Bill and Cathy McArthur on the Road 2004: 2

    It was windy and cooler on Wednesday, January 7. We are very familiar with winds shaking our house on the Delaware Bay, but the wind rattling the camper was a new experience. We took a 4 mile walk along the old state road on Sugarloaf Key during the late morning. This abandoned road used to connect with a road that we rode bikes on back in 1997 (see "Happy Holidays 1997", Thursday 01/01/98), but now has a bridge out. We found a great place to eat lunch on Ramrod Key: Boondocks. This is an upscale version of the Schooner Wharf Bar in Key West according to Cathy. Bill went kayaking in the back bay near the campground. The NE wind was howling in a manner reminiscent of Bill's ill-fated attempt at Rum Runner 2001. The rental kayak was a small plastic twin-hulled boat called a "water skate." Bill decided to have some fun and a good workout by crossing the bay into the wind a few times. The bridge at the top of the bay is an old bridge with arches underneath, just like the bridge where Bill dumped in Rum Runner 2001. Bill took the water skate under the bridge, into the wind and chop, a couple of times. On the last crossing back to the campground, Bill noticed that the left side of the kayak was under water. When he returned the kayak, it was found to be half full of water! I guess that made for a better workout. We grilled outside and then watched the rest of the DVD, "Mission", on our laptop with earphones substituting for surround sound. 

    On Thursday we took a 4 mile walk (run/walk for Bill) on the old state road outside the Sugarloaf KOA. We practiced trying to identify poisonwood so that we wouldn't discover it accidentally in the future. We bought a 30 gallon graywater tote at a nearby RV supply store; we have decided that this will be better than a sewer hookup for our camper and also necessary for any "dry camping" that we might have to do. After a brief stop at the Internet Café, where they were able to recover the photos from our broken camera, we headed back into Key West for a last time before moving up the keys on Friday. The day was sparkling and the temperature hit 77º. We ate lunch at the Schooner Wharf Bar. Then we decided to walk down and back on Duval Street. Near the Atlantic end of the street, we stopped in at the Butterfly Arborarium. There were lots of butterflies of all sizes and colorations flying around us as we took many photographs. Cathy called her cousin Ruth Ann, who lives about a mile from Sugarloaf Key KOA and arranged for us to visit her after dinner. We gave the XTerra a much-need washing and did a bit of shopping at Publix before leaving Key West. We had store-bought salads for dinner back at the camper. After dinner we visited Ruth Ann and her husband Harry and talked for a couple of hours about travels: ours and theirs.

    Friday was moving day. Bill had turned off the hot water pilot on Thursday night. We learned a lot about the most efficient order of events in breaking camp as we followed a much less efficient sequence. We stopped by the Internet Café on Big Pine Key before finishing our 27 mile drive to Knight's Key Campground at mile marker 47, just on the other side of the Seven Mile Bridge. We had an easy time getting into our new campsite because there was nobody backed to us and we could pull through. However, we had to re-hitch after unhitching because we didn't leave room enough for our back pullout bed which needs six feet. We patched the hole in the awning and then drove up into Marathon. We went to the post office, dropped Cathy's anklet off for repair, and ate lunch at a deli before returning to set up camp. Setting up went much smoother than the first time. The awning took awhile, but hopefully it will stay up in a light wind. Bill fashioned a couple of tie-downs with duct tape and used two support lines on each of the front posts. After getting the campsite squared away, we took a 5 mile walk on the old seven mile bridge to Pigeon Key. It was beautiful, warm, and calm as we walked. We were amazed at the roaring current that flows under the bridge with its standing waves and eddies. We saw a gorgeous sunset while we were walking back. We ate dinner at the Island Restaurant and Tiki Bar in Marathon. We had a waterside table, good food, and good service. We ate two "light" entrees of mahi and grouper which were as big as any that we'd get anywhere. The only thing light about them was the price. We shopped in Publix and then returned to the camper to watch half of "Porky's" on DVD . We had two hard cloudbursts overnight. The first one, at 4:00 AM, had us scurrying to zip up a lot of open windows. 

