Key West or Bust, Day 7

Mile Marker 0

Saturday May 17, 2008

At Mile Marker 0, time is of a different order. In fact, time just doesn’t seem to matter a whole lot at Mile Marker 0. For us, this is juxtaposed with the fact that we have only one day here. Even so we sleep in and have a lazy breakfast at the Paradise Café, just a few blocks from the hotel. Our server is, I would guess, Slavic, judging from her accent (it’s a bit of a hobby of mine), so I ask her about why she’s in Key West. She’s Ukrainian. Close. And she loves Key West because at Mile Marker 0, time stretches out and all the things that made people uptight in New York, where she lived for six years, don’t exist here. She says she may stay here for the rest of her life.

We have only a loosely-formed plan for the day, and first we walk back to Mallory Square and book tickets on a reef cruise, one of those glass-bottomed boat affairs. We cruise seven miles south to the reef, where we float for about 40 minutes. I would have expected the rumble of the diesel engines to frighten the fish, but on the contrary, they seem quite curious and schools of brightly-colored fish, whose names I don’t remember more than 10 seconds after the guide identifies them, follow the boat. Seeing the reef underwater, it becomes evident why the sea appears mottled from above. The deeper sections of the reef are sandy, and these areas reflect more light and thus appear as the lighter green areas. The uneven coral-covered sections of the reef are darker and account for the darker turquoise seas.

I ask the tour guide about water temperatures and algae. Algae has been on the increase as water temperatures have become slightly warmer over the years, but the guide doesn’t think the algae have affected the water quality on the reefs around Key West. The water is actually rather clear, although through the glass I can’t really judge the visibility.

Returning to the dock, we have lunch at the Half Shell Oyster bar, where we are joined by a rooster and a number of pigeons. You gotta love a restaurant that features a sign as you walk in, “Don’t feed the birds.” This place has literally thousands of license plates, donated over the past 20 years, that almost completely cover all the walls.

At Mile Marker 0, there are quite a bewildering variety of available travel conveyances, from bicycles to motorized scooters to hired bicycle hacks to little four-wheeled, street-legal electric contraptions that look a lot like modified golf carts. We, being the contrarians that we are, spurn them all and decide to walk Key West. I have my little yellow eTrex loaded with waypoints and it serves us well.

We walk to Ernest Hemingway’s house for little reason other than that Hemingway was one of the first authors that helped me realize the value and the joy of literature. We learn that currently there are 47 cats on the premises, and they have the run of the place. We see several six-toed cats, which, if I’m not mistaken, is likely the result of decades of inbreeding. And we learn the story of why there are so many roosters on the island: At one time a third of the population was Cuban, a culture where cockfighting was an accepted practice. The US population took exception to this, and the city passed an ordinance that all the roosters must be freed. And they are free today. There’s a $500 fine for “harassing a rooster.” And it begs the question: Where are the hens, without which there will be no roosters?

We walk across the street to the Key West lighthouse and I climb to the top for an elevated view of Key West. In the visitor center is a first order Fresnel lens. Without going into detail, Fresnel lenses, named after their French inventor and pronounced “frey-nel”, were for several hundred years including modern times the best light-focusing device ever created. A first-order lens could be seen 20 to 30 miles at sea. This first-order lens is in pristine condition and it is the closest I’ve ever been to one. What a monster! It must be 12 feet or more high, and probably six feet across its largest diameter. Kitty opts to stay in the air-conditioned museum rather than climb the 88 steps to the top. This lighthouse has a fifth-order lens and is still lit although it has been decommissioned for some years.

And farther south still until… we can walk south no farther. It is the southernmost point on the United States, and we pose for pictures along with a dozen other visitors. At Mile Marker 0, it is literally the end of the line.

A walk back to the hotel for a shower and then back to Mallory Square for dinner and another spectacular sunset. There are thousands more people milling around than last night; my theory is that most tourists book Saturday-to-Saturday visits, so this is the first night in Key West for many of them. On a Friday night like last night, many of them would be preparing to leave town. After sunset, we seek out some Key lime pie at Meson de Pepe’s. The place is jumping with a fantastic Cuban band and has a long waiting time, but the hostess sneaks us in to the bar where we can order Key lime pie and coffee. Don’t leave Mile Marker 0 without having some Key lime pie! They do use real Key limes here!

I’ve carried my little eTrex all day, and after cutting-and-splicing the track segments so the boat tour was removed, I discover that we have walked 8.3 miles today. My feet and legs feel it!

I feel like I could live at Mile Marker 0. Maybe it’s not so bad to have a destination if the destination is Mile Marker 0. Next time, I’m ready to make this a real destination and stay a while. There’s something about the atmosphere that I find vibrant and exciting, yet peaceful and relaxing. Boats bobbing gently in the harbor, the slap of a wake against the dock pilings, the creak of the boat mooring lines, the cries of the sea birds and their graceful aerobatics, year-round open-air dining in cutoffs (even among roosters and pigeons), these things I find extraordinarily appealing. Kitty, not so much. She struggles with having so many people in close proximity. And at heart she’s not a water girl, she’s a farm girl.

But this has been fun. It’s been good. Tomorrow we revert back to being motorcyclists and turn northward. But today, we went farther south than we have ever been.

For tonight, we are at Mile Marker 0.