Below is my account of our trip to Key West back in May. Because my mom reads this, some of the details in my blog have been edited, like I had to do with my Amsterdam blog. So, if you want to know the WHOLE story, you will have to ask me in person :)
Key West Trip May 6th – May 11th 2012
I had planned a trip to Key West for Gary and myself once my
classes at GVSU were done for the summer.
Finally, the trip had arrived.
Early Sunday morning, we took off from Grand Rapids, with a short
layover in Detroit, and arrived in Miami, Florida around noon on May 6th. The plan was to rent a car and drive the 3-4
hour drive from Miami down to Key West.
Once we landed, we got our luggage and car rental just fine. After about 45 minutes of trying to get out
of the stupid airport, we finally made our way south. Because we were planning on staying at an
apartment in KW and camping for a couple of days on the Dry Tortuga Islands, we
stopped at Wal-Mart to get some food and snacks. After suffering for an hour at the busiest Wal-Mart
in the universe, we were finally on the road to KW.
During the 4 hour ride we stopped occasionally to take
pictures of the bridges, stick our feet in the super warm salt water and look
at horrible crap for sale at stores with names like “Shell World”.
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| Me and a giant lobster |
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| Bridge Connecting Key West Islands |
The road to KW is basically the white trash version
of Route 66, if you can imagine anything worse than the crap on Route 66. When we finally arrived at KW, we found our
apartment just fine. It was a small, one
room studio which was wedged in with other cottages in the Old Town district. We unpacked, put the food away and decided to
check out our surroundings a little.
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| Entrance to the apartment |
The
apartment came with two bikes to use for the week, so we hopped on the bikes
and rode around KW getting ourselves oriented with the area. After riding around for about 30 minutes, we
decided to park the bikes and walk around on Mallory Square. Every night around dusk, Mallory Square
becomes transformed from an empty boardwalk into a place for people to set up
booths to sell pictures, jewelry, and various other crafty items, snacks and
drinks. It also becomes filled with
street performers for the evening. There
are people on unicycles juggling knives, dressed up as Jack Black, playing
guitars and strapping themselves into strait jackets to be thrown into the
ocean to prove their magnificent escaping techniques. It’s quite a spectacle.
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| Me, a Silver guy and his bike |
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| Mallory Square |
The best performance of them all was this guy
who called himself the Catman. He looked
like he was 100 years old and completely insane. His talent was that he had somehow trained
several cats to jump thru hoops of fire, walk on tight ropes and sit on little
stools. He talked to the cats and to the
audience, but you ccouldn't understand a dern thing he says because he speaks with
a garbled French accent. It is by far
the craziest performance there.
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| Catman and his amazing cats |
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| Kitty walking the high wire |
Once the
sun goes down, most of the performers pack up their stuff and leave. We then decided to get something to eat at
this place called Willy T’s. When we
were there, Gary noticed that we were sitting right next to this couple that we
had seen down at Mallory square. The
girl had had on these really cool, super tall shoes and when she walked by
everyone was whispering about her shoes and making a comment about them. So, Gary bugged me until I asked the girl if
she was just at Mallory square and if she had on these incredible shoes. She said yes, but they were killing her feet
so she had to change before they went back out for dinner. We laughed and talked a little bit to them. They were in from Ohio and they were staying
in KW about the same length that we were.
After our dinner and our goodbyes, we decided to walk a little more
around Duval Street. There was this bar
that advertised a nightly drag show at 9pm and 11pm. I casually asked the very tall drag queen out
front if I could possibly have a flyer that she was handing out. We had already missed the start of the 9pm
show, and we felt that we were too tired to attend the 11pm show, so we decided
to go to it the next day.
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| Me and a very boob-alicious Drag queen! |
However,
across Duval from the drag show, we came upon this bar called Bourbon Street. From the sidewalk we could see inside that
there were mostly guys at the bar and there were gorgeous guys in their underwear
dancing on the bar. Well, as they say,
“when in Rome”! So, we figured we would
hang out at the gay bar for a while. We
started to walk in and pay the cover, when the guy at the door laughed and said
we didn’t need to pay cover and let us in free of charge. I’m guessing I must have been Gary’s free
ticket or they really wanted Gary in the bar. We pull up a couple of seats at
the bar and just observed our surroundings.
