Merry Christmas

The past month here in Key West has gone by very quickly. We've grilled out here at our motorhome many nights.

We have also enjoyed dinner out at many of our favorite places, such as Sunset Lounge at the Navy base or Alonzo's Oyster Bar down by the Key West Bight marina.

 

We enjoyed a new place we tried for the first time, called The Blue Macaw.

Last Friday night we went to the 27th annual Key West “Bight” before Christmas lighted boat parade. It’s always fun to see all the decorated boats.

 

Tonight we met Ken, the son of our friends in Germany, whom we hadn't seen in 20 years. It was good to Ken and fun to catch up.

Sadly, we leave Key West this coming Saturday, December 23^rd concluding our two-month stay. We will move up to LaBelle, Florida where we’ll spend a month. LaBelle is inland, just east of Ft. Meyers.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all our family and friends.

Steve & Julie Cornelius

Happy Thanksgiving

We’ve enjoyed hanging out in Key West the past couple of weeks. Last Thursday we went out to the Sunset Lounge on the Navy base. A short distance across the gulf we could see the Army Rangers training with their helicopters.

We also had another fantastic sunset and I got a great photo as a small Hobie Cat catamaran passed in front of the sun going down.

Later we went downtown to Duval Street and Sloppy Joe’s to listen to live music. Afterwards, we walked down the street to one of our favorite places, Smokin’ Tuna, to listen to a band from Ohio.

Thanksgiving Eve we decided to check out the fish market across the street from our campground and bought some “Key West Pink” shrimp for dinner. Raw, they look like they’re already cooked, but they are just naturally pink in color. We steamed them outside on our tailgate induction cook top. It reminded me of some Jimmy Buffet lyrics in the song “Margaritaville”…“Smell those shrimp-They’re beginning to boil.”

A local Key West chicken stopped by for a visit yesterday.

We'll enjoy a traditional Thanksgiving today in our motorhome, including watching the 1987 classic movie “Trains, Planes, and Automobiles” with Steve Martin and John Candy.

Happy Thanksgiving to all our family and friends 

Steve & Julie Cornelius

Watchin’ the sun bake

We’ve settled into Boyd’s Campground here in Key West for our seven week stay. We’ve seen a couple of boats blown up on shore and a few buildings or houses with roof damage, but for the most part, Key West survived Hurricane Irma. The historic old houses in the old town area near Duval Street sustained no damage.

Our first Sunday here we drove out to Geiger Key for their Sunday BBQ. We’ve been many times, but we really enjoy the open air tiki bar and restaurant on the water, on the Atlantic side of the Keys. It's about 10-miles north of Key West so there are few tourists and mostly locals that go there.   

One evening we enjoyed the sunset at Mallory Square and dinner at a nearby Cuban restaurant.

Last Friday afternoon we went into old town to watch the 37^th Annual Key West Super Boat International Championship races. There were boats from all over the USA plus other countries. We watched the races from Mallory Square.  

Nice fishing boat

Later that evening we watched a parade of the super boats down Duval Street.

The weather has been mostly sunny and in the low-80s everyday with overnight lows in the mid-70s. We did have a brief rain shower one day last week.

Steve & Julie Cornelius

Tampa to Key West

We left the Tampa area on Wed, November 1^st and headed down I-75 and then U.S. Highway 1 to Key Largo. It was a nice drive and we were excited to see the Keys again. We stayed at the year old Keys Palms RV Resort on the north end of Key Largo. The weather was great and the sunset was beautiful.

It was heartbreaking to see all the damage from Hurricane Irma that hit on September 10^th on our drive to Key West. Most of the damage was from Islamorada to Sugarloaf Key, a 70-mile swath of the middle keys. FEMA estimated 25% of the homes in the Keys were destroyed and about 65% suffered damage. We also noticed many of the trees and greenery in the middle keys were brown.

Key Largo on the northern end of the keys and Key West on the southern end sustained very little damage, except for a few uprooted trees, a few damaged roofs, and some boats washed ashore.  

We are in Key West for November and December. We usually stay at the Navy base campground but it hasn’t re-opened to us military retirees because of minor hurricane damage. They hope to reopen by mid-December. So we’re staying at Boyd’s Campground on Stock Island, adjacent to Key West.

Steve & Julie Cornelius