The Florida Keys

Who can say where you will go on a honeymoon trip or when you may hit the road? I am going to have this guide book I seem to be writing start in Florida and head around the country from there. I want to mention some special places that most people don't know about. I am not interested in talking about Disney World, Sea World, Busch Gardens, or watching cars ride around in a circle at Daytona. For me, roller coasters are a matter of nauseous endurance rather than fun, and nothing could be more boring to me than watching cars race around a track. I get plenty of that every afternoon on an urban freeway.

Primarily, Florida is all about the beach. Beautiful white sand beaches cover more than 90% of the coastline from Fernandina Beach just south of Georgia to Pensacola on the gulf. Where they allow cars on the beach (St. Augustine Beach and Daytona Beach) be sure to consult the tide tables. Every year cars get stuck in the soft sand and get covered by the waves. Don't stay out in the sun more than an hour, and slather yourself up with sunscreen. Unknowing tourists stay out for three or four hours and get brutal burns that they only become painfully aware of at about 5:oo in the afternoon - when it is too late. Don't park your car in a questionably legal spot. It will probably be towed and cost hundreds of dollars to get back. Strong riptides often move south to north along the Atlantic Beaches, about twenty yards out. Every year a few dozen weak swimmers are swept out to sea and drown. You might see large dolphins leap into the air as they swim along quite near the shore, and you. They won't bother you. Sharks are a different story. Most shark attacks occur about 50 yards out. Surfers are frequent victims. Sometimes, however, they strike at somebody in only a few feet of water. Have fun and good luck!

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I am going to start with the tip of the peninsula. (Florida has often been described as America's dangling penis.) The Florida Keys are the most truly tropical part of the state. They are the most northern point in the Caribbean crescent of islands that curve eastward and south all the way to Trinidad off the coast of Venezuela. Americans don't think of the Florida Keys as being part of the Caribbean, but in fact, within the United States, it is possible to drive down into a tropical island paradise.

At the end of the road is Key West. It is a famous party town for binge drinking and quick hook-ups (hetero or homo). For those of us who share our intimacy exclusively with the partners we love, there are other things to do. Key West has an aquarium to wander around in, tons of tourist shops for t-shirts and stuff, art galleries where people can pay way too much for watercolor and oil paintings of lighthouses and ocean waves, and a bar, now re-named "Sloppy Joe's", where the writer is said to have indulged his alcoholism. This joint is always packed with tourists, and seems to sell almost as many t-shirts as it sells mugs of beer. Every year they hold a Hemingway look-alike contest, and overweight geezers with beards flock in.

A more interesting place to have a beer would probably be at the "No Name Pub", about twenty miles up the road from Key West, on Big Pine Key (This is the island famous for having Key Deer, tiny little deer about the size of a fox terrier. They are an endangered species, confined to this one island, and road signs warn against running them over). Here is its story from Radio Roger, a tough looking trucker from Ohio, cut and pasted from his blog:

"The No Name Pub is definitely not a sanitized, trendy restaurant. It is a fun, quirky bit of Florida Keys culture, and the food is great. The pub's signature gimmick is the thousands and thousands of dollar bills stapled to every square inch of the establishment's walls and ceiling. How this began remains unclear, but their website says that there was so much illegal money passing through the Keys in the 70's and 80's that they started hanging it on the walls. The current estimate is that there is over $12,000 worth of dollar bills on the walls and ceiling, but I believe that an accurate figure would be much larger. It's amazing to see all of these dollars dangling from the ceiling, fluttering from the movement of air through the ceiling vent. Your waitress will supply you with a Sharpie pen and a stapler, should you choose to add to the collection. Most of Big Pine Key's restaurants, businesses and attractions are located on or very near US 1. The No Name Pub is an exception. It is located away from all other businesses on a remote part of the island. At the Big Pine Key traffic signal on US 1 (there's only one), turn north on Key Deer Blvd. and drive about 1 ½ miles to the first major crossroads intersection (Watson Blvd.). Turn right (east) on Watson Blvd and drive about ½ mile. The No Name Pub is on the left. It's easy to miss, so have your navigator keep his eyes peeled for an old pastel yellow building with aqua trim and a palm tree in front. The sign atop the building reads "No Name Pub... You Found It".

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From Big Pine Key, driving north, you cross the famous Seven Mile Bridge to Bahia Honda. I'm sure you have seen it in the movies: miles of narrow bridge, surrounded by ocean with no land in sight. As you drive from one island to the next, take a break and stop at a tourist shell shop and you can buy yourself a pink conch shell to put on the coffee table, or a coral necklace. The last island at the north end of the Keys is Key Largo (It was the setting and title of an old movie with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, and an old song made famous by Sarah Vaughan).

