- Waiting on Weather
March 10th to April 1st: you would have thought twenty-two days should have been enough time to visit all seven of the main Florida Keys (there are 800 in total but we are not such over-achievers that this was ever our goal 😜). But, when the wind blows from the SW almost every day it is NOT blowing from the NE, and SW is the direction you want to go, you go by bus instead of by boat. So we did… to Key West and Islamorada.
Marathon, FL
Marathon was to be our “prep and provision” location before heading to the Bahamas. It wound up being our home for twenty-one of the twenty-two days mentioned above. This is the busy Municipal Marina, probably the best equipped place we have ever stayed on this trip! There were the usual: showers, laundry, bike racks and water, BUT also a pump-out boat (👍) a workshop, a library, sewing machines, a common room, bikes and a dinghy lift! 
We took the dinghy around Boot Key one of the days we were there, went to Sombrero Beach a couple of times, tested our snorkeling stuff and paddle boarded around the mangroves with our friends from MI. That was the fun stuff… we also did the “life work” we needed to do to get ready to be gone for 8 weeks but that’s boring so I won’t go into detail.
Key West, FL
Doing our part to uphold the stereotype of Key West as a “day drinking” mecca, we visited The 1st Legal Rum Distillery for a tour and tastings. The mojitos were excellent, the straight rum, not my thing…😖
The ugly thing on the left is the egg casing for the beautiful shells on the right. Go figure…
We missed the six-toed cats at Hemingway’s house but we did have coffee with these other ubiquitous Key West inhabitants. 
This is actually NOT the southern most point, that location is in a little park down the street and yes, we are drenched. Another feature of Florida is the quick daily deluge… 
… 30 minutes later on the same street. 
The end of one thing is always the beginning of another… or of the same thing if you walk to the other side of the sign. I love this!
Pigeon Key
We rode our bikes to Pigeon Key along the old Overseas highway. This section of bridge has been refurbished as a trail to the island, and the island restored, because the island was initially a work camp for the Overseas Railroad. Henry Flagler built the railroad to connect mainland Florida with Key West. The railroad was destroyed in a hurricane and the old Overseas highway was built on the railroad supports. 
We toured the island and learned about the railroad, the work camps, the fishing camps and the hurricane of ’35. 
The island now serves as a marine learning center and camp. These are crab floats which the students collect when cleaning the coral reefs and beaches. 
A post card from Pigeon Key! Really – I mailed this from the post office in Marathon! 
A view of the new Seven Mile bridge which replaced the old Overseas highway. We had to sail under this bridge when we traveled from Little Shark River to Marathon. A bottle of Bahamian rum to the first person who can see why we held our breaths as we sailed through here… Islamorada
Another bus ride, another distillery… but we did bring our bikes on the bus and we did not day drink. Our visit to the beer garden was at the end of the day… 
This is a view to the Florida Bay side of Islamorada. 
When we were on Pigeon Key we learned that you only eat the tail of these guys. The fishermen take the tail and throw the Florida lobster back into the water where they will grow a new one! 
Of course we HAD to eat here…
We first learned about the hurricane of ’35 on Pigeon Key; Henry’s railroad never recovered. It was, however, Islamorada which took the full brunt of the hurricane. It is a harrowing, sad story of nature’s fury and man’s ineptitude in the face of the strongest hurricane to ever make landfall in the US. This is the memorial to the victims who lost their lives here. 
We left Marathon and staged at Rodriguez Key for our jump across the Gulf stream so our total was six keys in twenty-one days: Vaca and Boot Key (Marathon), Pigeon Key, Key West, Islamorada and Rodriguez Key.
And now we sit where the Keys are spelled Cays but pronounced the same!