We weren’t sure the whole way to Marathon, but luck was on our side, we got onto the bridge just as the sun was setting.

It is still quite a hike to drive from here to Key West, after the sun had set as we crossed the bridge, it slowly got darker and darker as we crossed over the various Keys.

As we got to Big Pine, Kacie mentioned that she hoped we would see a Key Deer. They are little versions of deer that only live in the keys and that are only about half the size of a normal North American deer. We had been through there before looking for them with no luck. Now we were in the dark. We started to see the warning signs for deer crossing, along with fences on either side of the road trying to keep them off of it. We had resigned to not seeing any of them again. Then, out of nowhere, right after one of the fences ended at a driveway or something, there were two of them right off the road, about 6 feet from the car. I just caught them as we were right up on them. I think I could’ve stopped if they were any closer, but luckily they saw me coming and stayed where they were. And what you hear isn’t a lie, their heads might have been as tall and the mirrors in the Mustang, a lot smaller than normal deer where we come from.

So after that, I decided to stop at a convenience store to buy a couple lottery tickets since we had gotten so lucky throughout the entire day, with both sunrise and set, and now catching a couple Key Deer as we drove down. We’ll see if we win. If we do, we’re staying down here.

At about 9pm we rolled into Key West. It’s about what I remember. The rest of the keys seem like beach towns. Key West is a real town that has a beach and tourist areas. There are normal people who just live here. We weren’t interested in that though, Kacie had found a place called the Cabana Inn. It’s perfectly Key West. Adults only, an old house built up to have a bunch of rooms scattered around a nice little pool with cabanas and a hot tub spread around the property. Space is a premium here, and I assume regulations are pretty lax. And to top it all off, it’s located a half block off of Duval Street, the good half. We had to drive down Duval to even get to the parking lot, and as we got out of the car, we could hear the bands playing just a few steps away. Kacie jumped out to check in while I stayed with the car. You could feel it in the air, Key West. There’s not really any other place like it, at least that I’ve been to. She got us in and we lugged all of our crap through the original house, which now has the lobby and a few rooms upstairs, to our room which was right beside the pool.

In very Key West style, there were even a couple chickens hanging out in the lobby by the breakfast area. I don’t remember this many chickens all over the island. There are also a lot of chicks around right now. The chickens must be going crazy recently.

I don’t think it was either of our intentions, I know it wasn’t mine, to do anything but shower and pass out when we got in, but Key West got us. We were in the room for about 10 minutes before we looked at each other and said, “Let’s go have a drink”. Again, I don’t think it was either or our intentions, we have multiple bars closer, like within a few steps, but we ended up walking a couple blocks down to Sloppy Joe’s, which was also our favorite spot the last time we were here. It’s always a party type atmosphere no matter when you go there. We rolled up in there, luckily found a table someone had just left, and started knocking back a couple mojitos and a lemon drop shot a piece.

There are live bands every night, or at least it seems that way, and we got there just as they were setting up. The band this night was called Cat 5. It was a girl singer with a couple dudes backing her up. They played covers of fairly current songs, which as you can imagine, make the ladies want to dance around. They were pretty good, we stuck around for a bit to watch and drink. It was a pretty cool first hour of our Key West stay.

After that, we walked back to the room, took showers, and passed out. I don’t remember what time, but since we had been up since 4am, we were out pretty quick. The next day would be our only full day in Key West, so we wanted to be well rested. And it turned out that we would need it.