There are lots of good hotels and cabin rentals in the Keys. Abra will remember staying in the Coconut Bay Lodge in Key Largo , where you could lay around in a hammock, or snorkle-dive right from the dock. However, Key Largo has one place to spend the night that is truly spectacular and unique - Jules' Undersea Lodge. I think you are supposed to have taken scuba diving lessons and have a certificate or something, but just imagine, your luggage is sealed up in a water-tight case, and you scuba down to your hotel room, which is completely under water!

Speaking of being under water, from Key Largo you can pay to get on a boat that will take you about 3-8 miles out into the Atlantic to coral reefs where you can snorkel or scuba dive down to the Christ of the Deep Statue. Abra and her brothers did this when she was younger.

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August 17, 2009: The "Kind of Blue" Jubilee Anniversary

August 17, 2009 marks exactly fifty years from the day Columbia Records released the Miles Davis album, "Kind of Blue". "So What?" one might ask. Well, there are many great albums from the Age of Vinyl, but "All Blues" are not the same. Some music has the horsepower to affect and alter it's listeners, to move them mentally and emotionally, and to transform them.
One afternoon on the sidelines of the soccer pitch, at least fifteen years ago, I was talking to the son of a friend of mine. Though this young fellow was in college at the time, I had known him since he was in grade school. Beside refereeing youth soccer games, he had been in a garage rock band since high school. "My Dad told me you listened to jazz a lot," he says, "but I don't know much about it. People say it's pretty deep. What should I listen to so I can get into it?" "Get a copy of the CD "Kind of Blue" by Miles Davis," I told him. "It's easy to find. They probably have it at Wal-Mart. Drink two glasses of wine and sit in the dark with headphones on, at one o'clock in the morning. Listen to Miles talk on trumpet, Cannonball Adderley on alto sax, John Coltrane on tenor sax, and Bill Evans on piano. Do this three times. You will be turned on to the music."
I knew this because that's how I got hooked on jazz. (Well...I didn't have the wine.) The Columbia Record Club sent me a copy of the "Kind of Blue" album when I was thirteen years old. As I lay in bed listening to it in 1960, the music transported my mind from suburban New Jersey to a smokey jazz club in Greenwich Village, where I could hang out with Maynard G. Krebs, and talk to girls with blonde ponytails, wearing black turtleneck sweaters. From that point on, I began to construct an aura, a shell, of iconoclastic coolness, or so I imagined.
Anyway, about six months after my conversation with this young guy, I ran into his father, Claude, who tells me a tale of woe about how their oldest son is driving both his wife and him nuts. (I knew this to be a very short ride.) "That crazy kid," he told me, "changed his major at the University, from Business Administration to Music. He says he wants to become a jazz musician!" Shaking his head and rolling his eyes, Claude went on to ask, "Do they still have those?? I thought they were all dead by now!! Where does he get these crazy ideas???
What could I say? I didn't tell him. Two years later I heard Claude Jr. was playing bass on weekends in a piano trio, in a bar just off the expressway. It wasn't me, or what I had said to him. It was Miles. Like the Pied Piper in the fairy tale, his recorded sound (particularly in his golden period from 1955 to 1965) kidnaps the listener's ear. Looking back from a fifty year view, the "Kind of Blue" album remains a masterpiece of the twentieth century.

Traveling Tips

Here are a few tips:

• Follow the brown signs. They will point you to hidden and not very well known treasures, or at least to a good place to camp.
  

• Little two-lane roads labeled "scenic view" in the Rand McNally Road Atlas (the ones with the little green dots) are worth traveling down, unless you are in a hurry to get from point A to point B.


• Listen to William Shatner. Captain Kirk knows what he is talking about. Priceline.com is amazing and hard to beat. If you know your destination, make a bid. You won't know the exact hotel you will get, but we have gotten amazing deals, and never been sent to a dump. If you choose a 3-star hotel, even in a big city like New York or San Francisco, you will probably end up in a fancy and beautiful place for a Holiday Inn price. If you go for a 2 and a half star hotel, you will get something on the level of a Comfort or Hampton Inn. One thing to remember, the fancy 3-star hotels charge extra for the parking garage and give nothing away without charging. There will be no laundry washing machine on-site. However, in a 2.5-star hotel you will be able to do your laundry for a few dollars in coins and enjoy a complimentary breakfast for free.


• Be sure to stop at local produce stands and to sample local cuisine. Enjoying the foods of an area makes it all the more fun. We have enjoyed boudin balls in Louisiana, beignets in New Orleans, sourdough bread in San Francisco, TexMex foods like tamales in the Southwest, wine and cheese in Napa Valley, boiled peanuts in the South, crab chowder in Boston, Nathan's hot dogs in New York City, and conch fritters in Key West. They were all well worth it!
  

• On long trips, carry a small tent and compact camping supplies with you. They may come in handy if you cannot find a hotel room, or if you just decide you want to camp at a beautiful site.


