That Key West trek

 Big up Carolyn and her team at the Multi Cultural Activities Club of the Sunrise Lakes Phase 4 over 55 community, for organising the trek to Key West, the southernmost tip of the USA. 

Some one hundred excited seniors came on this bus trip. We had an excellent driver and a whale of a time.

Inna di bus

The day could hardly have gone better as the organizers thought of everything.

Carolyn,  president of the multi-cultural club, is on the extreme right

The only problem was that once we got to the tip of the USA, the line to get to the monument for a proper picture was so long and as my group was starving after an interesting bus tour of the cay,  we couldn't bother waiting for that photo opportunity, so I settled for a selfie.😊

I took a selfie from the other side😊.

Yup, it's indeed a long line!

Incidentally, the living quarters for fighter pilots is located right at the southernmost tip, just behind the monument.

  This is where the fighter pilots from the exciting movie Top Gun were the from.

This trip was a special treat for me as having been no further south than Marathon island. So, I had long wanted to travel to the Southernmost tip but had never had the opportunity before, as it's a four-hour drive from my home.

So, when Jasmine from Tamarac Senior center told me about the trip, wild horses couldn't stop me from signing up.

The Tamarac posse posing outside the Golden Coral restaurant where we stopped for breakfast. 

Their brunch is probably where the term greasy spoon originated. Not my cup of tea at all, but it filled a gap.

As I said, the organising team thought of everything to make this a fun trip.

We even had a race on the bus trip down.

This was like regular racing, except that the entrants were not alive! (They had 5 cardboard images of various creatures which were numbered and punters invited to place $2 bets on which would win. 

The dice was rolled, the race begun, the punters and observers had fun shouting support for their favorite creature. I believe the beetle won and the prize was $11.

 Enough to buy a margarita at a few bars in Key West!

As you probably know, Florida does not particularly have great landscape but the 165 mile journey down the archipelago via Key Largo, Islamadora, Marathon, Lower Keys, to Key West, was pleasant enough.

It's of course nothing but water, smaller cays, palms, and boats.

This little cay looks like it actually has homes!

The old causeway

According to Wikipedia,  "the Overseas Highway is a 113-mile (181.9 km)^[1][2] highway carrying U.S. Route 1 (US 1) through the Florida Keys to Key West. Large parts of it were built on the former right-of-way of the Overseas Railroad, the Key West Extension of the Florida East Coast Railway. Completed in 1912, the Overseas Railroad was heavily damaged and partially destroyed in the 1935 Labor Day hurricane. "

Yup, we saw signs of the damage in lots of areas.

You know, once we got to Key West, it was far more interesting than I expected, considering it's only 4 miles by 2 miles. (They doubled the original size by dredging.)

I strongly recommend the Hop on hop off tours as they really impart a wealth of interesting information.

For example, I learned about Dr. Sandy Cornish, a former slave, who purchased his freedom and publicly maimed himself to prevent his return to slavery.

In Key West, he became an outstanding civil rights leader. 

We also learnt a bit about the activism in Key West of Jose Marti, the Cuban liberator.

Marti's and Cornish's outstanding contributions to our history is well documented in the Key West Historic Sculpture Garden in Mallory Square.

We concluded our interesting day in Key West with a big and delicious lunch at Two Friends Patio Restaurant. 

Apart from the great food, they had live music, which was quite good.

Sign behind the guitarist says Conch Republic.

According to our tour guide, there was an interesting incident in 1982 when Key West decided to secede from the USA and call themselves the Conch Republic. This was because of a dispute with the federal government over massive drug searches, which were causing traffic jams.

 The revolution lasted 11 hours! 😁

In Key West, it's about conch. 

We were told that they have some 28 methods of preparing conch. That delicious sea snail was first introduced to the Keys by Bahamians over a century ago. 

(Their well-known dessert is Key Lime Pie.)

Yummy.

Other memories in pics.

Eric was the sole male in the Tamarac group.

It was a long wait for lunch. But this is because the place was packed. Good food, good music, and we all had to request doggie bags.

Another performer at lunch

Carolyn was always working!

What would a bus trip be without a little incident?

Well, when the bus came to pick us up for the return journey, apparently a policeman really rattled the driver because he was causing a traffic problem. So when about a dozen of us arrived at the designated time at the designated spot, to our horror, we saw the back of the bus as it departed. 😟

We subsequently learnt that we were not being left behind but we had to wait for close to an hour for the driver to safely return and rescue us. 

When we boarded, we could see that he was still really scared.

We, however, boarded incident-free, and I had a well-deserved nap on the return journey.

All's well that ends well.✌

PS. Two days after this interesting trip, a wild fire erupted which caused the only route to and from Key West to be closed.

 I am thankful that we went when we did as it must have been horrific for those caught  while in Key West or  worse, on the way back, as there is no alternative route. 😲