The Keys Disease: A Never-Ending Saga of Sunshine

Over the past couple of months I have developed a very bad/good habit of obsessively checking Reserve America for availability, particularly for Long Key. Bad because I keep booking and booking and leaving barely any weekend time for recouping and/or the mundane errands that us regular people with full-time jobs have to do like cleaning and well mostly cleaning. I end up going days, sometimes a full week with all my gear still in my car. I'm pretty sure at this point my co-workers think I'm living out of it, but hey it makes me feel mobile and I like that! Good because well I keep getting to go back! Weeee! Two weeks after our last Long Key visit I found another cancellation and we headed off to our paradise once again.

 This time Finnley slept over my house so we could try and get an early start. As expected that didn't work out as planned. We left around 10:00am after shopping and buying another seafood feast. Unfortunately, we ran into bad traffic pretty much right off the bat. We were barely driving an hour before we were backed up for an hour. After the 3-way intersection of The Keys, Everglades National Park, and Biscayne Bay we started moving, but ended up stopped again on the blue walled road for another hour. After the past two trips down there I was and am still really sick of traffic. I almost exploded in anger. Every time that shit ruins it for me. I mean I know down in the Keys that is like the standard, but every time Finnley and I have gone to Key West before, 98% of the time it was smooth sailing.

Something I noticed and found weird about the Keys is every time we are stuck in traffic people decide to get out of their cars and start walking. Normally when you’re dead stopped for an hour plus the people can make it to a point and get picked up, but traffic was moving a little too fast this time and we saw a guy running after his car. I felt bad for him, but it was really funny and his friends did eventually pull over and wait for him. At one point as we sat in the dead of traffic, the man in the car behind us exited his vehicle carrying a styrofoam food container, walked to the side of the road into the grass and just dropped it there. I watched this person in shock. I couldn't and still can't believe someone can be so deliberately careless for the earth. I got his tag number, I don’t know what I'm going to do with it lol, but I have it just in case. My dad actually offered the only insight into a justifiable reason: what if he had a bathroom related accident?? Lol can’t argue with that. 

Due to all the delays we didn't make it to camp until 3:00pm. When we got there the ranger remembered us from last time and we talked to her for a little. We did a quick setup and tried to calm down from the 4 hour drive that should have only taken 2. This time we had some friendly neighbors from Maine. We talked to them and exchanged stories of our travels as we set up and made our pregame dinner of clams and steak. Afterwards we did some exploring and watched the sunset. Unfortunately our delay didn't leave much time for adventure. When night fell we had a second dinner of scallops and shrimp. Nothing tastes better than a grilled scallop dipped in garlic butter as your toes are in the sand and the wind blows sea threw your hair. Which reminds me, holy moly was it windy! Everything we did was a double struggle mixed with laughter at all our awkwardness.

We had a nice big fire that night even though it wasn't so cold out. I tried taking more long exposure shots because this time the moon wasn't around. I thought I would be able to capture the stars better, but quickly gave up after a few mediocre attempts. It was interesting how different the environment was this time. Last time it was calm, barely any wind, a flat sea, and a huge moon. This time it was extremely windy, no moon in sight, and small, but crashing waves. Matthew and I decided to set up our chairs right on the water edge. It was kind of eerie, but in a beautiful transcendent and subconscious way. It was actually a little too transcendent because I started getting anxiety.

 The previous night I had a very intense and trippy dream. In it my brother, Finnley, and I were on a canoe going through a canal. At one point everything went pitch black and all I could do was hear and feel. I felt Finnley moving the boat forward with his hand. I felt him leaned over full arm’s length deep in the water pushing us forward. I was terrified that him doing that was going to tip the boat and was pleading with him not to. We all kept switching places in the boat. We reached a lake and the sky turned into a beautiful purple/blue cosmic galaxy of stars. It almost looked like a planetarium because it all looked so close and spherical. I felt so happy and started spinning the boat around and around really fast with the top half of my body hanging off. At one point we looked to the middle of the lake and there was a pair of women's feet rising from the water. We watched her rise until her whole nude body was exposed and anticipated seeing her face. When her face finally showed it was demonic, she flipped right side up and came toward me. I jumped into another dream thinking that the demon was stupid and why would she even try because I’m too close to God for her to ever get to me lolol!

