It may sound idyllic, but when you're living right there with all the tiny sea oriented critters, --- holy, jumping sand fleas!... Yes, those '"no-see-'ems" bite fiercely! This is why most vacationers stay in hotels. But, the Florida keys are beautiful and not tropical, but semi-tropical. It's a wonderful 55 to 75 degrees in December to February, yet in August the temps are over 100 with high humidity... WHOA!... Look out! The only way I could stand it was to wear a bathing suit all the time and spray myself constantly with a little bottle of cool water! And, the sun is furious; you WILL wear a hat. I wore quirky straw one that I became quite attached to.
Big blue gray crabs scuttle sideways across the beach in the morning; palmetto bugs wander around constantly (sort of a huge beetle, and strictly vegetarian) and jellyfish come up on the beach to die. (I don't know why....???) The long, ghostly white, spaghetti-like stingers of jellyfish are just as potent when they're dead as when they're alive, so matter how curious you are: MUSTN'T TOUCH IT! And, if you are in the shallows and thinking of fun walking on the coral reefs, you DO IT wearing sneakers with thick rubber soles, - no flip-flops! I knew why the first time I did it. Moray eels hide in the little spaces and holes in the coral formations, with their mouths of very pointy teeth half open and their beady white eyes, watching, watching, watching, and it seems like they're just waiting to bite you on the ankle!
Naturally, land animals live on or very near the beach too. Stray cats and dogs (often well fed), raccoons, armadillos and many, many salamanders and lizards are there. You can hear them scurrying away as you walk down the paths of sand bordered by tall beach grass, which is very pretty and is called "sea oats". I learned fast enough to wear my flip-flops almost everywhere because once you walk away from the lapping surf there are these little blackish-green plant things in the ground called "sand spurs" and they are very sharp, ending up sticking in the soles of your bare feet!
The ground is white everywhere, or very, very pale gray, even away from the beach. All the rocks are of coral. A common rock in the Northeast U.S.A. might be brown, brownish gray or gray because it's usually limestone. But, in the Keys all the rocks are white and if you study them you'll see the tiny holes of typical coral. (Coral that fishing people sometimes bring up on their hooks is a brilliant red, but when it dries it's white... Too bad.)
Shells are very plentiful. Most of them are of the small white clam variety, or tiny shimmering gray shells called "jingle shells", or of the little cone type, but sometimes you'll find a helmet shell or a big whelk, white-bleached and dry as a bone. I found a small abalone shell lined with the silvery turquoise and light blue mother of pearl. I hear that abalone steaks are delicious, but you have to pound them until you think you'll die from exhaustion or they are as tough as shoe leather. Of course, there are pinkish conchs too; couch chowder is delicious! (I LOVED shelling! I was there right after a hurricane and the shell collecting was fabulous! I felt a little bad about taking so many of them away, but a beach ranger said not to because the shells would only be smashed by grading tractors, anyway. The shells I gathered were perfect for making necklaces; each one had a little hole in it, made by a borer.)
There isn't much land in the Florida Keys. Key dwellers and Floridians know that a lot of land down there was "created". That is, the sand was dredged up from the ocean bottom and dumped on shore. Actually, as you drive down the ONE MAIN road of Sugarloaf Key you can see the ocean on each side. (I don't know what permanent residents do during hurricanes. The water must REALLY come up. There are beautiful homes in the Keys, many of them painted tropical pastels, - pink, light turquoise, sunny yellow, creamsicle orange.)
Live oak trees, THE Florida tree, grow rampantly and so do hibiscus bushes with their shocking pink trumpet-like blooms. Little shore birds, the sandpipers, several types of them, roam the wavelets. It's comical to see them rush down to the water when the waves retreat, then scoot back as the waves come back again. They do it over, and over, and over, and over, --- all day long. Seagulls are always flying and cawing. They chase the fishing boats, hoping that passengers will throw them used bait, which they cleverly catch in midair...
Some people do surf fishing, standing on the beach, casting their lines into the waves. I went deep sea fishing ONLY ONCE! (I get violently seasick. So much so that I'm actually still sick for hours AFTER I get back on land.) While deep sea fishing I was rewarded with a great sight! A whale surfaced right beside the boat, not six feet from me, as I was standing at the gunnels. He was 3 times as long as the boat, which was not that small. His one eye, toward me, was the size of a basketball! He wasn't really very interested in us. He slipped back in the ocean, with hardly a splash. SO COOL! I'll NEVER forget it. That whale seemed so gentle.
Key West is a very, very neat place, very quaint in it's own way. Of course, there are wonderful bars there and the living is - take it easy. Key West was a favorite place of author Ernest Hemingway. I got to go through his house there, to see his writing room with his typewriter and to walk around his fancy swimming pool. He loved cats and had many of them. The descendants of his pet cats still live at his house. A lot of them are polydactle cats, or cats born with extra toes. All the Hemingway cats at Key West are very, very pampered and have their own maids. Oh, ME-OW, ME-OW, ME-OW, ME-OW!!!... =^_^= , =^_^= , =^_^= , =^_^= , =^_^= , =^_^= , =^_^= , =^_^= ... :D
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