Yesterday we took Andy to a doggy motel so we could be at Di & Ricks' house by 6:30 this morning! From there we drove straight to the Florida Turnpike and drove to Homestead (south of Miami). At Homestead, you have to get onto US 1 to get to Key West. It's about 30 miles from there to Key Largo (the first Key) and 138 miles to Key West (the furthest south that you can drive to). US 1 is a narrow 2 lane road (kinda of like US 95 except there's water on BOTH sides of US 1. It's slow going, but a beautiful drive.
It's actually cooled down here, too. I think it only got up to about 80 degrees today so it was really nice. It's supposed to cool down to 73 tonight (yes, we have the air conditioning on!) The fence in the first picture is actually to keep the alligators off the roadbed! That's the Everglades behind the fence (I missed getting the picture of the "alligator crossing" sign that we saw.) The second picture just shows some of the keys that group to form the Florida Keys. They actually started with mangrove trees growing in the water. After awhile they start collecting soil and sediment and finally form a key (this process takes many hundreds of years.)
I had to get a picture of the boys watching the birds on Duval street as we walked by. The were so cute! The cage just behind Koby has a snake in it! I also got a picture of a guy with a bird on his shoulder when I was taking a picture of lots of flowers (I didn't see the guy until after I took the picture.)
Key West has lots of fun houses build in the Victorian style. Lots of the houses have gingerbread molding on them, one even has little
gingerbread men in a row all around. It's really a fun house to see!
We got to ride on the Conch Train with the kids all around Key West today. It's a good introduction to the Key and you get a lot of history about the Key while riding on the train. The boys were really excited about the ride. Those are supposed to be engineer hats they're wearing.
Howard and Rick didn't even make very many snide remarks about the tour. We went to both ends of the key and all around the older area of the key. Key West is 5 miles long and 1 mile wide and one of the biggest keys. There's lots of military on the key, mostly Naval Air Base. There's a good harbor on the north side of the key too. On the south side there's some beach, but no harbor because of all the reefs around the island.
This is a building built by the federal government to their specifications. It has a sloped roof so the snow will slide off easily and there are 17 fireplaces in the building so no one will get cold in the winter when the temperatures drop into the 70s! Our tax dollars at work more than 100 years ago! The statue in front of the building was really cool too.
To finish our day we got to eat dinner in a really cute little restaurant that sits under the 7 mile bridge. We seated on the patio facing west with the bridge behind us. As you can see, the sunset was beautiful tonight!
Tomorrow we'll celebrate Thanksgiving with a barbecue on our deck at the motel/suite we rented on Long Key. (The deck looks out onto the swimming pool and the Gulf of Mexico.) We'll go swimming tomorrow afternoon. We may just hang around and swim on Friday too. That's what you do in the Keys -- just hang around!!!!
Have a Happy Thanksgiving. We miss all of our family and friends and we'll be thinking about you tomorrow!
We had a great Thanksgiving, although different! We rented a really nice 2 bedroom suite call the Tree House Suite in Layton on Long Key. This is our main deck where we spent most of our time. There is a little side deck also and that's where the boys loved to play.
The view from the deck was really cool and since it faced northwest, the sunsets were pretty cool too! The day I took this shot we were told the waves were too high for Kayaks (please note -- no waves!) We were good kids and waited until Friday to Kayak.
This picture of Rick & Koby and Di & Dean was taken from the deck. Then we went down so we could watch the boys play in the rocks and sand along the bank. There are only about a handful of beaches in the Keys, because they aren't islands, they're keys!
Even Tessa got to go kayaking with Mom and Dad. It was a beautiful day and we had lots of fun.
On Black Friday we had to go shopping so we went to the Keys version of a Bass Outlet. It's called the World Wide Sportsman and only has merchandise for fishing. Lots of fishing stuff. The boys favorite was a replica of Ernest Hemingway's boat. It's actually the boat built one year before Hemingway's in 1933. He liked it so much he had one built for himself.
We also had to get Florida Key T-shirts while we were in the Keys. The boys have pirate Ts, Di has a yellow T (of course!). The boys got their pirate sunglasses at the same time and wouldn't even take them off when the sun set! 
Tessa got a sweatshirt from the Keys. She's sitting in her favorite place on the deck for this shot -- the porch swing!
Not much leftovers with a ribeye barbecue dinner so we "had" to go out to dinner on Marathon on Friday. A very nice lady offered to take a picture of all of us at our table so I got to finally be in a picture too! We had fresh catch of the day and it was great!! 
Coming out of the Keys this morning was really pretty with the clouds on the eastern horizon. They help show where the ocean ends and the sky begins. This was taken while crossing a small bridge and shows the clouds, the Atlantic, a small key (where the road is) and the Gulf of Mexico. Thought it was a pretty shot. The Gulf water is not as rough as the Atlantic, but neither is bad because of all the reefs that surround the Keys.
Had to get a picture of this! Double click to make it bigger. It reads "Crocodile crossing." And yes, there are crocodiles in Florida and they are protected. They are only found where the salt water meets the fresh water in the Everglades. I didn't know that until I got here. We really had a wonderful trip and a very special spot of our trip was being able to Skype our family in Idaho! That was really cool to see you all.
