Key West, or Cayo Hueso

I was invited on a two week vacation to Key West with my boyfriend and his family that I just finished. It's a great place and I think two weeks was probably the perfect amount of time, as we got to see pretty much everything and didn't have to rush getting things in.

I took the plane from New York to Miami to Key West, with a short layover. On the way down to Key West, I was sitting next to the man who would open Hemmingway Days - a playwright from Canada who was decked out in full Hemmingway garb, including a pith hat he had in one of his carry ons. He told me that this was the best way to see the Keys - to flyover and watch the shallow waters change color. And it was really beautiful - I was glad to have a window seat.

Joe drove me back to the house that his brother, John, had rented. It was a great little house in the old town with plenty of bikes for everyone staying there. There were stained glass windows and it was brightly colored. It was fabulous and John gave Joe and I the master bedroom because it was just the three of us staying there both weeks - their oldest brother, Rich, and his girfriend, as well as their parents, were only staying for the first week and their friend Ryan was only staying for the second - so he thought it would be fair to give the two of us the giant bed and adjoined bathroom. Also, so that Joe could clean his gaping moped wound that he received in Europe in peace. There was also a pool and hot tub behind the house which were really enjoyable to have, especially on hot days and cool nights.

Throughout the two weeks we were there, we went to the Hemmingway House (mostly to pet the cats - we didn't take the tour, I'm personally not a big fan of Hemmingway but I do love cats), did a Duval crawl (the major tourist/bar street in the old town side of Key West - full of all kinds of bars, including a clothing-optional one, and all kinds of dumb stores selling the same T-shirts), biked all over the Old Town, the Key West Butterfly Conservatory (you can buy some pretty amazing butterfly "sculptures" - actual butterflies arranged in plexiglass cases to hang on your walls), went to beaches, kayaked, took two different sunset cruises, chartered a boat (which I got seasick on... unfortunately), went and watched all of the different street performers at Mallory Square (including the Cat Man.. he's crazy), going to a drag show (always a great thing to do, I promise) and all kinds of other things. Oh, and we saw the Today show being filmed. We left after like half an hour because 6 or 7 am is way too early and I wanted to sleep.

One of my favortite things in Key West were all the great restaurants. I think probably my favorite was a little "mostly vegetarian" restaurant we went to three times. It was always really good and really filling - and I'm not even a vegetarian! Cooking some of our own meals turned out really well, too.

It was nice to go someplace different, relax, see people that I haven't been able to for a while, and just have fun in such a crazy and unique place as Key West. It was good to bike everywhere, too, because here in suburbia it's cars everywhere. Having bike lanes is also nice, when you can get them.

The trip back was a bit stressful as Joe and John left before I did and I had to take the keys back and also make sure I got back in time for my taxi. (I was supposed to leave the day before, but my flight was cancelled for some kind of mechanical problem and for some reason I got booted to the next day. They told me I could rent a car to Miami but I wasn't about to drive 3 or 4 hours. It gave me another day with Joe, though!) The flight was fine and I got more of my amazing book (Wizard of the Crow by Ngugi wa Thiong'o [Kenyan]) read.

Now I'm home and ready to get back into the swing of things and hopefully get sewing again! (And maybe knitting, too!)

Me on the weird foldable bike I rode around Key West more photos of Cayo Hueso

Vacationland

Last week, I took a trip with Joe to Maine. We visited our friend Meredyth on Westport Island for two days and then went up to Acadia National Park for a day and a half. It was a trip to be remembered.

After spending just a couple of days in Connecticut (after our 10-hour drive from Ohio and the Wooster graduation), we headed out for Maine. The 5-hour drive took us through Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New Hampshire before finally reaching our destination. What that means was, for me, it was my completion of visiting all the states in New England (I've been to Vermont before - on a spur-of-the-moment trip to Bennington College) which was exciting in a silly way. We had lunch on our trip and were glad when we finally drove down the dirt road to our destination and saw our friend in the doorway.

From Maine

The first night we got a round of meeting and re-meeting everyone and a tasty chicken dinner. We played Apples to Apples into the evening and then went to bed - Joe and I slept on the couches in the front room. It was already a fun trip by then, everyone had great stories and we all were in the same frame of mind and sense of humor.

