Key West for REAL, part 3

Friday - Leaving Key West
Rob picked up the rental van and we spent the next few hours clearing out Key West Friend's house and packing the van.  Tank said, "Is this our new van?"  I told him it was ours for the weekend and then asked him if he remembered what happened to our old van.  He thought for a minute and then said, "It got broke-ed."  Yep.

Before we left Miciah tried out her shoebox boat on the ocean.  She made this boat at home and then insisted on bringing it down to Florida with us.  She's cute like that.

Do you love how she painted it?  Awesome, right?  ...  It floated pretty well, too.  Rob kept calling it a "seaworthy vessel."

Then we left.  While driving back up the Keys we stopped at the Seven Mile Bridge to walk on the old scary bridge and take pictures.  It was very bright, but the ocean was gorgeous.

If you're ever going to the Keys, I highly recommend stopping to walk on the Seven Mile Bridge.  It'll give you an appreciation for the new, wider bridge.  You'll walk on that old bridge and think, "Why would anyone in their right mind drive on this bridge?"

We also saw a bunch of blue jellyfish in the water, and that was fascinating because there were so many of them!  I couldn't get a good picture of them.  But here's a picture of Elijah instead:

Better than a jellyfish any day.

We drove to the Everglades with Key West Friend leading the way.  We arrived after dark, so we set up our tent and ate dinner by flashlight and car headlights.  It was awesome.  Then we covered ourselves with 100% deet, talked late into the night, and then went to sleep.

Saturday in the Everglades
Some time around 2 a.m. the deet wore off and the mosquitoes and no-see-ums found us.  We woke up covered in bites.  Which made us suddenly appreciative of our after-dark arrival the night before.

NOTE TO ALL OF YOU:  If you ever go to the Everglades (and I recommend it.  Don't go every year, but do go once in your lifetime), go in the winter months and bring lots of 100% deet.  We re-sprayed ourselves every hour or so.

We attempted to see manatees, but they weren't cooperating.  So instead we saw lots and lots and lots of alligators.  (Plus cool birds and fish and stuff.)

That second alligator was inches from us, and that's not an exaggeration.  You're supposed to stay 15 feet away from the alligators, and we were happy to stay away from them, thank you very much.  But this one crossed the foot path moments before we did and its tail was even over the path for a while.  Check it out:

Really neat, but probably not the safest.  He looked so docile.  It was very tempting to try to touch him.  But then you remember that he's a wild animal, he has lots of sharp teeth, and that you'd like to keep all of your limbs in tact.

On our way out of the Everglades we stopped and ate gator sandwiches.  Alligator is actually pretty good.  I'd eat it again.

Then we said bye to Key West Friend and made our way to Orlando, which was only about a 5 hour drive.  And that was good, cause we were exhausted from a long week and not sleeping the night before.  Rob and I took turns passing out in the passenger seat.  He slept and I woke him up when I thought that trying to stay awake for another 5 minutes would result in me crashing the car.  It was a long day.

It ended at my uncle's house, eating leftover Thanksgiving food (hurray!), watching Alice in Wonderland, and then sleeping wonderfully in a soft bed that wasn't the ground.

The kids, ready for bed.

Sunday and Monday - Home We Come!
Our no-talking-about-the-van rule was over now that our trip was over, so the whole way home we talked about cars.  We discussed which new car we would get if we could get anything we wanted.  And then we discussed what we would need to do with our finances to be able to afford another car.  It was a fun time.

After a stop in Atlanta and another much needed good night's sleep, we arrived home on Monday night.  Our original plan was to let most of our crap sit in our van and we'd slowly unpack it over the next several days (I'm a slacker like that).  No such luck.  The rental car had to be back at the airport by 9:30 the next morning.  We unpacked it, cleaned it out, and returned it, all in about 2 hours turn around time.  I was impressed with us.

THEN we went home and crashed.  I think the whole next day I was basically asleep standing up.  It was a long trip.  But it was fun!  Thank you, Miciah, Elijah, and Teancom, for saving up your money for a year so we could enjoy our time in Key West.  And thank you, Key West Friend, for letting us come. 

The End

Key West for REAL, part 2

Wednesday

We woke up on Wednesday and heard Tank say, "Look, Elijah!  There's a rooster in Julianne's back yard!"  Elijah didn't even look.  He said, "There's ALWAYS a rooster."  If you've been to Key West, you know it's true.  Roosters run free all over the island.  I think it's supposed to be quirky and cute, like Hemingway's 6-toed cats.

