It's really only about a three-hour drive from our first hotel, in Homestead, to our second hotel, in Key West, but we pretty much spent the whole day getting here because there is so much to see along the way. Here's a little taste of travel day.
We stopped at Mrs. Mac's Kitchen in Key Largo for breakfast. It seems like a pretty classic Keys joint, with license plates lining the walls and dollar bills lining the ceiling. The food was great! We all went for breakfast, but we started with a shared piece of key lime pie so we could really get in the spirit of it all. Liam and Henry both ordered the jumbo-size chocolate milk, which was fine for big, strapping Liam, but for Henry ... well, let's just say that our server bet him a dollar that he couldn't finish that milk plus his breakfast, and she won.
After breakfast, we headed down US 1 for a little while to Islamorada, where we stopped at the Rain Barrel Sculpture Gallery and poked around. Henry was impressed by the resident cats (who were not, I think, the six-toed variety famous on Key West), and it was fun to wander around and look at all the interesting artwork. We also saw our first Keys free-range chicken.
Also on Islamorada is a place called Robbie's. It's like a big complex with a restaurant and a bar and party boats and stuff. But we had our sights set on Robbie's famous tarpons. Specifically, watching while they leaped up out of the water to eat fish out of our hands. Apparently the story is that years ago, a tarpon had a big cut on its face, and the folks at Robbie's sewed it up and kept on feeding it ... so Scarface eventually let his tarpon friends know, and pretty soon there was a whole swarm of them all around the dock, just waiting for the chum buffet to start. Anyway, we took turns feeding them, which was by turns terrifying, gross, fascinating, and thrilling.
Readers, this is also where our trip started to go a little off-kilter. We all stopped in the bathrooms on the way out, and Mike was the last to go. But when he stepped out, he slipped on some wet rock. He caught himself before he fell and broke something, but in the process he scraped a huge layer of skin off his big toe. Not gonna lie, it was gross. I ended up going back to the tarpon shack and borrowing a spray bottle of hydrogen peroxide, a bunch of paper towels, and some ridiculously small bandaids, and we did some first aid on the spot before any tarpon bacteria (or whatever) could settle in. Yikes!
After that little misadventure, we decided it might be best to just keep on going straight to Key West so Mike could avoid walking on it for a little while. We got to Key West with plenty of time to spare before check-in at our hotel, so we stopped at CVS and got some real first-aid supplies, got Mike all disinfected and bandaged up, then ventured downtown. We parked our rental van and headed to the Lobster Shack for lunch. Our lobster rolls were delicious, if extremely pricey. (Note to Lobster Shack: If you're going to charge $20 per sandwich, maybe throw in some chips or something, sheesh!) After we ate, we took a little walk to the southernmost point in the continental United States. I had read that there's always a line to take pictures at this spot, so we were pleasantly surprised that there were only a couple of people ahead of us.
We walked back to the van and realized we still had plenty of time, so we headed across the street to the Key West Butterfly & Nature Conservancy. It was HOT in there (you would think by this point I would have acclimated more to Florida, but nope, I was sweaty and miserable) but the butterflies were pretty great. They also had a pair of flamingos named Rhett and Scarlett. Well worth the price of admission, especially considering that I had a coupon.
After that, we had one more photo stop to make: the end of US Highway 1. Or the start. Or the end. Anyway, it's mile marker 0. Hopefully someday we can take the boys to the northern end in Maine. But that will be an adventure for another day.
We checked into our hotel and got settled in, then we made a critical error by deciding to take the hotel shuttle back downtown to see the "famous" sunset at Mallory Square. This is not an activity I would recommend unless you are a big fan of drunk people, crowds of drunk people, street performers who cater to drunk people, or not being able to actually see the sunset. In short, it was not our scene (understatement), so we took off back the way we came in, found an empty restaurant (because everyone else was busy drinking ... I mean, watching the sunset ... at Mallory Square), ate some Thai food, and then took the hotel shuttle back to our room to sleep off a very full and eventful day.
Tomorrow is the grand finale, and the whole reason for our trip, so stay tuned!
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