Dry Tortugas National Park

June 22, 2007






The Dry Tortugas National Park lies about 70 miles west of Key West and is one of the most isolated National Parks in America. It is mostly comprised of water with a small chain of islands that includes Fort Jefferson, a large brick fortress that was constructed beginning in 1846. The Park is famous for its amazing snorkeling, diving and fishing and it is one of the reasons that Kathy’s brother Chris and nephew James traveled from Colorado Springs for a visit.

Kathy

Chris

It’s always great to have family visit and Chris and James arrived for a long weekend visit that included a camping excursion to the Tortugas. Prior to that portion of the trip, we had time to go out to dinner a couple of times and take a day-long trip to Ft. Taylor State Park for a fun day at the beach. The beach at Ft. Taylor is still beautiful, despite the recent move to commercialize it and the terrible destruction of the shade providing Australian Pines. There was a nice crowd and the weather cooperated for a great beach day.



The hi-light of the trip was the Tortugas trip and Kathy, James and Chris took the early morning Yankee Freedom ferry to the park. Fort Jefferson, where the campsites are located, is only accessible by boat or seaplane and there is no water and only a limited number of highly desirable primitive camp-sites. Sadly, work kept me from going this time, but from all appearances they had a wonderful time. The weather was perfect, almost too good as the SPF 50 sunblock did not keep them all from getting sunburned. The snorkeling at the Fort is the best of anywhere in the Keys with large, healthy coral reefs with tons of fish. The fort itself is interesting, it remained in Union control throughout the Civil War and was used to house Confederate prisoners, including Dr. Samuel Mudd who set the leg of John Wilkes Booth after he assassinated President Lincoln.

James & Kathy



The Tortugas is a beautiful place and one of the coolest places in the Keys to visit. Well worth a trip. Kathy, Chris and James all seemed to enjoy it, despite their weary reddened appearance when I picked them up after their return. We will be seeing them again soon as we will be meeting up in Marshfield, Massachusetts for the July 4th holiday soon.





http://www.nps.gov/drto

Summer

June 22, 2007




Summer






The calendar says that the summer has just started, but here in Key West, the summer seems to have been underway for some time. After all the excitement of traveling all last summer, this year seems positively tranquil. The summer doldrums have hit and time just seems to have been slipping away.

Henry


It has been a busy month, we have been finishing up a lot of work on our house, we had the ceiling in our living room vaulted to match the kitchen ceiling, it has really opened up the room. We also had some cracks in the Spaulding along the walls outside the house repaired and then had the entire place painted in a bright shade of green known as apple tart. It has suddenly become much easier for delivery people and visitors to locate the house. Our next project will be to tile the porch, but that one will have to wait a little till we recover from the most recent projects.

Mario & Tati painting

Life has settled into a nice pattern, with Kathy teaching the summer school camp at the preschool and me holding down the fort at RPM Nautical while the rest of the staff are overseas in Sicily working on our first summer project. Our social schedule has taken somewhat of a breather, mostly because there is just not as much going on in the summer. The good thing is that the town has emptied out except for the permanent residents and the pace has just slowed down to an even more relaxed state. It is nice to be able to find parking easily, to be able to get across town in a matter of minutes and not face hoards of visitors.

Kathy, Beth & Maureen


Not that we haven’t had a few visitors. Our friends, Beth Grant & Maureen Cleary were down for a brief visit from Chicago. We had a great meal at La Trattoria and hung out for a bit, going to see Dora’s band Forty Foot Sharpie at the Bull, it was far too short though. Thankfully, Beth will be returning in January for the Key West Literary Seminar, she received a scholarship and will be attending a workshop and the first session of the seminar.

40 Ft. Sharpie


Since our dog India gets to appear frequently in the blog, Kathy thought it was time that some of our six cats got some exposure, so I am posting pix of a couple of them as well as our chicken Henry and one of his rooster friends.

Baby Kitty

Bad Boy