The next day was the real treat, though. That morning we decided to go out to a place called Big Al's and pick up all kinds of cheap stuff for our fun later - shooting it with a 10-gauge shotgun. We picked up a three ducks playing instruments, an octopus ring-toss game, the head for a baby doll kit (yeah, just a head - no body or limbs at all), a ceramic house that was apparently a candy dish, a plastic tank, a stuffed whale (they'd never shot a stuffed animal before), a plastic or semi-plastic sculpture of lemons and a sunflower fly swatter, which we had thought was simply a plastic flower to go in the ground. We also got a deck of cards (52 reasons cats are better than men), some bizzare postcards and some other things just for fun. Then, we took all our cheap finds (which were all about $10 or $15) out into the yard. To destroy.

From Maine

The baby doll head was by far the strangest thing - it seemed to absorb the shot and loose shot would fall out when you turned it upside down. It became weirdly imbedded in the skin. We finally finished it off by shooting a 12-gauge slug into it. It was rewarding for all the times we shot and couldn't do anything do it, really.

From Maine

Then came the ducks - those pretty much just exploded into a cloud of smoke when you hit them. The same went for the lemon sculpture. That was only half-destroyed, so Archie (our gracious host) shot it as kind of a clay pidgeon - we threw it up in the air and he shot it and hit. Candy dish house - another explosion of ceramics. The tank wasn't too exciting as it was small and pretty hard plastic. The octopus ring-toss game was inflated and we didn't notice until after we'd shot it 3 or 4 times that we'd hit it - but it was riddled with tiny holes from the shot just going right through it. The whale exploded little clouds of stuffing when you shot it - which we did twice because it was cool. Finally, the fly swatter, which wasn't really that exciting. It just kind of broke apart.

From Maine

After a photoshoot of our carnage and picking up more of the pieces from around the yard, we went on a hike through Archie's backyard / nature preserve. It was really beautiful and pristine on this small island where not a lot of people lived. There were lots of pines, really pretty coast around the island and even some lichens growing. It was a nice relaxing trip through Maine's scenery. Afterwards, cards were played and I took a nap. Meredyth's father told Joe stories about Europe. We had another tasty dinner, this time it was ribs and a little bit of venison burgers. Archie let Joe and I sleep up in his bed and he took the couch after we watched Cigarettes and Coffee. The next morning we left for Acadia.

From Maine

It was another couple of hours up to Acadia, but we did stop and had some lobster rolls and lobster stew. We got up to Acadia and decided to take a hike before going and finding a campsite, as that would be further on down the one-way loop road. We chose the Beehive Trail - which has iron rungs on exposed granite cliffs. For me, that was absolutely terrifying and not fun. Once we got to the top, it was nice. But those exposed rungs were more danger than fun. I didn't want to go back down that way, so we decided to take the Bowl trail - around a large lake surrounded by the mountains which was eerily totally silent when we were there - and then climb to the top of Champlain Mountain. It was along trip and we thought we might be able to take the Precipice Trail back down, but it was closed for the nesting Perigrine Falcons. We took another trail down and walked back along the road to the car. Though we couldn't see anything at the top of the mountain - probably a visibility of 50ft, we could see great views as we got down below the cloudline on our way down. I took a small piece of the pink granite back with me. It's really quite pretty, and I'm sure it's really great right after a rain and you can see all the colors in the stone.

From Maine

We found the campsite and found an empty spot, pitched our tent and made a fire and went to sleep. In the night I woke up several times in my really uncomfortably tiny sleeping bag (it was a mummy bag that I barely fit into) and heard that it was raining outside. We woke up and it was pouring and I didn't really want to hike through the pouring rain and it wasn't going to let up until late that afternoon, so we decided to pack up and leave and drive up to the top of Mount Cadillac. Where we also didn't have any visibility. But there were cool waterfalls because of all the rain!

From Maine

We drove back home to Connecticut and stayed there for almost a week more before Joe left to go back to Ohio. We did do some other hiking and it was fun and pretty, but Maine was definitely an experience.