The adventure begins.  Yesterday we departed Key Largo, our beautiful little island home for the past two and a half years, en route to Mexico, our new home for…well, who knows.  We made both little and lots of progress on day 1. Little in that we only covered about 300 of the 2500 or so miles on the first leg of the trip, lots in that we avoided the turnpike and interstate highway, driving up 27 through the center of the state. It was a beautiful day driving through miles and miles of cane fields and around Lake Okeechobee. Whomever programmed the music on Radio Margaritaville seemed to have us in mind as most of the songs seemed to be directed at us and our new life. We were smiling just because; less stressed with each passing mile.

Stress?  What stress people ask us. You guys live in paradise! Yeah, it’s true, we had it pretty good. We lived on a sailing resort that is one of the last vestiges of the “old Keys”. (It’s the Key Lime Sailing Club, if you haven’t been, go!) We ran a sailing school and had the crystal clear waters of the Keys literally right in our backyard. The problem with living in paradise though, is everyone wants to be there, even if only for a short time. Our driveway was right on U.S 1, the Overseas Highway. Lately it could take 4 – 5 minutes just to get an opening in traffic to get out on the road. Sometimes there would be two million people on an island chain that holds two hundred thousand comfortably. And they keep building. More hotels, more McMansions, more people. I (g) lived in Key West back in the 70’s, when just getting there was a death defying feat on the old bridges that are now four-laned. Buffet wrote a song back then called “Migration” and there was a line in it that went “mobile homes are smotherin’ my Keys, well I hate those bastards so much”. That was the mid 1970’s. Today, they have become much more rare. The land has all been bought up for hotels and such. If Jimmy could have seen what development would do to the Islands, I’d bet that those re-purposed beer cans would not have looked quite so bad. If you want to see the old Keys, you’d better go soon, because before long it’s just gonna be Miami.

So today, we will cover some more ground. It will most likely be our last full day in Florida. We’re in no rush, we move into our place in San Carlos on the first of August. So we have a full week to get there. Gives us time to learn the rules of Pickle Ball. We’ll be stopping to visit some folks along the way. The posts here will become more regular once we get into Mexico. I know that’s what most of you are reading this blog for but it seemed like this post needed to be here as kind of a prologue. Please enjoy today like it’s your last on Earth!

PS – normally, Irene proof reads everything I write. But she’s still asleep, so please forgive any typos or punctuation mistakes. 🙂

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