And it only gets worse! In the next dream I was at what looked like my grandma's house. Finnley and I were there as well as this young teenage girl who was obsessed with Finnley. In the dream I didn't care because she was so young and for that I didn't find her threatening, but at one point she said something to me that pissed me off and I told her to go drown herself in the ocean. So basically she ran out the door to go down to the ocean in the backyard. Finnley and I start talking about it and I'm telling him to go get her, but we end up talking for so long that she succeeded. She came back as an evil spirit and burst through the door going inside everything and trying to attack us. The last thing I remember is throwing something heavy at her and her going inside a baby’s body and biting the crap out of my arm lolol!

So as you could imagine I was kind of in a weird mood that day especially being around the water and all. The weirdest part about the first dream was I felt like it was really one of those dreams that mean something. I felt a very direct connection between it and my consciousness. After all water is the dream symbol for a person’s consciousness. I just couldn't figure out what the heck it meant. Usually when I have dreams like that I know even before looking it up what they mean, but this one had me confused. It wasn't until the moment that Finnley and I sat at the water’s edge that night that I started putting pieces together. It had to do with my anxiety about growing up and moving forward in my life because regardless of how amazing and how much I love the present changes within me and the future changes I'm working towards, I'll never stop being nostalgic for what was once my fairytale. I was blessed with a life full of an abundance of love and the opportunity to be a child with no cares or worries about anything. For that I will forever wish and dream that I could just go back even if I understand that I must simply have gratitude and move forward.

I get anxiety a lot when I'm away from home because I'm yearning for that, but as I sat at Long Keys water edge I realized I have to let it go and so I sent it off into the ocean with a few figurative tears and sat back by the fire. Again affirming that sentiment I stared into the flames that are endlessly given birth by those before its ashes and coals; it was one of many moments (past, present, and future) of a rebirth of thought or at least an effort towards it. We went to bed soon after. I woke up all night as usual and I think I kept our neighbors up as well. The new sleeping pads were noisy as can be because I didn't put a blanket under them. Every time I tossed and turned I heard them wake up. Later the next day we found out the noise kept waking the wife up because she thought it was rats lol! Earlier the night before they came back and told us they saw rats at our other neighbors campsite and that they told them about giant rats on one of the Keys islands. 

I had to look these rats up and when I did I fell in love. I pretty much need a giant rat now, but thats another story for the future. Anyhow because of this and because I wake up and pee all throughout the night, every night I keep a little camp toilet outside of my tent so I don't have to walk all the way to the bathroom in the crack ass of night.  However if you walk by or are around my tent you may see my crack ass in the night and one time that night I woke up in my usual sleepy delirium and stuck my little bare butt out the tent and heard a man make a shocked noise. Now I don't know for sure if I subjected that poor man to such a strange site, but it sure sounded like it! 

Yet, I refuse to believe it and assume for the sake of my embarrassment that he just made that noise because his wife woke him up once again over her fear of rats (they usually camp in a RV if you didn't infer that already). By the way there is just nothing like waking up in the middle of the night bare assed and peeing while staring at the stars and listening to the ocean waves :-P. I highly recommend! At around 5:00am I woke up and looked out of the tent and everything had changed. Everything was so calm and quiet. There was no wind and the water was flat. There was a huge star straight ahead of me and it shone a white light on the water. There was also a large cruise ship out in the distance. It was a very beautiful and peaceful moment for me. After that I fell asleep like a baby until sunrise.

When I woke up again for sunrise the day was back to its windy ways, but boy was the sunrise a sight to be seen. The sky was glittered with clouds. I always think clouds enhance a sunrise and sunset, at least for pictures. After taking many we went back to sleep for an hour or two, despite our better judgment. When we finally got up Finnley made breakfast and I tried to help because the wind was making everything difficult. Afterwards we were feeling indecisive about what we should do and ended up talking to our neighbors again for a while. We were going to kayak again, but I was concerned about the wind being too strong. Instead we decided to do the 1mi nature trail on the North end of the park. I didn't think it was that long of a walk from our campsite to the start of the trail so we skipped along. We had no idea how long the actual trail was and Finnley was kind of concerned, but I knew it couldn't be much more than a mile.

