Marco, Marathon and Key West - Loop Trip Days 73 - 78

Marco Island wasn't far from Naples, but it was an interesting place to visit. The island has about 25,000 permanent residents, but grows to around 150,000 when the " snowbirds" return to their winter homes. There are only a few hotels and it's not the typical Florida beach city. Our Marina was located in the Historic Marco which had a number of good restaurants, but not much else, to the north of us. Going in the opposite direction took you into the town where all the shopping and more dining places were to be found. 

Harbor at Factory Bay

My first day here wasn't great as a woke up not feeling too good. While I spent most of the day sleeping, Regina did laundry and went exploring in the main shopping area. She found some places that we rode to on our bikes the next day when I was doing much better. We had a great brunch at Doreen's Cup of Joe, visited West Marine and Publix. This was a true test of our bike basket capacity!  At dinner time, we walked down the street in the historic area where there were two excellent restaurants side by side. The Old Marco Pub had Italian food which was what we really wanted for a change and it was amazing. If you enjoy veal dishes, I would definitely recommend visiting this place. Next door was Mareck's where live music was playing so that was the after dinner location. While sitting there, we met Mike and Ginny from Gloucester, MA. They were escaping the cold weather up north and turned out to be boaters dreaming of looping so this made for a lot of fun discussion.  So much that we closed the place down - at 9 PM!  South Florida goes to bed early!!

Next morning we left at about 9:30 to let the tide start coming up. This day was to be a 60 mile run south to an anchorage at the mouth of Little Shark River in the Everglades. Not our original plan, but a good place to stop before going to Key Marathon on Friday. I have begun to accept that the plan I made for the trip was just a template of sorts. In northern Florida, I wanted to go to Steinhatchee and Yankeetown, but no fuel from hurricane damage and the small weather windows eliminated both. Now I'm skipping Everglades City because no fuel is available there either.  All of these places had historic lodges and cool places to see that makes missing them disappointing, but it had to be. Maybe next time!  So we went south, to the anchorage, to be joined by eight other boats on a beautiful, calm river that became a bug crazy place just as the sun started down. Out came the ThermaCell for the first time in a couple of years. These things really do work and kept the flying critters at bay.  Track and photos - www.ramblr.com/web/mymap/trip/273527/951487

Little Shark River

Another amazing sunset 

We lost cell service crossing to the anchorage so I had no way to check tides in the area. Based on our last location, low tide should have been around 11:00 AM and had been around 2 feet everywhere we had been.  This area had plenty of depth in the river, but the Gulf side approach was a little shallow. Based on this, departing around 8:30 seemed safe.  At about 7:30, the anchor alarm started going off so I jumped out of bed to see what was wrong. Much to my surprise it was the 4.5 feet the tide had dropped that allowed us to drift beyond the circle set on the alarm. We got moving quickly to get out before water level dropped any more and had no issues. This was another calm day in the Gulf and we could have done a slow cruise to Marathon, but it seemed like a good day to arrive early and enjoy the afternoon so we ran around 13 to 14 knots dodging crab pots the whole way. It was nuts, 10 miles offshore, the water is only about 12-15 feet deep and it's a minefield of these things - they're even in the marked channels!  Well at last came Seven Mile Bridge and into the Atlantic Ocean, so no more pots right?  Wrong!  They're here too and the water is a bit rougher than forecast so now it's a real pain to see them and maneuver through the maze.  So now we're supposed to be close to our selected marina, but apparently my Navionics chart plotter with the destination set has somehow lost it's mind. We end up going about seven miles out of our way only to have to double back into the waves and pots to reach the destination. Anyway, in at last and you will see diversion on the map.  After getting the arrival chores done, we visited Lazy Days for appetizers and happy hour before walking to Burdines' for dinner. They had great food and live entertainment. The lead singer had, at one point, actually been part of John Prine's tour group. Track and photos - www.ramblr.com/web/mymap/trip/273527/951483

Right in the marina at Burdines'

Fireball

Guy on the right sang with John Prine

Saturday ended up being a day for planning and chores. Again weather is a big factor in looking at what is reasonable to try.  With another front about to roll in, the plan to take the boat to Key West and the Dry Tortuga's just doesn't make sense.  So I extended our stay here by two days and arranged a rental car. We'll just drive to Key West and avoid the weather. Since this was a beautiful day, I was able to get the dingy ready for use now that it's not cold.  The cover had to come off so we can just jump in and go plus it needed air added as well as the bow nav light glued on. The motor actually started on the second pull after six months of no use!

Our slip

You will see all sorts of things in the Keys

Mangrove so thick you could walk on it!

For Super Bowl Sunday, we picked up the rental car and drove into Key West. The crazy part of this was that I reserved the basic economy car and instead got a Mustang - sweet!  On the drive, you could see a lot of the damage that occurred during Irma.  Clean up and reconstruction continues, but having abandoned mobile home shells and boat hulls along the roadside is very sad.  So we got to Mallory Square and found a place to park right outside the Hog's Breath Saloon to start our tour. I wanted to go see the marina where we would have gone had we brought the boat here.  It was called Galleon and it looked pretty nice. There were several restaurants around it and was about four blocks from Duval Street. We walked around to several places that had music playing. At Captain Tony's, we met a man and his son from John's Creek who wanted to hear all about Looping. It might have been that they just thought we were loopy, but they were fun and the son went to high school with Josh Dobbs!  From there, we visited the Ernest Hemingway house mostly to see all of the six toed cats!  Then it was dinner at Two Friends before heading back to Marathon. Fun day but you cannot believe how dark it is on the highway between the individual occupied Keys!!

Yes - it's Key West!

Galleon Marina harbor

Every place has non-stop live music

Duval Street

Capt Tony's Saloon

The famous Kapok tree

One of the ±50 cats at Hemingway House

Regina did a "Key West tattoo" in memory of her Dad

The Hog's Breath

We've got a couple more days here before we start moving up the Key chain toward Miami.  Adventures continue - let's see what happens next!!