Interesting stuff from Key West:

We took I-95 south all the way to the end, which unfortunately takes you through some congested parts of Miami and dumps you onto US-1 in a section downtown that doesn't deserve to bear the name "highway" at all. We lost about 1.5 hours but it was cool to go through Miami. Once we were into the Keys section of US-1 everything smoothed out. Occasionally we got stuck behind someone going slow but for the most part it moved along nicely. Courtney and Gwen shared the driving task for the first part of the trip then I drove the last leg into Key West.

Our hotel, the Merlin Guesthouse, was only one block east of Duvall Street. It was about $250 per night but we split the bill five ways so it wasn't too bad. There were only supposed to be two people in the room (although it was big enough for about ten) so we were careful about entering/leaving the room in small groups.

On Friday night around 10 we were finally ready to head out for some dinner. It was weird walking past the drag queens and the gay bar but we got past that section of Duvall soon enough. The plan was to get some seafood but the first place we stopped, Crabby Dick's, had $30 entrees so we cancelled that idea. Gwen had told us about this great cheeseburger place so we walked down Duvall St and stopped at "Cheeseburger Key West". Their burgers really were great and the price wasn't bad either.

After dinner we walked around a bit and decided to go to Rick's Bar and Dirty Harry's for the midnight wet t-shirt contest. Gwen and Courtney headed back to the hotel since they were tired and didn't care much to see the contest anyway. We had fun at Rick's and then decided to head back as well. However, Ron made us stop at the Garden of Eden on top of the Bull & Whistle pub briefly to see if there were any people getting body painted or hanging out in the nude. Nothing worth commenting on there.

After sleeping until about 10 we headed over to the beach at the Fort Zachary Taylor state park. The operator collecting admission fees told us that a rare bird, the loggerhead kingbird, had been sighted there and that some people had flown in from Colorado just to try to get a look at it. We saw some people walking around with binoculars and they said they were trying to find the bird. The beach near the fort wasn't very nice because it had little pebbles instead of sand, but we made the best of it. The water was a bit chilly at first but there were pockets of warm water. Ron and I needed plenty of sunscreen because neither one of us has any semblance of a tan. Courtney had some snorkeling gear with her but the water was cloudy. We stayed until everybody got pretty well baked in the sun and then walked over to the fort. There was a huge rooster on the beach that was part of a sculpture exhibit that's currently being featured in Key West. We also stopped by the blacksmith's shop briefly.

We headed home to drop off the beach stuff and on the way saw a living statue performer and a parrot sitting outside on a shop's balcony. The parrot would make loud noises to attract attention and then if you whistled to the bird it would whistle back the same thing. Ron had a little whistling contest with the parrot but the parrot definitely won. After gawking at the bird for a bit we grabbed some pizza for lunch at The Upper Crust. We went down to Mallory Square and passed by the sculpture garden but didn't spend any time there. We got to the Key West Aquarium just in time for their 3pm tour. They had a pretty nice place given the limited amount of space. We saw some sharks and rays get fed and got to pick up a few less-dangerous sea creatures like horseshoe crabs. The tour guide told us that they have a resident iguana that wandering in from the wild and decided to hang around the property. Courtney works at an aquarium so she was able to point out some of the more interesting specimens of fish. Jawfish are really cool because they build tunnels in the sand and put bits of rock around the entrance. Also another odd thing about Key West is that there are roosters that wander around on the streets and rooftops; we saw a number of them around Mallory Square.

Ron wanted to get a spring break 2007 shot glass from Ron Jons so we made a detour over there and also stopped at a few tourist shops. I picked up a Mile 0 Key West shot glass, my first shot glass ever. We also checked out Fairvilla, which is an adult entertainment store with quite a wide selection.

Upon heading back down Duvall St toward the hotel, we noticed that it was close to sunset and therefore decided to turn back around and return to Mallory Square. There is a very nice Wachovia branch right at the end of Duvall St which I thought was interesting. The square was getting very crowded at that time of night, and all of the street performers were out doing their shows. We watched a pair of guys do a circus-like routine and then checked out some of the vendor stands that were lined up along the square. We watched the sun go down from behind a couple rows of people that had already gathered all the way along the railing. One of the buskers that was right next to where we were standing had a performing dog act, and the dog would go across a 6-ft dog walk standing on just two ropes. Fortunately he did have a safety net beneath in case the dog made a wrong step.

We headed back down Duvall St again (most of all the walking time was on there) and stopped for some pictures with Captain Morgan at Mr. Cheapee's convenience store. After that we walked around some more trying to pick a good place for dinner that wasn't terribly expensive. We settled on a seafood buffet place and got a nice balcony table. I had some decent shrimp scampi but Carrabba's was still better in my opinion.We were soon joined by another jocund group that had clearly already started drinking for the night. There were lots of bike owners cruising down Duvall both Friday night and Saturday night, and when the occasional sport bike owner came along and tried to impress the bystanders the group across from us yelled down that they should "buy a Harley!" Fun stuff.

One of Courtney's friends was coming in to town with a bachelorette party Saturday night so we met up with them at Irish Kevin's. Courtney got pretty trashed since she was doing drinks and shots with the other group but the rest of us only had a few. The live music was awesome though, the first guy did a lot of classic and 80's rock and I knew most of the songs. The second guy to come on did some more modern stuff but then broke out some Tenacious D [nsfw] and some Saturday Night Live [nsfw] which was a hilarious capstone. After a few hours we took Courtney back to the hotel and Gwen decided to hang out on the hammock outside. Ron and I wanted to get a strawberry daiquiri from Flying Monkeys so we went back out with Bruce for a little bit. Since daylight saving time kicked in that night, we had to leave around 2:30 as they were closing down.

On Sunday, Gwen and Bruce got up early for some breakfast but the rest of us stayed asleep for a while. We cleaned up our stuff and checked out of the hotel room since we needed to leave by 11. We took a final walk down Duvall St and stopped at Margaritaville on the way back for lunch and some great key lime pie. I'm glad that I got to hear some Jimmy Buffett music at least once before leaving the keys. After lunch we stopped at the Key Lime Factory so that Gwen and Bruce could buy a whole pie to take home with them. That stuff is really good. We got back to the car and drove down to the Southernmost Point. We were a little dismayed to find the weird fake people that were positioned nearby which kind f ruined any decent picture opportunity. Ron made the most of it and decided to get a little frisky with the southernmost fake woman. We also got a pic of the southernmost bum and a group picture looking out over the ocean.

The trip home was a lot faster because we took the Florida Turnpike instead of going through Miami. You have to pay the tolls but it saves a lot of time. I drove the bit from Miami to Melbourne so I've gotten my taste of the Scion xB now. I don't like the centered gauges but aside from that it was ok. All in all, it was a really fun trip and I'm ready to go back to Key West some time for a vacation! Next time I would definitely plan to do more sight-seeing, probably rent a jetski, and maybe go on one of the biplane flights. Oh they also rent a lot of scooters because parking is really bad downtown.