 The weather turned out to be a pretty nice day. It was sunny most of the time and the wind died down slightly towards the afternoon. The water wasn't as clear and beautiful as the last time and it was cold so we didn't really get to go in. The hike was nice, we jogged through it a little and took pictures. By the time we got back to the camp site it was time to start packing up. It took us about 30 minutes to do everything. Before we left we took a stroll out into the water and frolicked around for a little. We left a couple minutes late and we were on the road. Traffic wasn't so bad this time in the Keys, but we had a little morale shattering stop when we got back on the turnpike. When I got home I felt a kind of relief to be off the road, but the sand still stuck between my toes summoned me back and you better believe I've booked Long Key for two more trips since!

The Keys Disease: Part 2

The whole week after Bahia Honda Finnley and I looked forward to and longed for the following weekend at Long Key State Park. It was so nice have something to think about during our daily grinds. The prior week I had ordered a new backpacking tent so we were excited to get to use it at this park. It's a Big Agnes Seedhouse 3 person and only weighs about 4lbs! A refreshing change from our 8 person, 38lb tent. While I love my huge excessive dome, it's just not practical for the day trips, hot weather, and plane travel of Finnley and I's camping future. I also ordered some Therm-a-rest camper’s sleeping pads because our huge excessive 2 person cot wouldn't fit in the new tent.

When Friday came along (also Valentine’s Day) Finnley and I were both bursting with excitement and anticipation. I felt so happy, I almost felt like it couldn't be true. I got anxiety because I thought something bad was going to happen. However, I managed to talk myself out of it and told myself that I was going to allow myself to be happy and I ended up feeling better. Finnley and I had planned on getting an early start so that we could go down to Key West first and then back down to the park. I woke up at 7:30am and tried my best to get out of bed, but my Lola was being so cute and every time I tried to leave she would get upset so I had to lay with her for a little while. It also didn't help that I was so tired my eyes were crossing.

I had wanted to leave by 9:00am, but ended up leaving around 10:00am instead. This time the drive was ok, but I noticed I was in a weird mood. Finnley drank a Redbull and was talking to me at a million miles an hour and I couldn't take it. I was having anxiety and that was making it worse. I tried to acknowledge it to myself and let him know, but that pretty much caused a fight that lasted until sundown that night. It started out playful with me smacking him in the face with straws, but escalated from there. Finnley didn't feel like driving an extra 2 hours out of the way to Key West just so I could go shop at my favorite store and that's fine, but we had planned on it so I wasn't backing down. He also freaked out every time traffic was slowing down and every time I tried to calm him down because he was driving my car, he just got angrier. I think he was so terrified we were going to get stuck for hours again. The blue water wasn't so relaxing this time. It was rough and the cars air was thick with tension. Everything just looked sad and volatile.

We stopped at Long Key on the way and checked in and checked out the site. It was a lot closer to the beach than Bahia Honda and the water was different. At Bahia Honda the beach was more sand and had waves. This was still glassy water with a floor covered in shmushy algae. It was very beautiful. The water reached as far as my eyes could see. The site was fairly shady and had a picnic table and fire ring. The only thing that was slightly a disappointment was how loud the traffic was. A little after arrival we headed out to Key West. We got there at 3:00pm and went straight to my store. I got some jewelry and we rushed back to the car. I love Key West and wish we could have stayed longer, but the sun was going down soon and we still needed to shop for food.

We made it to Publix with 30 minutes to shop and got in and out right on time. Getting back to camp with 30 minutes of light to spare, we rushed to prepare camp. The new tent was a breeze to set up and we also washed dishes and got to see a bit of the sunset. Finnley started what was supposed to be our romantic Valentine’s Day dinner/ island feast of lobster, shrimp cabobs, and scallops. When the sun went down the tension between me and Finnley dissipated and we slowly got camper cozy as we watched the enormous sherbet moon rise from the glassy waters as it drew moon beams upon. With our bellies full of delicious seafood delight we relaxed and stared out into the ocean together. I decided I should attempt some long exposure shots before I got too tired. I got my camera out and figured out how to use the little remote. I took some pictures of the moon, the fire, and our campsite. They came out pretty cool, but not as cool as I wanted. I have much more to learn about that kind of photography.

