It's Ian's day!

3/4/22
Happy Birthday to Ian!  Ian, you had a big job to do as soon as you were born.  You had to teach us how to be grandpa and grandma!  I hope you are happy with the way we turned out, or else we have to go back into training!  Now that you are into double digits, we love you double infinity!

We drove into Key West today, and spent hours aimlessly wandering around, but we didn't get lost!  We were wondering what traffic and parking would be like, but it was better than we expected.  With the pickup, we tend to encroach on others' spaces, so we watched for signs and ended up with street parking on the outskirts of the old town area.  There are some public parking lots scattered around, but when we walked by them, they were pretty tight and would not be good for a pickup!

We found the landmark southernmost point marker.  There was a line to wait to take a picture by it, and we were too impatient to start exploring, so a picture from across the street will do for me!  We were hungry for some lunch, and stopped at a little French restaurant and we got to sit upstairs on their balcony.  I was full-on tourist mode as we walked along, ogling old buildings, odd buildings and everything in between!

Since this was a Thursday, and midday, it wasn't real crowded anywhere we walked.  We stopped in a few stores to look for t-shirts, but we didn't indulge in a lot of shopping.  We were both just very interested in getting the feel of this old, old town.  There's places that feel Cuban, Haitian, Mexican, and definitely a vibe of live the way you like it!  You can see and hear the military aircraft up in the sky, and the Coast Guard on the water.  Along with some huge cruise ships as a contrast to that!  We ended up finding a shaded bench in a park to eat our dessert, Key lime pie!

We became snarled up in traffic trying to leave Key West for our trailer.  There's only 1 road that can be used, and it's 4 lane in some places.  But an accident had closed 2 lanes, so everyone was way backed up for a long distance in both directions.  The morning traffic had been nothing like that, so we were surprised, but it makes sense.

We spent some time earlier today looking for potential camping spots as we head north in a little over a week.  A lot of places have no vacancies during this busy time, so we have to dig a little deeper.  We do it all online, using websites like recreation.gov, allstays app, campendium app, state park reservation systems, facebook groups and Harvest Hosts.  Somehow, we always end up somewhere!