The front bars had two or three guys dancing on them all wearing nothing
but tennis shoes and boxer briefs. In
the back of the bar, there were two or three guys dancing completely naked
except for tennis shoes. At first, we
were both in complete shock, but we figured what the hell and ordered a couple
of drinks. [Material Edited :)] One of the dancers eventually knelt down and asked us where we were from and what our
situation was (gay, straight, bi, a couple?)
He was from Mason, Michigan and traveled around the US dancing at
different bars. When we told him we were
from Michigan too, he mentioned that he was going to be dancing at some bar
called The Dunes in Saugatuck this summer.
It never fails, I could travel to Pluto and I would run into someone
from Michigan! [Material Edited :) ] We finished up our drinks and headed back to the apartment for the
night. What a way to kick off a week in
Key West!
The next day (Monday, May 7th), we started off
the day by hopping on the bikes and riding around KW to hit all the tourist
attractions. Our first stop was the
southern-most point monument. Even
though it was early in the morning, there was still quite a line of people
waiting. The good thing about that, is
that everyone hands their camera to the person standing behind them and takes
the picture for you. The group of people
in front of us volunteered to take our picture instead, and when I handed him
my phone he shouts, “Great! Free iPhone!” and pretends to run off. I suppose that actually could happen, but
since KW is a small, crowded island, I don’t think he would have gotten far.
After the hitting the southern-most point, we
headed over to Ernest Hemmingway’s house.
It’s really interesting because they have left the house exactly the way
he had it before he died. And, since he
was a crazy cat lover when he lived there, they keep anywhere from 40 – 60 cats
on the property just like how he did. It
was great for me because I got to love on all the cute little kitties that hang
around the property. And it’s funny too
because they will be laying on furniture and walking around amongst the
tourists. I wanted to get a picture with
Gary petting one of the kitties. As we
were walking out, we stopped to pet this cute black and white kitty laying in
the shrubs. Of course, just as I go to
snap the picture, the kitty decided that he didn’t like Gary and swatted at him
and ran off. I was laughing so
hard. There’s a million cats and they
are all super friendly, but somehow Gary makes one mad.
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| Our tour guide of the Hemmingway house |
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| Kitty! |
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| Hemmingway's house |
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| Kitty, mid-swat, and Gary the cat wisper-er |
After the Hemmingway cat attack, we rode
around until we found mile marker zero, where the end of the US highway
is.
We then rode our bikes over to the KW
cemetery. The cemetery is pretty
interesting because it is very old and they cannot bury people underground,
either because of the high water table or because the island is too rocky, so
most people are buried in above ground tombs.
Once Gary was fully depressed, we decided to head back to the apartment, change, and ride over to one of the beaches to lay out for a few hours. We biked over to a beach called Smather’s
beach. It seemed like it was on the
opposite side of the island from Duval street and most of the drunk
tourists. The beach was not over-crowded
and there were many palm trees to get shade from. Periodically along the sidewalk there would
be a truck that served cold drinks and food.
The beach had a main area where there were bathrooms, chair rentals and
stand-up board rentals as well. We spent
a few hours there sleeping on the sand, reading and enjoying the water.
Once we were thoroughly cooked, we gathered up
our stuff and headed back to the apartment to shower and get ready to head to
Mallory square for the evening’s entertainment.
Although most of the street performers were the same from the night
before, we still had fun watching them and watching the people who were
watching them. Afterwards, we had dinner
and just walked up and down Duval street drinking and people watching. The fun
part about KW, is that you can walk around with an open container, as long as
it’s plastic. So, we would just pop into
a bar, grab a drink, and continue walking up and down the street. At
11pm, we headed over to the drag show.
The drag show was in a small bar which was upstairs from a gay bar. The room was fairly small. There was a ‘T’ shaped stage at the front,
which had red velvet cushioned seat benches around it. Behind the seating, was a small, square bar
with bar stool seating around it. Since
it was a Monday, there weren’t that many tourists there for the show; however
the rest of the seating was full of locals.
When the show started, the ‘girl’ who was doing the MCing for the show
came out, introduced herself and asked the tourists where we were from and then
introduced our first ‘dancer’.