Finnley decided to get schwasted so he was pretty entertaining. One time I went to set my camera up behind the tent and I came out and walked towards the fire. Finnley was walking by and jumped back and squared his fists as I walked by. I started cracking up. He said I scared the crap out of him. It was so funny because I wasn't even trying to this time. The rest of the night before bed we sat by the fire and reminisced on last year’s road trip. It's still bittersweet. Sometimes the memories get so far from me, I feel like it never happened, like everything is same as it was before we left, like I could be leaving any second for it. I only have the changes that happened within myself to look fondly on and remind me that it really happened. However, those changes are sometimes hard to see when you’re in the exact same circumstances you were in before as I am. Not to lessen the changes because they are vast and beautiful. I have an innate happiness that never existed before as well as a drive that is insatiable in all the many good and bad ways. I'm finally learning to harness and take advantage of my Type A personality traits instead of despise and discard them.

Because we didn't have the sleeping pads yet we made a bed on the ground with a couple sleeping bags and blankets. Surprisingly it wasn't bad. My butt bone hurt a little in the middle of the night, but nothing more out of my ordinary wake up pains. Finnley slept well too. We woke up a little after sunrise, but still got some pretty pictures and went back to sleep for an hour. It was so cool I didn't even have to get out of the tent to see the sunrise, all I had to do was sit up. It was a beyond beautiful day out.

Finnley started making breakfast and I tried to help, but I was distracted by the beauty all around me. After we ate we decided we would go kayaking. After renting the kayak Finnley took it back to the campsite via the water while I drove back. I wanted to bring my GoPro out there, but I forgot to charge it and I was not happy about that. I had to bring my Iphone instead. We paddled out pretty far because I planned on getting some topless kayaking in and Finnley had his own motives. I remember looking down and watching this reef formation drift behind me so fast I could have been in a car. At that point I got a little nervous, but we were able to paddle back to the coast with some man power. I knew my arms were going to be sore. When we got to the coast the water calmed down. It was nice and clear and tinted in a sea glass green. We paddled to some land that looked like it was a part of the nature trail on the North end of the park. We walked around on the shore for a little. The sand in the shallow water was so mushy it almost trapped Finnley in it because he was wearing sandals. I had to help him out.

We got back on the kayak and headed north. It was cool because there were a lot of trees and a little trail that took you through them. Finnley decided to stand up on the kayak to see what all the raving about SUP paddle boarding was about and he ended up liking it a lot. He said he could see everything, all the fishes and what not. He made me stand so I could see too. It was pretty cool, but felt a little unstable. When he stood back up he saw a baby nurse shark and later I saw another one, but it kind of looked like a hammerhead shark. It was really cute. Afterwards we headed south a little and then back to drop the kayak off. We walked back to camp and went to pay for the 2 hours and return the vests and paddles.

When we got back it was about time to start cleaning up, but I really didn't want to go. I really love Long Key, better than Bahia Honda, and if I could go every weekend I would! While Finnley starting packing up I tanned a little and took it all in. We were out of there around 12:30pm and went to go eat at the Islamorada restaurant by Bass Pro. There was actually some sort of Chili Festival going on and I wanted to go, but Finnley didn't because there was a 30 minute wait at the restaurant and he said the buzzer wouldn't work over there. Can you say Party Pooper? We went to this fish market instead and he bought some smoked fish. We went outside and ate some until the buzzer went off. We ordered a lot of food. It was definitely a seafood feast kind of weekend. We got the fish dip appetizer which was amazing! Finnley got the sampler for his meal and I got coconut shrimp. We were both really sad to be leaving. I wish I could stay there forever. It's like paradise. I have the camping bug now worse than ever and I plan on scratching that itch as much as possible. Here's to continuing the adventures!