    Cold is a relative thing. Saturday was blustery and chilly, but we saw that it was 9 degrees at home while we had a temperature of 65 degrees. The folks back home would have felt balmy at our 65, even with the wind. We had to drive back to Sugarloaf Key to go to an Internet café after we tried two local places which didn't have the facilities that we needed. We ate lunch back at the camper. The soft walls of the camper billow and vibrate in the wind similar to how the walls of our home shake and the windows billow in a hard NW wind. After lunch we stopped for a cappuccino at the Blonde Giraffe Key Lime Pie Factory, home of the best Key Lime Pies according to some poll or another. We haven't tried one of their pies yet, but enjoyed the caffeine and hot beverage on this chilly day. We took a 4 mile walk down to Sombrero Beach, a beautiful and clean public park and beach. If Bahia Honda has the best beach in America, then Sombrero Beach has the bestest beach in America. We drove to the visitor's center for some brochures and then took a 1.5 mile walk to Sombrero Marina and Resort. We saw lots of big boats that featured live-in residents. We returned to our windy camper for dinner. We ran our furnace and also used our electric heater to get the chill out of the air. It was so reminiscent of Spain to be running an electric heater. When Cathy took her evening shower, she was discussing hot water with a fellow camper. It turned out that both of them had experienced the demand hot water heaters in Spain and their vagaries. The other woman had spent a year in Spain dealing with uncertain hot water, outlasting Cathy's 4 months experience. Bill spent 38 minutes convincing SONY that he should be able to submit the Cyber-shot for repair and then we spent 36 minutes talking with Tom and Katie; something seems out of proportion, doesn't it? By evening, the wind was so noisy that we decided to exercise "plan B" for the first time and sleep in the car. We had brought two air mattresses and a blanket for just this purpose. We augmented those with one of our comforters. Sleep was not easy, but it was possible.

    Sunday morning the beautiful weather began to return. The wind was still blowing 15-20 mph, but the sun shone brightly. A pall was caste on the day when our laptop would not boot up. We spent a half hour on hold and talking to a Gateway support person about the problem. The support database was down, so the support person couldn't give us an authorization number to get the laptop repaired. Also, the closest repair facility is in Miami. Things looked pretty bleak as we went for a walk/run on the old Seven-mile Bridge. When we got back, magically the laptop began to work again (temporarily?). Bill made some frantic backups as soon as he could. We ate lunch in the camper and then drove to some of the more upscale areas of Marathon: Key Colony Beach and Coco Plum Beach. These areas have homes that reminded us of the beachfront in Ventnor, NJ - big, expensive homes on the ocean. Cathy wanted to watch the Eagles vs Packers game, so we went to the Tiki Bar at the Sombrero Resort to watch the game. The Tiki Bar is normally has open sides, but the vinyl "walls" were down because of the wind and chilly air. We enjoyed the first half of the game talking to a slightly drunk retired TV producer who had worked at Channel 6 sports in Philadelphia back in the 60s. We ate a pizza for dinner in the Sombrero Resort Pizza and Pasta Restaurant. Bill discovered a TV in a closed dining room and checked on the progress of the game from time to time during dinner. We both watched the end of the regulation game and then we had to do some shopping and get back to the campground. We couldn't find the game on the car radio, so we didn't know what happened until Phil kindly sent a text message to our cell phone giving us the final score. We watched the first half of "Something About Mary" on DVD in honor of Brett Favre.

    We started the morning on Monday with a walk on the old Seven-mile Bridge. We also visited a computer shop to print out an email and then a UPS Store to ship out our Cyber-shot camera for repair. We had lunch in the camper and then spent a lovely couple of hours bird-watching from the campground beach while we sat in our NASCAR chairs (two cup holders on each chair). We watched a Least Bittern with a broken wing walk out on a rope over the water and catch a number of tiny needle-nosed fish. A nearby Great White Heron couldn't seem to catch a thing. We saw an Osprey fly over with a fish in its mouth and numerous Cormorants and Brown Pelicans. We drove down to Big Pine Key to use the Internet Café. We met a couple of golf pros who had a great looking kevlar kayak on top of their car. They are on their way to new assignments in New York and Connecticut and had just circumnavigated Key West with their dog Mako. They have a website with photos of their adventures. We then proceeded down to Sugarloaf Key to eat dinner at Ruth Ann and Harry's home with all-you-can-eat stone crab claws and lobster tails, all harvested by Harry via SCUBA diving.

        Bill and Cathy