The Keys to Happiness

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May 16th 2019

Published: May 16th 2019

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3TravelingSisters

Ft. Lauderdale - Claire trying to spray Susan

Claire debugging the car. Susan making faces

Day 3 Blog – May 15, 2019 – Ft. Lauderdale to Key West, FL – 206 miles

It appeared that the day was starting off badly again. No breakfast from the hotel (just ate our own yogurt), no ice from the hotel (their ice machine was broken), but the next hotel over gave us a glimmer of hope when they allowed us to fill up our containers with ice.

Scarlett needed a bath. She REALLY needed a bath, so we headed to a car wash. Even after spraying and scrubbing and spraying and scrubbing some more, the bugs still weren’t coming off. Susan pulled a Big Fat Greek Wedding and jumped out and sprayed the whole van down with Windex. The bugs were much easier to get off after that. Then we filled Scarlett up with wiper fluid that had a special blend (with Rain X and bug remover), gassed her up, and made a quick stop to see the Ancient Spanish Monastery.

Scarlett sparkled as we drove through Miami Beach with high rise condos, expensive waterfront homes, yachts, and art deco buildings all around. We no longer had the Beverly Hillbilly look or bugs!

The Coral

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Old Spanish Monastery

Castle Museum was down US Hwy 1. It was a frustrating drive with traffic lights every 10ft for miles and miles and miles. And none were correctly timed. Then to top it all off, when we arrived at the Coral Castle Museum it was smaller than most homes and only one story tall with the tops of the turrets just barely clearing the scrubs around it. Needless to say, we didn’t pay the $60 to go see it. At least on the way to the museum we did pass the University of Miami and saw the interesting domino supports under the rail tracks.

Eventually, we made it to the Keys. In Key Largo we stopped at the Visitor Center and the friendliest people gave us some great information about many of the Keys. We were happy to off the mainland and feeling the friendliest of the Keys. We finally were able to do some of our silly sister types of pictures starting right there in a Big Chair. Later, we saw several giant creatures and made pictures: lobster, angel fish, shrimp, and shark. For lunch we stopped at a park by the sea on one of the Keys and

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a building in the art deco area of Miami Beach

made a selfie for good measure. When we got to Key West, we checked into our hotel and ate an early dinner before exploring the area.

Of course, we had to make our picture at the Southern Most Point and visit the Lighthouse. We made some pictures with a nearby statue of a man throwing away some trash. We saw Hemingway’s House and Margaritaville, but we didn’t waste away there. We found the tiniest park we’d ever seen (it was less than 1/10 acre). On one end of the park it had a façade of an old house (the width of the park) and it also had a giant cigar in the park. Naturally, we made pictures. Navigating the narrow streets of Key West was tricky enough in a van, but we encountered numerous roosters everywhere hanging out in the streets. We even encountered a whole family of roosters and chickens hanging out on Duval Street (the equivalent to Bourbon Street in New Orleans). You could say it was for the birds!

Alas, we drove the perimeter of Key West back to the hotel, but we didn’t eat any Key Lime Pie like we said we were going