Wednesday was our day for sailing!  Sailing isn't cheap, but if you're going to go to a subtropical island, you HAVE to go sailing!  I think that's a Vacation Rule.

The kids loved it, of course!  We saw dolphins and felt the lean of the boat and drank all their free water.  Tank was especially into it.  He wouldn't take his eyes off the ocean (which he called the 'sea,' and that's adorable) and he was so excited to see dolphins.  Unfortunately he was the only one who didn't see them.  ...  I think he did see them, he just didn't recognize them.  They didn't jump out of the water or anything, so you had to kind of know what to look for.

Captain Andrew was great with the kids and he let each of them sail the boat.  Very cool.  He told Miciah that she was very good at sailing and then said, "You need to get this girl sailing lessons."  Right.  On which ocean nearest me?

Also, there was this great crazy tipsy guy on the boat with us.  New England accent.  He kept telling us he was from Connecticut.  For the rest of my life I will be referring to him as Midlife Crisis.  I don't think I've ever met anyone that was a caricature of a person until Midlife Crisis.  He kept saying, "Are you seeing this?  They're steering the boat.  They're ACTUALLY steering it.  This is the real deal.  Are you seeing this?"  Wasn't much to do but smile.  "I'm moving down here.  I'm done.  I told my kids, 'I'm already gone.'  It's done.  I'm gone.  I've already looked at 2 houses in Florida.  It's done."  Okey dokey.  And, my personal favorite:  With his third beer in hand, "This is a natural high.  No, really.  Look at this.  We're on the ocean.  The sun is shining.  Sails above you.  I mean, this is the real deal!"  Uh huh.

Afterwards Key West Friend took Miciah on a date to the Shipwreck Museum and Rob and I walked back to the Navy base with the boys.  We bought souvenirs and what did the boys want?  Pirate toys that we could buy at our local Walgreens.  But they were happy and the toys were cheap, so it's all good.

Miciah trying on the old school diving mask at the Shipwreck Museum.

Teancom the Pirate

We put the kids to bed early because they were wiped out and CRAZY.  We waited until Elijah had passed out and then Rob and I went on our real date.  We walked down Duval Street, which is the famous night life place.  The challenge is called the Duval Crawl, where you get one drink at every bar on Duval Street, and there are probably 25 bars.  Rob and I passed on the challenge and just walked down the street, which was interesting enough.  Lots of ladies of various sorts (naked ones in pictures, dancing ones, scantily clad ones, not-really-ladies dressed in drag), t-shirts of questionable value, and souvenirs that you'd only buy if you were drunk.  All-in-all, it was our kind of place.

One of the things that I love about our trip to Key West is that our kids will have fond memories of the island, and they won't remember the party side.  They'll think that it was beautiful and fun and nice.  And they won't know what on Duval Street after 7 p.m. the party REALLY starts.  :)  Hurray for Key West.

Anyways, on our date we went to Caroline's on Duval Street and ate the best key lime pie I've ever had.  We bought a whole pie to take home for Thanksgiving.  Which brings us to ...

Thursday, Thanksgiving Day 2010
The first order of business was taking family pictures on the beach.  We'd been planning this for ages, because Key West Friend is a good amateur photographer and she has a great camera.  I LOVE the way the pictures turned out!  In a few weeks I'll have a large print posted on my living room wall.  Hurray!

Here are the kids all prepped and ready to go.  I wanted to take the boys' pictures while their hair was still combed, since that was bound to last all of 90 seconds.

My favorite part of my little pre-photo shoot photo shoot was that Elijah was completely uncooperative.  Not shocking.  To get the photo above, Rob had to tell him some joke about a chicken.  This is a photo taken moments before, when he said, "This IS my smile!"

Yes.  Clearly.

Then we cooked and cooked and baked and cooked and washed dishes and prepped for our Thanksgiving meal.  It was super tasty, we enjoyed our time with friends, and Miciah decorated this adorable table for us:

Check out how much effort she put into this table.  She was so excited about it.  Cracked me up.  The girl is a born party planner.  (Bummer she has me for a mom.  I'm a born anti-party planner.  Less work = better.)

It rained on Thanksgiving day and into the evening, so it was good that we got our photo shoot out of the way.  Also, it meant that Rob missed his Key West sunset.

...  to be continued  ...

Key West for REAL, part 1

 (Whenever Tank wants me to look at something he'll say, "Look, Mom."  I'll respond, "Yeah, I see."  And whether I actually looked or not, he'll say, "Now look for REAL.")

