Key West 2

On the road:  Key West's economy has been based primarily on tourism since the Great Depression.  The hoards of people who roam the town's streets testify to Key West's success in catering to visitors.  But it's still a town a lot of people call home, where they are born, grow up, attend school, and die (buried above ground, by the way).  Key West is also home to a lot of chickens!

A feral hen shows her chicks how to make a living.

It seems that Cubans who came to Key West brought chickens with them.  Those chickens escaped to become "free range" animals.  Their main virtue is their taste for scorpions, which would otherwise be a plague upon the city.  (I remember my mother, reflecting on living in Florida as a newlywed, telling me that each morning she would knock her shoes on the floor to dislodge any scorpions that might have taken up residence overnight.) 

Meeting the needs of tourists is Key West's passion.  For those convinced that we live shoulder-to-shoulder with departed spirits (and perhaps even the undead), there are scary tours of scary places.  Equally scary are the price tags hung on on some works of art, as in this metal art shop near the Custom House.

A "frightseeing" tour for the Boo! crowd. 

This large metal sculpture was priced beyond my means.

What happens in Key West doesn't necessarily stay in Key West.  It may head north on US 1, which runs up the East Coast to Ft. Kent, Maine, on the Canadian border.  This was the route my mother and grandmother traveled when they motored from their home in Doylestown, PA, to Cocoa, FL, for winter vacations.  Paved roads were so rare in the 1930s that they composed a ditty to sing whenever they encountered a stretch of concrete: "Concrete, we salute thee...."

A bad shot from the jolty tourist train of Mile 0 in Key West...

...and the end of the road in Maine.

Florida's beaches are a key tourist attraction, trumpeted on TV in the U.S. and around the world.  But they are also home to many forms of wildlife.  At Marathon's Sombrero Beach I noticed that the concrete walk is embossed with little turtles, specifically, baby Kemp's Ridley Sea Turtles (Lepidochelys kempii).  Although they breed primarily on the Gulf Shore of Mexico and Texas, Kemp's Ridley ranges from Yucatan to Maine, and have been seen at Marathon, too.

Sombrero Beach at Marathon, FL.

Little turtles are embossed into the concrete walkway.

Kemp's Ridley is an endangered species.  Amateur video shot in 1947 at a breeding beach in Mexico showed nearly 42,000 turtles laying eggs in a single day.  By the late 1960s this beach hosted only 5,000 breeders.  In 1991, just 200 turtles showed up.  Kemp's Ridley has fallen prey to the nets used by shrimp trawlers, loss of habitat due to development, and oil well blowouts in the Gulf of Mexico.  Thankfully, after years of international effort, the sea turtle's population is starting to recover. •••