Basically, the entire show consisted of each drag queen coming on stage
in full drag and lip syncing to some song.
During the song, people would walk up and put dollars in her bra or
g-string. It was the funniest and
craziest thing I have ever done. I’m not
exactly sure how much money in ones Gary and I ended up putting in drag queens
underpants, but the show was at least 2 hours long. For some reason, every time I went to the
bathroom, Gary had some kind of trauma happen to him. [Material removed :)]
The last time I went to the bathroom, I came back to find Gary all in a tizzy. He said that some girl at the bar was hitting
on him and he had to run away. Just
then, this girl came up to Gary and said, “There you are!” and sat on his
lap. She was really drunk and when she
leaned over to me to say “I love him!” I could barely understand the words that
were slurring out of her mouth. I just
shrugged my shoulders and laughed and told Gary that he was on his own with
this one. As the show went on, Gary’s
new girlfriend proceeded to flash everyone her boobs and her butt. It was starting to become apparent that she
wasn’t just drunk, but scary drunk. I
told Gary that she’s too drunk because at that point she was starting to pass
out and I could not understand any of the garble that was coming out of her
mouth. So, Gary leaves her with me and
goes to the bar to ask for help from the bartender. A guy and a girl who worked there came over
and pulled her off of Gary and escorted her out. About 15 minutes later, the girl bartender
came back to us with a couple of shots and told us they were sorry about the
drunk girl disturbing our vacation. We
said no problem, but I also asked if she was ok. The girl bartender says, “Who gives a fuck? We just threw her out. Now enjoy your vacation!” After many more drinks and dollar bills, the
show finally ended. As we headed out, we
decided to hit the Bourbon Street gay bar again just to top off the night. As we were evaluating the crowd inside the
bar from the sidewalk, I noticed that a couple of gross, fat, older gay men
were making kissy faces at me. I slowly
turn around and notice that Gary is standing directly behind me. I said, “You know those kisses are for you,
right?”. We ignored the gross old men
and went inside. There really wasn’t the
same kind of crowd there had been the previous night, so we just had one drink
and called it a night and headed back to the apartment.
The next day, after rolling out of bed late and nursing our
hangovers, we decided to take it kind of easy for the day. The first thing we wanted to do was find the
exact location that we needed to be Wednesday morning for when we go to the Dry
Tortugas.
We rode our bikes over to the
dock where the boat would take us there.
We talked to one of the guys working and he confirmed that we were in
the right location and he said to just be early since we were camping and the
crew would need to load our gear first before everyone else got on the
boat. After that, we rode our bikes over
to where the cruise ships dock. From
there, we just rode lazily around the coast of the island, until we finally
came upon the old military fort called Fort Taylor.
We decided to take a look and rode our bikes
inside. The Fort Taylor area consisted
of the old fort buildings, but also a large beach area where people could lay
out and grill. This beach was quite
packed compared to Smather’s beach we had gone to the previous day. After looking around for a bit, it was just
too hot to do anything else, so we decided to ride back to the apartment,
change our clothes and go lay out at Smather’s beach again. After a few hours at the beach, we headed
back to the apartment to get ready and check out Mallory square again for the
night. Since we had to get up early the
next morning for the Dry Tortugas, we just went back afterwards to pack our
stuff and get ready for the morning.
Bright and early Wednesday morning, we gathered up our
camping stuff, hopped on the bikes and rode over to the dock to board the
catamaran that would take us to the Dry Tortugas. We dumped our camping gear where they loaded
it on board for us and waited patiently for all the other passengers to
arrive. Around 7 or 7:30am, we were
allowed to board the boat. Since I have
the potential to get sea sick, we sat up top and in the back of the boat, where
they said it was the most stable part of the boat. We choose a couple of spots on a bench seat
and sat down. The trip included a buffet
breakfast, so I held the seats and Gary went to go stand in line and get
food. Not 5 minutes later, this behemoth
of a woman and her tall scrawny husband came up the stairs and started looking
around for seats. As my luck would have
it, they sat right next to me. As the
amazon woman was sliding all the way over next to me, I quickly said, “There is
another person sitting here”. She
replies, “Well, this bench is made for 4 people”. Sure, I thought, 4 normal sized human beings. But, I could tell she was an angry, fat woman
who probably got criticized for her weight all the time, and because she was on
the defensive and could squish me like a bug, I wasn’t going to fight. However, when Gary came back with his plate
of food, I could see him just slightly stop short as he evaluated the
situation. I just shrugged, because
there was literally nowhere else for us to sit because the boat was at
capacity. I then gave Gary my seat as I
went and got some food. The rest of the
boat ride was spent with the 2 of us huddled on 1/3 of the bench, while super-size
took up the rest. After a 2 hour long
boat ride over relatively calm seas, we eventually made it to the Dry Tortugas. The Dry Tortugas are a set of small islands
in the Gulf of Mexico. In the 1800’s
there was a fort built on the island that was supposed to be used as a military
access point for the US. Once the Fort
was closed down, it then became a US jail.