Okay, okay.  Here's the post about our Key West trip.

Driving Down - Friday and Saturday
We are lucky to have good friends in Atlanta and family in Orlando, so we made the trip in 3 days, about 9 hours of driving each day.  Not bad.  Not a ton to report about on those driving days.  Atlanta is much like St. Charles, where I grew up, except with horrible traffic.  Chatanooga, TN was GORGEOUS with the turning leaves and layered mountains.  Florida takes way too long to get through, and who knew there were so many pine trees in FL?!  It's supposed to be citrus and palms trees only!

Arriving on Sunday
On the Sunday before Thanksgiving we arrived in Key West.  Driving down the Keys was awesome, and Rob and the kids were captivated by the ocean.  There are so many colors of the water down there.  Not at all like the drab gray ocean of Northern California.  (Sorry for those of you who live(d) there and love(d) it.  I think the ocean in No. Cal. is an ugly color.)  My favorite quote about the ocean comes from Tank, who said, "I didn't know there were so many signs in the sea."  It cracked me up, and it was true.  In the Keys there are lots of signs posting about water levels and where it's safe for boats to go and such.

The downside of driving down the Keys:  It's a long, long drive.  Miciah was counting bridges and Keys and she says she ended up with over 40 of each.  Near the end of the drive she started saying, "If the next Key isn't Key West, I'm going to die!"  The next Key wasn't Key West, and she didn't die.

Luckily our van arrived in Key West with us.  About 2 hours North of Miami the AC died and the transmission started going out, all at the same time.  We were on the side of the road twice, and when we stopped to eat, the van almost wouldn't go into gear again.  Good times.

Monday
Which meant that the first order of business on Monday was to take our van to a mechanic.  Key West Friend found us a really nice mechanic (think laid back Florida Keys style).  Rob detailed the issues we've had with the van and the mechanic said, "So, when I'm doing looking at it, you want me to just drive it into the canal for you?"  That was awesome.

The kids had a ton of fun playing in and around the palm trees in Key West Friend's backyard.

When Key West Friend got off work and after we'd made a million phone calls to rental car companies, etc., we took the kids to the Key West lighthouse.  It offers a great view of the island and ocean.  And as an added bonus, the man who runs the place was super nice and gave the kids free postcard souvenirs. 

There was a great banyan tree on the grounds and the kids played in it for a while.  Banyan trees are SUPER COOL.

Then we went to Mallory Square for the Sunset Celebration that happens every night.  There are performers of all sorts.  Most of them use fire on sticks and/or unicycles.  The one that Rob and the kids watched was an escape artist with a crass sense of humor.  So Key West Friend and I went around looking at the overpriced jewelry that was for sale.  We didn't actually get to see the sunset because a cruise ship was blocking the entire dock.  I told Rob it wasn't a big deal, cause we could see the sunset another night.  Turns out that never happened, and Rob missed his sunset over the ocean.  (I said, "It looks like the sun.  And then the water.  Not that big a deal.")

My favorite part of Mallory Square was how interested Elijah was in the performer.  After the show was over, Key West Friend gave the kids a dollar each so they could tip him.  Afterwards Elijah said, "We gave him money because if you work hard, you get money."  Umm, ... let's aspire to something higher than being a Mallory Square performer, please.

Tuesday
By Tuesday morning we knew that the transmission was dead (well, we pretty much knew that on Sunday) and that it would cost $2,500 to fix it.  The real kicker, though, was that it was going to take 1 - 2 weeks to get the transmission down to Key West!  Adding together the cost and time factors, we decided to just gift the van to the mechanic and get a rental car for the trip home.  

We went to the mechanic's and cleaned out our van, and then we checked out every car dealership on Key West.  We tried to call it a "date," but it was too stressful to count.  All we really got out of it was the understanding that we could NOT afford a $300 monthly car payment.  So we started getting used to the idea of having only 1 car.  Then I looked at Rob and said, "Okay.  For the rest of the week we aren't allowed to talk about our van."  And we put it out of our minds and enjoyed Key West.

We took the kids to the aquarium which isn't big, but it is fun.  We got to touch a nurse shark (they used to use their skin for sandpaper!) and a baby alligator, which was cool.  We also got to see some big sandbar sharks feed.  Very neat.

Rob touching the alligator.

 The kids loved the touching pool.  Miciah especially was into it.  She touched everything without fear.  She even helped an adult visitor work up some bravery to touch a starfish.  It was cute to see Miciah talk her though it.  "It feels really neat."  "Here, I'll hold it for you."