• Speaking of camping, all the National Parks in the US are well-maintained, safe, and beautiful, but beware--you may need to make camping reservations well in advance, especially in the "high season." Almost all state parks meet the same high standards, and some of these are not as crowded. If you do not want to tent camp, you may be able to rent a small cabin for less than a motel room.
  


• Make sure you carry toilet paper with you. TP is not in the same short supply in the US as it is in Mexico (ha-ha), but you never know when you might be grateful to have a few spare squares.
  

Family Trips

Later, as a family, we continued to travel all around the country on the cheap. Abra will surely remember sleeping in the car in a campground in Slidell, Louisiana. I’ll bet she remembers our walk around the French Quarter (le Vieux Carré) of New Orleans the next morning, where, in a small tourist shop, she tried on a pair of sunglasses that had a false rubber nose hanging down from the frames to cover her actual nose. Only when she looked in the mirror did the mortified twelve-year old Abra realize she was wearing a rubber penis on her face!

This might have been the shop.

As a family, we pitched our tent in so many places. We camped one summer in the Everglades National Park in Florida, where large alligators slept on the sides of the roads, and the mosquitoes were so bad we left the next morning looking like we had all caught the measles. We camped at the mountain top Chisos Basin of Big Bend National Park in Texas, where all three kids terrified their parents by climbing Appetite Peak without telling us, or asking permission. It is a pile of rocks, from which, a fall could easily be fatal. At the time, Abra was twelve, TJ was only about nine, and the fifteen year old Devin was leading them ever higher, climbing up and over large bare rocks without looking back.

Appetite Peak, Chisos Basin, Big Bend National Park

At Wilson State Park in Kansas, we lay in our tent, thinking about tornados, surrounded by lightning and thunderstorms. I remember another time when we camped on St. George Island off Panama City, Florida, when the winds and rain rattled and pounded our tents all night. The next day, as we left the nearly deserted State Park, the ranger told us a small hurricane had developed in the gulf suddenly and gone by in the night without coming to shore!

Driving Through the U.S.A.

See the U.S.A. in your Chevrolet (or in whatever kind of car, truck, or van you are driving). We have the amazing Interstate Highway System on which you can aim for the vanishing point in the setting sun, and a spider’s web of two-lane blacktop roads to cruise your way down life’s path. All you need is a Rand McNally Road Atlas, a week’s change of clothes, a cooler for the drinks and sandwiches, and enough money for gas. Just check out cool-sounding destinations on the internet, and follow the brown signs for parks and historical sites.

In 1970, Brenda and I drove a VW van from Florida all the way west to California. After camping in the desert near Death Valley, we went to the zoo in San Diego, drove around Beverly Hills, through Laurel Canyon, and along Mulholland Drive. Then we veered back to the East a bit and went to Sequoia National Park to see the giant trees, then through the Mohave Desert to Las Vegas, and then cruised back to Los Angeles to go to Disneyland. Then we drove up the Pacific Coast Highway all the way from Malibu Beach, through Big Sur, to San Francisco. After riding the cable cars, we headed all the way up to Seattle.

Then we headed back east across Montana and the western Rocky Mountains to the Grand Tetons of Wyoming and down to Denver, back across the corn belt states to Chicago, and then through to New York City. I remember I took Brenda to meet my grandmother in her fifth- floor walk-up apartment in the Bronx in a colorful neighborhood that had become almost completely Puerto Rican. Grandma was the only person in the neighborhood who didn’t speak Spanish. She was ninety and still walking up and down five flights every day to go to the market. We went to Philharmonic Hall to hear a Mozart concert. We drove over to New Jersey and I showed Brenda the town in which I grew up. We headed north from there. I remember us lying on the grass in Boston Common. We drove by Niagara Falls, and on to Toronto, Montreal, and the city of Quebec before turning back south and heading back home, driving along the crest of the Appalachian Mountains along the Blue Ridge Highway.

The trip lasted about two months. For all we saw and did, we didn’t spend that much money. Of course, in those days gasoline cost about forty cents for a gallon. At about $2.50, a gallon it would be a bit pricey to drive so many miles in one long vacation. In addition, though we splurged on motels a few times, most of the time we slept in a bed build into the back of the van. We parked at night in highway rest areas, and the parking lots of open-all- night Wal-Marts and grocery stores, as well as bus and train station parking lots. With today’s security cameras and patrolling security guards, it might be difficult to do that. In cities, we sometimes slept in parking garages because they were cheaper than hotels. We kept a low profile, kept our eyes open, and were cautious about keeping the doors locked. We were never hassled once. The highway rest areas in some states had signs that read “No Overnight Camping”. I just figured that if a cop tapped on our window, I would say we had only been there about an hour and I had felt too sleepy to drive any further. It never happened. I’m not sure that would be true today.