However, because it was so expensive to haul supplies and water to that
location, the jail eventually closed and now it’s just part of the national
parks system. The island is not very
big, maybe 1 mile in circumference. The
fort takes up most of the island and it is surrounded by a moat that you can walk
on. Inside the fort are other smaller
buildings, the ones in use now are just for the rangers who stay on the island.
After everyone departed the boat, a DNR ranger made us
campers stay on board so that he could explain about camping on the
island. He first warned us about not
swimming in the moat. He said that there
was a salt water crocodile in the moat.
At first, we totally thought his story was complete BS, just something
to keep people from swimming in the moat.
However, later in the day we would come to realize that this ranger was
not full of BS! Then he had to explain
to us what we needed to do if Cubans showed up in the middle of the night. The other guys who were also camping for the
night said that they had been to the Dry Tortugas several times and that over
the course of 10 years of camping they had witnessed 3 different landings. I had no idea that the likelihood of Cubans
landing on this island was so high. The
Ranger explained that the Cubans would most likely land in the darkness and
they might wake us up asking for food and water. We were to go get the on duty ranger who
would be staying on the island and he would contact the coast guard. The Coasties would then come and get them and
take them to go get processed into the system.
The Ranger also informed us that just 2 weeks prior to our visit, Cubans
had landed at the Dry Tortugas. I could
see that this was going to be a very interesting camping trip.
Once we got off the boat and gathered up our gear, we made our
way over to the camping area. The
camping area was really small, I think there may only have been 6 camping
sights. We found a campsite that had one
lonely palm tree that we could get some shade from.
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| Camping under a palm tree |
After setting up the tent and organizing our
camping stuff, we went back to the dock to check out some snorkeling gear. We got our gear and headed down to the beach
to snorkel around the moat of the fort.
It was really cool to snorkel and see all the coral and fish under the
water. However, it’s very awkward and difficult. After snorkeling about halfway around the
moat and destroying most of the delicate coral with our flippers, we became
kind of bored and tired of snorkeling.
We made our way back to the beach and returned the gear. The rest of the day was spent reading, laying
in the sun, lathering on sunscreen, swimming, and walking around the moat.
Sometime during the
late afternoon, one of the guys from the other camping group walked by us and
mentioned that the alligator was out of his hiding spot and hanging out in the
moat where you could see him. This was a
complete shock to us, because the whole time we thought for sure that the
alligator was just a BS story. He
pointed where he thought the alligator had been hanging out and we walked into
the fort to look out one of the windows for a better view. I crawled into the window and peered over the
edge into the moat. Oh my god, he’s
right there! He was about 8 or 9 feet
long and he was a BIG boy! We snapped
few pictures before he got scared and swam off into the moat, presumably to go
back to his hiding spot, which we discovered was a little nook he could slide
into under the wall of the moat.
Around
3pm that afternoon, all the day people had to pack up and get back on the boat
to head back to the main land. After
they took off, there was just a handful of us left on the island for the
night.