We also bought Rob's AWESOME Key West hat on Tuesday.  Seriously, who can't love this hat?!

... to be continued ...

Key West

I continue to not feel the desire to post about Key West, even though it was a GREAT trip and we did lots of fun things.

So, for now, here's a picture of Elijah, the Sailboat Captain:

A Florida Retirement

A member of our family has informed us that he would like to stay in Key West permanently.  We were unprepared for the announcement, even though he's been talking about retirement for a while.  We thought he meant, like, LATER.  But apparently he'd been meaning an early retirement.  Right here.  Right now.

So we said a tearful goodbye.  He was sad to leave the family, but we reassured him that he'd served us well and that there's nothing to be ashamed of.  If you work hard in life, you deserve to retire to a beautiful place.  We know he'll love it here.

We salute you, family member Ohio DQM.  We wish you well.

Memorial Day Weekend

My friend from Key West came and visited us here in Cincinnati!  But because Cincinnati is a tourist trap (who doesn't want to visit Cincinnati?!), we decided to take her down to Mammoth Cave.

(If you don't like Mammoth Cave, or caves in general, you can pretty much stop reading here.  Just FYI.)

I love Mammoth Cave.  I love the massive passageways, the (very few) formations, the constant 54 degree climate.  I love the history of it, the mystery of it, and the Floyd Collins story.  I decided that my new life goal (ha!  I haven't had a life goal since I set the "I want to marry Rob Thacker" one) is to do every tour that they offer.  I did tours as a kid, but those don't count because, though I did the Snowball Tour, I only have a vague, fleeting memory (perhaps fabricated) of the Snowball Dining Room. 

Note to self and everyone else who wants to learn from our mistakes:  Never, ever go on a holiday weekend.  It was packed!  The only tours available at the ticket office were the Historic Tour and the New Entrance tour.  FOR THE NEXT DAY.  (Another note.  You can buy tickets in advance, but when I checked on-line, they only had the tours showing for the Winter schedule.  Memorial Day Weekend marked the start of the Summer schedule.  Figures, right?  Granted, I'm sure I could have found the tour schedule if I'd looked hard enough.  I guess I'm just lazy.)  So we checked in to our campsite and then decided to go check out Diamond Caverns.  I'd always wanted to check it out, and here was our golden opportunity!  (Check, check, check.)

Verdict:  You can skip it.  I mean, I'm glad we did it, but I won't pay to do it again.  In fact, I'm not sure I'd do it again if someone ELSE paid.  Sorry, Diamond Caverns.

Here's a GREAT picture of the cave:

One of the sad things about caves is that they don't photograph particularly well.  But here's the tourism spin:  It's so much better in person.  Go see it for yourself!

Also, my Key West Friend owns a professional-grade camera.  So, while I love my $400 camera (thank you again, Collin), we left it dormant for much of the weekend.  Here's Key West Friend letting Elijah take a picture with her camera:

Elijah was SO EXCITED that they were wearing matching colors.  The kids all adored Key West Friend.

Oh!  The Diamond Caverns Gift Shop had these great hats!  Perfect for balding men.  I made Rob try one on. 
Before:

After:

Obviously he was thrilled!  We bought 5, in differing hair colors.

And that's pretty much where our pictures stopped.  If you want to see more, you can check out Key West Friend's blog post about it.  And then if you want to see EVEN MORE, you can check out her smugmug (linked at the bottom of her blog post).

On Sunday we packed up camp and then did the 2 available Mammoth Cave tours.  It turns out that the 2 available tours were the 2 that I would have picked anyway.  If you're going for the first time, they're the ones I recommend. 

The Historic Tour shows you the huge, huge rooms and passageways, plus gives you some of the history of the cave.  It's fascinating history, and breathtaking scenery.  (Does a cave count as scenery?) It's about 2 hours long, 2 miles total, and it's a pretty easy walk.

The New Entrance Tour is about 2 hours long and covers 3/4 of a mile, a bunch of which is stairs, stairs, stairs.  The tour shows you a different entrance to the cave.  A newer entrance (go figure), and the guide gives some of the history of that entrance, which means you learn about the Kentucky Cave Wars.  Who doesn't want to learn about that?!  I think it's fascinating stuff.  But the real draw of this tour, and the whole reason to take it, is you get to see the best cave formation that Mammoth has to offer:  Frozen Niagara.

I just stole that picture from someone's website.  But, again, it's impossible to tell how amazing this formation really is.  So go see it for yourself!

