Route 1, Day Ten: The Last Sunset

It's January 7th, and Roberta cooks up some bacon and scrambles eggs for our breakfast. Then it’s time to say good-bye to her and James.

Frank, husband of Jim’s cousin Kristin, grew up on Key West. His family lived there for multiple generations, coming originally from the Bahamas. He arranges free tickets for us and we spend the day as unabashed tourists. The Shipwreck Museum reminds me of the Nantucket Whaling Museum, complete with a lookout on top.

The ocean around Key West was the site of an average of one shipwreck a week for many years. “Wreckers” in small boats would go out in the storms and hurricanes to rescue passengers and crew, which was the first priority, and salvage any cargo they could bring in. Depending on the effort required and the risks involved, wreckers received a percentage on the sale of the salvaged goods.
The Conch 'train' threads its way through the streets of the old town, hitting the major points of interest, including the colorful buoy at the southernmost point in “the continental U.S.” It seems a stretch to call an island 100 miles from the mainland “continental”, but whatever floats your boat.
The Key West cemetery is full of above-ground crypts; many of them are stacked. It looks like an eerily deserted white marble city for children.











I enjoy seeing the Caribbean fish in the aquarium, including my personal favorite: the fairy basslet. (Have I mentioned I like purple?)
                                               
By 3 p.m. we’re touristed out. I give up trying to read all the biographical sketches in the historical sculpture garden: it has about 20 or 30 bronze busts. We eat at a restaurant specializing in Cuban cuisine. The pork chops marinated with lime and garlic are extremely tasty. Since we first entered the town two days ago we’ve heard roosters crowing frequently. When cock-fighting was banned in the 1970s, the birds were released and their descendants roam the island freely. It is illegal to capture them or harvest their eggs.

About 4:30 p.m. we leave Key West and drive Route 1 North, a.k.a. the Overseas Highway, in daylight. Around 5:30 p.m. I spy a huge orange disk behind me, a quick glimpse of the setting sun. Too bad we can’t be at the sunset festival tonight.