February 2-3, 2018 Marathon, Florida Keys

70's and partly cloudy day.

We went to the Pigeon Key Art Festival in the city park today. Lots of very nice art. Fun to talk to the artists. I actually sold some of my jewelry to one of the artists. Didn't expect that. I loved the art car made from recycled pieces. On the hood is a kaleidoscope. The eye of the fish on the back panel is a glass pan lid with a CD behind it all on the gas cap. The rear back up light is a red glass mug.

Sunset looked different tonight, but when I look at the photo it looks just like last night's  sunset. Poor us to have this great view in today's front yard. John took me out to dinner at Burdine's Waterfront. We sat overlooking the water and listened to live music under a thatched tiki roof.

I finished the Froggy Bottom basket. It is 10 1/2 x 9 1/2 x 2 inches. It has some kind of stone frog on a lily pad in the center, frog and green glass beads and is made of pine needles. Came out cute. The restored and opened this part of Sombrero beach. It is lovely. I can't sit still long enough to sunbathe much any more. Plus the sun is longer nice to my skin. I like to walk on the beach and this is all of it, not very long.

But they are still working on restoring the rest after hurricane Irma. We went to Big Pine Key to see the key deer. They are a variant of white tail deer, only about half as big.  We walked around Blue Hole. It is an old quarry that has salt water in the bottom and a lense of freshwater on top. Lots of wildlife here drawn to the water. There is an alligator floating on the other side and we saw some turtles. 

Then we hiked in the Key Deer Preserve.  They call this habitat pine rockland, with a canopy of pines and a low understory. The palms are a bit ragged from the hurricane still.  The deer are about 24-26 inches tall and the fawns weight between 2-4 lbs when born. We did a fair amount of hiking but saw the deer on the road, many among the houses.  They are protected here and tolerate people. Pelicans are in the bay in front of our RV at camp.

Pine key is covered with poison tree, it is related to poison ivy, which I am wildly allergic to. My worst nightmare, poison ivy trees!! More birds from camp. An iguana at the beach-he did not know it was closed, a butterfly on a flower, a turtle hanging below the surface of Blue Hole and another one with it's shadow.

We went to No Name Key to hike some more. This is John in a hardwood hammock. Hammocks are on elevated ground above the wetlands. There are tropical trees, mostly gumbo limbo, pigeon plum, poisonwood and mahogany. Very dense and green. Closer to shore is hurricane damage, debris and sea grass and dried mud and trees stripped of leaves and maybe dead. 

Rainbow on the way back. giant bracken fern, a sea sponge in the hurricane debris. I love the Ichabod crane service and one of the Florida licence plate designs. On the way back we stopped at the No Name Pub, named after the island. It has been around since the 30's and kind of in the middle of no where. In front were key deer made from debris.

There is a nice outside patio at No Name, the inside plastered with $1 bills.  The menu said people from all over the world come for the world famous pizza and to put a $1 on the wall. A newspaper article on the wall says there are 65,000 to 75,000 bills on the wall. John thought the place was a fire trap and he kept his money in his pocket.  The old bridge by Bahia Honda State park in the evening light on the way back from the 7 mile bridge.

The clouds once again blocked sunset from our front yard but I managed to get a little color from my lawn chair. It has been 6 months since the hurricane came through but there is still damage to be seen. Most houses either have new roofs or tarps on them and lots of new construction. Some new houses going up-on stilts to protect against the storm surge in the next hurricane, a mangrove island with no leaves and probably dead trees. Stripped trees , damaged road and fences, piles of debris and this last is some storm damaged motor homes. Lots of people are living in new trailers while reconstruction takes place.