Mammoth has 12 miles open to the public, and you can even do a river boat ride INTO THE CAVE.  Cool, right?  So, you should go there.  Heck, I'll go with you!

Last note on Mammoth:  They have a 6-hour Wild Cave tour.  I've never done it, but I'm going to THIS SUMMER!  I was waiting for my brother to go with me, because they have size requirements, and Rob is too big according to the size limits they have listed on-line.  But while we were at Mammoth this time, Rob asked about it.  They pulled out their measurement string, and Rob is small enough to go!  Ha, ha!  So we're going to pay $60 a person, leave our kids with a babysitter for 2 days, and take this tour!  I'm SO EXCITED!  One step closer to meeting that new life goal.

And the rest of the weekend was spent just kinda chillin'.  Mammoth was fun, but tiring, and we were all zonked by Sunday night.  We did go to our ward's annual Memorial Day Picnic, and that was fun.  I represented the female race, again, by playing in the annual soccer game (there was 1 other woman out there representing.  Thanks, Jocelyn!).  Though this time I got crap for wearing cleats.  Seriously?  If you only wore flip-flops, that's not my problem!  :)  Everyone was safe, so it all turned out well. 

We closed out the day roasting marshmallows and eating s'mores around a fire in our backyard.  LOVE summer.

Oh!  To end our super fun Kentucky caving/camping adventure:  We came home with 7 ticks on us, collectively.  3 on Elijah, 1 attached.  1 on Miciah, non-attached.  1 on me, super attached.  And 1 on Key West Friend.  I was glad we could give her an authentic Midwest camping experience.

Thanks for coming, Key West Friend!

(Picture taken by Miciah.  Love the penguin sticker on her forehead?  Elijah put it there.)

A Soft and Cuddly Man

I was missing Rob in Key West, so I found myself a new man to cuddle with:

He was super soft.

Key West

I spent last week in Key West.  And there's one main reason that I haven't written about it before now:  I had to determine if I actually went, or if it was only a dream.  I have decided that it's a good thing that I brought home souveniers, as physical proof that I was gone.  Else it would have felt very unreal indeed.

First:  Why did I choose to go to Key West as opposed to say, well, anywhere else in the world?  Well, my good friend, J, lives there.  We wanted to get together after not seeing each other for a very, very long time, and I told her she could come here to Cincinnati, which she was very willing to do, OR ...  I could go to Key West.  By myself.  For a week.  Sold.

I won't detail my trip.  But I am going to post some pictures (stolen from J, who took all the pictures while we were there), and give highlights.

Highlight 1:  On the plane ride there, I spoke with a fascinating woman who owns 2 cats.  Also, I saw a clearing in the forest that was shaped like a conversation bubble.

Highlight 2:  On the plane ride back, I stood up at the end of the flight and bumped my head on the overhead compartment thing.  People behind me were sympathetic, but I said, "It's okay, I'm short."  I'm only an inch or two taller than the bottom of the overhead compartments, and I tend to hit my head on them a lot--I'd say 4 out of 5 trips.

Okay, now on to the real highlights.

It was nice to be able to just chill!  I got to talk to J, think about life, sleep for 12 hours straight, and do nothing.  During the down times (and thankfully, there were a lot of down times), I looked at the ocean.  J lives 118 steps from the water's edge (I counted for Miciah), and so everyday I would look out at the ocean and I discovered that it was never the same color day to day.  Sometimes it wasn't the same color moment to moment.  Gray, gray-blue, emerald green, light blue, darker blue.  I can now no longer define the color of the ocean.

Key West is further from mainland Florida than I supposed.  And locals refer to the drive to Miami as The Drive, which cracked me up.  But makes sense, right?  Cause you can only drive out of Key West one direction.

Also cracked me up:  Key West claims to be the Southernmost Point of the continental United States.  Like someone forgot to tell them that they're an ISLAND.  ...  Key West is only 90 miles away from Cuba, and I didn't know that.  That's like Cincinnati to Columbus!  Crazy.

We decided to walk all the way around the island.  It was my idea, so I take full blame for the fact that we were worn out all the rest of the week.  But it's such a small island:  4 miles by 2 miles.  You GOTTA walk around it!  I was surprised by the fact that there are very few beaches.  Mostly it's just land and then, umm, water.  A lot of times it was road and then water.  It was very strange to me.  Here's one of the actual beaches on Key West:

Even the beaches, then, only have like 5 feet of sand.  I guess I just expected it to be beachy.

