Day 6: Islamorada to Knights Key: Miffed by Muffins

February 8, 2015

Today, as promised - though prematurely - by the tourist brochure, we got the Island feeling. That is, the road passed from narrow key to narrow key, and we generally could see beautiful Caribbean Blue sea framed by trees if we looked left or right. It's good that this lovely sea and views popped up just now, because the area does not score too well for other specialty attractions. Notably, of course, we are talking about bakeries or restaurants.

Shortly after leaving the Sunset Inn we came upon the Midway Cafe. Their sign asserted that it would be "Keyriffic!". Possibly a clue for what was to come could have been found in that same sign, that explained that the Midway was so named for being 80 miles to Miami and 80 miles to Key West. Fair enough, but the sign pointed the wrong way to these landmarks. Also outside was a poster advertising the famous Key Lime pies, made by Manny and Isa, since 1965.

Inside there was indeed key lime pie, though no sign of Manny or Isa. That kind of figures, since they would have to be an estimated 100 years old now. The pie itself seemed like well known lemon meringue, though presumably with lime versus lemon. We have to admit that at $4.25 we wimped out, and so can not report on whether the filling had a really interesting zippy key lime tang, or whether as we might guess, it was a sickly sweet bottled lime juice production. We feel really guilty about that, and no doubt will scrape together the needed research funding before we leave the Keys.

In a bizarre twist, though, we sprung for three muffins, at something like $3.25 each. Outside, Dodie handed me half of one, intended to supplement what I would consider a meagre breakfast of porridge with raisins and berries with yogurt. "Is this the Blueberry muffin?" I sniffed, "It has no blueberries!". "No", replied Dodie, "It's something else, I don't know what, maybe it's supposed to be the key lime one". No matter what it was supposed to be, it was clearly a white cake mix concoction, laced with tons of sugar as the main taste component. Grrr. I think there might, might , be one real bakery, in Key West. We sort of remember that from last time. We'll see. Gives us something to pedal for!

(Editor's note: People who know the Keys are probably fuming right now, thinking it unfair to denounce the whole region based on one bad muffin. Plus, they are probably thinking of all the great seafood places they know about. Fair enough. On the other hand, people who know the Grampies understand that a bad muffin is a pretty serious matter!)

A scholarly reading of this sign reveals that the pies are not necesarily made here, and by whom (in 2015)) is not specified.

But here is the actual pie. Looks pretty good, really.

This photo was shot with the camera facing East, making the direction signs a cruel hoax.

One of the features as we continued to hop from key to key was that the automobile bridges were twinned with pedestrian/bike bridges. One of the main purposes for these is to permit fishing from the bridge. Every so often there are widened portions that give people more room to stash their often extensive fishing gear. But people were usually arrayed all along, casting hopefully over the side with long rods. Usually they had come with coolers, but it wasn't clear to us if these were holding bait, cans of pop, or lots of fish. We never did see an actual caught fish, leading us to suspect that these people were spiritually related to the fishers on the French canals, who also put in long hours and seemed to have little or nothing to show.

(Oh, oh - I hope there are no Keys experts reading this (and just recovering from the muffin attack) who know that you can feed the family for a week from just an hour or two spent on the bridges.)

With so much exposure to sea today, we could continue to appreciate the various shades of blue. It really is much different from Hawaii here, but of course just as beautiful.

This shot was actually taken because of the black birds. There was a constant stream of them hustling off into the distance. They continued to flow by for the at least ten minutes that we watched them. The shot is good mainly because it illustrates one of the shades of blue that the sea sports here.

Just into Marathon, we arrived at the Dolphin Research Center. As with the key lime pie, we cheaped out here and balked at the $25 per person general admission. This amount of money would allow you to visit the dolphins that live here. For escalating additional amounts of money, you can feed or swim with them. The Dolphin Research Center seems like a pretty worthwhile thing, not just a tourist attraction. Check out their website and see what you think.

Knight's Key campground is at the south end of Marathon, just before the famous Seven Mile Bridge. We will try to be careful with that one, since there is an old and a new bridge, and the old one leads to nowhere. Jeff Skinner seems to have found that out yesterday, calling it the Eleven Mile bridge.

The campground is stuffed with those city bus sized RVs, the ones that routinely tow a jeep. On the other hand, some nice space is reserved for tenters, so it's ok. Of course, we are the only self-propelled campers in the place.

There is a short walk to the showers, and this is by the boat slips. There is a place for cleaning fish there, which attracts the pelicans. Twenty or thirty of them greeted me when I went over to say hi. The way they stand with their long bills down, they look like old men with heads sunk into beards. For us they are an exotic sight, though they are almost as common as seagulls elsewhere. I am sure our grandkids, all northerners, would be beside themselves with the chance to walk up close to these guys.

Speaking of northerners, we put the fly on the tent, though in this climate we could just as easily simply lie down under a tree. We will sleep easy in the tent and fly, though, and tomorrow be ready for another day of glorious cycling.

p.s. Dodie knee update: It looks terrible, but she is only whimpering a little. Flat with a little tail wind is helping. I think we are ok until trying to get back out of here, with possible headwind. That will only be in two days, so no sense worrying now.

Muffin Update

We hacked into the Blueberry muffin, and can report that yes, there was a blueberry in there.

We opened the Blueberry muffin and found the blueberry!

Today's ride: 57 km (35 miles)
Total: 229 km (142 miles)

Rate this entry's writing	Heart	0
Comment on this entry	Comment	0