Our Last Day in Key West . . . :(

I took yesterday off from updating the blog - Friday was a quiet day for us, we walked a mile over to the Key West Botannical Gardens and ~ have I said it before ~ it was HOT! I got a bunch of artsy-fartsy pictures of birds, flowers and butterflies - only one of which I'll bore you with. This was called an "Autograph plant" - for obvious reasons, you can scratch your name into the leaves! After we returned to the campground, it was time to hang around the heated pool and do our own campground version of the Duval Street Crawl!

SATURDAY - busy last day in Old Town, Key West, for us! Pretty much at this point, we've seen everything that we wanted. We returned to town because I wanted to go back to the Southernmost Point and get a picture of the house that Jimmy lived in "back in the day", which is now condos but has an address of 704 Waddell Street. Well, here it is - pretty unremarkable, eh?






After that, we walked the entire length of Duval Street - from Southernmost Point to Mallory Square (about a mile and a quarter) and I pretty much tormented Bob by ducking into every shop - just to make sure I didn't miss buying something that I absolutely needed to remember our journey by!

We got to the end of Duval Street and noticed that Greene Street was now closed down - remember, Greene Street (#428 to be exact) is where Captain Tony's Saloon is. The funeral was this morning and the funeral party returned to Captain Tony's Saloon for a post funeral gathering. Well, aside from the Saloon being closed, there was a huge crowd outside, so of course we went to check it out! Turns out, Captain Tony was such a legend in Key West (I knew that) that they were having a funeral parade down Greene Street in his honor at 1PM. First, there was the riderless horse, with the boots facing backwards in the stirrups (nobody I talked to knew if Capt. Tony was ever a cop, most recalled that he had mob connections from NJ in the early days), but it made for a nice touch to start the parade.

Then, the Conch (pronounced KONK) Republic Army Color Guard followed the horse with an astonishing collection of shotguns, sabres and yes - even a cannon!

Then, there was a pickup truck (I didn't at the time understand the significance of it, so I didn't take a photo) with cheap plastic chairs and a pack of menthol no-name cigarettes on it), followed by a pickup with a Captain Tony cutout and a drag queen behind him.

The parade ended with the Conch Republic Army doing one crazy-arse gun salute, followed by several cannon salutes. After that, the street went wild when it was announced that Captain Tony's Saloon was open and the beers were free!

Rest in Peace, Captain Tony - Key West threw you one helluva party (like they needed an excuse)! Oh, and I happened to be standing next to a local who made the comment "this hardly ever happens, all the tourists are watching the LOCALS and not the otherway around"! So true, so true. . .

Oh, and I can't resist closing out today's photos with SPONGEMAN!




Tomorrow we're off to Homosassa Springs and manatees. We lucked out this weekend in that Hurricane Paloma is decimating Cuba but a nice cold front is going to push it out to the Atlantic and we don't have to worry about it chasing us up the Gulf Coast!