After a few days in Miami, I decided to head south and check out the Florida Keys…

The drive to Key West…

I must confess to being a little disappointed in the Keys leading up to Key West. They seemed to consist mostly of trailer parks, gas stations, fast food restaurants and boat parts dealers… The natural scenery was beautiful though.

The Seven Mile Bridge runs over a channel between Knight’s Key (part of the city of Marathon, Florida) in the Middle Keys to Little Duck Key in the Lower Keys. Among the longest bridges in existence when it was built, it is one of the many bridges on US 1 in the Keys, where the road is called the Overseas Highway…

The first thing I saw upon driving into Key West was a Sears store named Searsland… Not a good introduction. I checked in at my hotel and started walking around, hoping to develop a more favorable impression of Key West. Fortunately, I stopped and started talking to some friendly Key West locals who pointed out this boat to me. The story was that the boat belonged to a prominent local dealer of cocaine. Key West started to seem a little more interesting…

The old Customs House and now an art museum…

The Daydream by Mortimer Blake…

A Key West street scene… And the wall to Ernest Hemingway’s home in Key West…

The southernmost point in the United States. I met a lot of interesting people here…

The Naval facility next to the southernmost point…

Chickens roam freely around the island and it is unlawful to disturb them…

You don’t see signs like this back in California…