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| Boat leaving the Dry Tortugas |
Since the inside of the fort only remained open until dusk,
we decided to walk around inside and get a better look. There wasn’t too much to look at, but they did
have a boat left over from when a group of Cubans had arrived on the island a
few years back. We decided to check out
the boat. It looked like it was made of
a metal patchwork quilt. They had used
bits and pieces of different metals and welded them together to form the hull
of the boat. Right in the center of the
boat was a car engine which they used to turn the propeller. They had the exhaust pipe routed up and out
of the boat like a periscope and a long rod was connected to the engine which
turned a small propeller at the back end of the boat. A large sheet of metal with what looked like
water pipes were fashioned together to form a manual rudder. Looking at it you wouldn’t have even believed
that the thing even floated.
As the afternoon wore on and it finally started to cool down
a bit, we noticed that the island was coming alive with creatures. Hermit crabs were appearing everywhere and
they were the biggest hermit crabs I have ever seen. Of course, I had to pick up every one and
touch it. The island also has an
abundance of rats, which Gary wasn’t too thrilled about. I did get a glimpse of a few of them running
around as well. During our stay we
managed to see hermit crabs, rats, tarpin, a goliath grouper, lobsters, a
conch, sea urchin, a sea turtle nest and of course an alligator. J
Once the sun went down, we really couldn’t do too much
because it was so cave dark out there on the island. But before we retreated to our tent, we
walked around the moat in the dark. It
was so cool to see the water and the stars and there was no noise or lights to
interrupt it.
The next morning, we got up fairly early because the sun was
up and by 8am it was already too hot to lay in the tent. We packed up most of our gear and took it to
the dock so when the boat arrived they could load our gear on board. Afterwards, we just got on our suits,
lathered on the suntan lotion, hauled our books and food to one of the picnic
table in the shade on the beach and just enjoyed the scenery. Because there weren’t a lot of people who
stayed overnight on the island, it didn’t take us long to get to know each
other a little bit and for Gary and I to give them all nicknames since we
really didn’t know their real names.
There were the stoners – 3 guys who looked leathery from the sun who
came out to the island for an annual guys fishing trip. One of the guys was Mason the Mason. He talked to everyone and drank Sanka all day. The European – a single guy from Eastern
Europe who came to fish. The angry
couple – An older couple who only spoke to each other as if they hated one
another. The beautiful couple – a
younger couple from up north who was there to relax and camp. They were both so beautiful they could have done Calvin Klein underware modeling. And the ever famous Johnny Visor – a guy who
came to the island on his awesome boat, who always was seen with a beer in his
hand, who always had on an awesome white visor and who generally thought he was
pretty awesome. Johnny Visor became our
secret entertainment. This guy (thought)
he knew everything about everything and he never shut up.
Around 10am the boat from the mainland arrived and the
island became packed once again with day tourists. At this point, I was just about going out of
my mind and I could not wait for 3pm to roll around so we could get on the boat
and head back to key west. I had done everything
I could possibly do on the island. I had
read, napped, played in the water, sat in the shade and walked around the moat
about 1000 times. Gary laughed and
pointed out that the hardest part of this for me isn’t the camping or the not
showering or even having to go to the bathroom in port-a-johns. It’s the fact that I can’t just sit and relax
and enjoy myself and the scenery. I
can’t just sit still, I have to be doing something. He was right, because if I had to stay one
more day on that island, I’m pretty sure it would have turned into a scene from
Lord of the Flies.
3pm. We all board the
boat and leave Johnny Visor and the Dry Tortugas behind. Once we reached the mainland, it was just
after 5pm. Since it was our last night
before heading back to Miami to fly out, we quickly made it back to our
apartment to shower and run down to Mallory Square for one last time. As we arrive to Mallory Square, we noticed a
group of people and a couple of camera men all hovering around someone and
taking pictures. It was David Arquette! Before he ran off with his entourage, I
managed to just snap a blurry picture of him.
After the evening’s street entertainment finished up, we
just went down to Duval street to have a couple of drinks and people
watch. It was Thursday, so Duval was
starting to get busier for the weekends tourist. At one bar, we ran into the Angry couple from
camping at the Dry Tortugas. We talked
with them for a minute and they mentioned how they had seen David Arquette as
well. After a few drinks, we had to turn
in early because we knew we had a long day of travel the next day. So, we headed back to the apartment to finish
packing and get ready to head back.
Friday morning came early and we loaded up the car and said good bye to
Key West as we drove the long drive back to the Miami airport.
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| Impression of Johnny Visor |
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| The End |