We went and saw a bunch of stuff.  There's a treasure museum that we went to which sings praises to Mel Fisher.  Mel Fisher was crazy and a treasure-hunter, and even though he lost his son and daughter-in-law during the searching process (and as a result of it), he kept searching and eventually found his El Dorado:  2 sunken 1620's Spanish ships with immense amounts of gold, silver, and other unimportant things of historical significance.  You can see lots of those things on display in the museum and you can even purchase some of them in the gift shop (like the gold snuff box we saw, yours for the low low price of $65,000), which only goes to show that Mel Fisher is still racking up cash.  He was kind enough, though, to let us lift this real gold bar without paying extra.  The markings on it--the stamps--were very cool:

Mallory Square at sunset was awesome.  Locals come and give performances and then guilt tourists into giving them tips.  We were not conned by their "give me money because I just entertained you" act because I did a quick calculation and realized that the good ones are making more money than I do.  The good one we saw was juggling fire sticks while standing on a 10-foot unicycle.

One of the bad ones was strumming an acoustic guitar, butchering American Pie, and standing right behind us as we watched the sunset.  For half an hour.  It was torturous.  But the sunset was beautiful.  Check it out:

and:

While watching the sunset from the shore, we decided that we NEEDED to get on a sunset cruise.  Boats go out about an hour before sunset and arrive back at shore about an hour after sunset.  This was, hands down, the best thing we did.  (Right here I have to put in my plug for traveling sans kids.  A $40 sunset cruise is MUCH more manageable when you're only paying for 1 person.)  For so many reasons.
Neither J nor I had ever been on a boat on the ocean.  So here's for firsts!
The sunset was gorgeous:

We also got to watch a couple get fantastically drunk.  They were old enough to be our parents (I'm guessing they were in their early 50's).  She was dressed in a cute black evening dress, and he was in khaki shorts and a floral print button-up shirt.  He started the trip by saying, "Will we have to duck under the sail?  Because my reaction time is a little slow right now."  Right.  By the end of the night they were "dancing" on the "dance floor."  They were the ONLY ones dancing.  He had his shirt unbuttoned (For the love of all that's holy, WHY?) and she was touching him all over while they -puke- danced.  Gross.  I wished I had video taped the whole thing so that I could show them the next day how RIDICULOUS they looked.  Be glad you didn't see it.

Despite the fact that this Plastered Couple almost made me hurl, the sunset cruise was fabulous.  We got to talk to the captain of the boat, and that was fascinating.  He's been in Key West for 16 years, minus the year he moved with his young family to Wisconsin to try to make it there, in a more family-friendly environment.  Shockingly, there is little need in Wisconsin for sailboat captains.  One of my favorite nuggets from Captain was the fact that it can get cold on the ocean over the "winter."  As he said, "I have to wear a sweatshirt and wind breaker.  And sometimes, even socks and shoes."  The pinnacle of cold in Key West:  Needing to wear socks and shoes.

I asked lots of questions about the Keys, because the history--both human and geological--is fascinating.  For instance, Key Deer.  A subspecies of the white-tailed deer, they only exist on the Keys.  But how did they GET there?  ...  I mean, doesn't it make you curious?  ...  Well, turns out that the ocean used to be 50 feet higher than it is currently.  Then it dropped to 300 feet LOWER than it is now.  What had formally been the original reef became the Keys.  All kinds of animal life went down the new, now-connected land mass.  Then, as the water levels rose again, the animals fled back to the mainland, but some of them got trapped, and there you have the Key Deer.  Neat, huh?

As for human history, the fact that the Keys exist as a tourism location is amazing to me.  In the 1800's, a guy decided to build a railroad line all the way from Miami to Key West and everyone thought he was crazy.  But he was rich, so he did it anyway, and it totally worked.  Eventually they paved it over to allow for car travel.  Fortunately, parts of the old bridge were destroyed during a hurricane, so they updated it with a bridge that's much wider.  You can see parts of the old bridge, and it's so narrow that it makes me nervous just THINKING about driving across it.

Oh yeah, plus the crackpot Hemmingway lived in Key West.  And Pres. Truman loved it, too.  And that's that.

So, all in all, a great trip.  I learned that people go to Key West to get fabulously drunk, and I hadn't known that before, so I feel less ... naive now.  I learned that the ocean is beautiful, no matter what color it is.  And I learned that Cincinnati is also beautiful, just different.  When the plane got below the cloud line, and the rolling hills of Cincinnati came into view, the trees exploding with fall colors, ...  I was home again.  Hurray for vacations.  And hurray for coming home.