The official travel journal of Jerry & Ann Linebarger
www.linebloggers.com
Our bay-front campsite at Fiesta Key KOA, located halfway between the towns of Islamorado and Marathon. We spent the month of February, 2008 here at a cost of $100 a day - pretty expensive for a campsite, huh? But we had a wonderful time and would go back again.
We spent lots of time at the pool reading, working crossword puzzles, and enjoying being able to swim in February.
After our month on Fiesta Key, we moved south near Key West to Blue Key Resort. The campsites here were actually privately owned and rented when not in use by their owners. This was a lovely campground but, at $158 a night, it should be!
Each site had it's own private tiki or cabana. Ours was even equipped with an outdoor TV.
And our own private dock on the canal.
One of the highlights of our stay in the Keys was a 70-mile boat trip out to Dry Totugas National Park and Fort Jefferson. In spite of Ann's dose of Bonine, she spent the whole trip on the side deck with barf bags - not a pretty sight. But she said it was worth it.
Construction on the fort began in 1822 and continued until 1877. However, it was never finished. It was designed to accomodate 450 guns but the most that were ever there was 177 during the height of the Civil War. There were no battles fought here but it was used to prevent the trafficking of war goods from Arkansas, Louisana and Mississippi around the tip of Florida and up the east coast to Virginia. Damn Yankees!
It took 16 million bricks to build the fort and it is still the largest masonry structure in the Western Hemisphere. It was built to house 1,500 soldiers and 500 civilian workers. There is no fresh water on the island so a million gallon cistern was constructed for water storage but it never worked correctly so water was always an issue. According to records, this was an awful place to live with no shade and constant 25-30 mph winds. Fort is located 90 miles from Cuba, just as Key West is. Because of its location, many Cuban refugees land here. In fact, in 2007, about 1,800 refugees landed here. For this reason, the park rangers are heavily armed and operate under a "wet foot-dry foot" rule. In other words, the rangers try to "shoo" the refugees away because once they set foot on land, they have to be taken into custody.
