What a beautiful beach!

I have lived in Florida since I was 13 years old. That’s been.. let’s see.. 30 years. (Yes I’m an old fart). I have NEVER enjoyed the beaches of Central Florida (New Smyrna, Daytona, Cocoa, etc). I’m not sure why. First I think I’m just not a fan of sunburn, or hoards of ugly, freaky people and their satan-spawn children. But mostly I think I was never a fan of the beach because I’d never been to a real Caribbean beach before. It honestly wasn’t until I visited St. Thomas and Water Island in the U.S.V.I. that I had an epiphany. I LIKED the beach, well… the beaches there. No waves, crystal clear water, very few people, cool fish, cheap rum. It was like a Duran Duran music video, and I was completely blown away. That epiphany started the landslide that eventually led to us moving to Key West.

My favorite Florida beach has been Fort Zach beach since moving to KW. It’s 3 blocks from my apartment, there aren’t a lot of people, waves aren’t bad, the water is beautiful, but let me tell you.. the water at fort Zach State Park has NOTHING on Bahia Honda State Park. Bahia Honda is the closest to a true Caribbean beach I’ve seen in Florida.

It doesn’t have the cool tree canopy that Fort Zach has, or the picnic tables, or the BBQ grills.. well, it does, but they are collected around a couple of pavilions near the parking lot, but the water man.. the WATER.

It’s about 2 feet deep for hundreds of feet off the shore, the ocean floor is pure soft white sand, and the water is absolute crystal. I had some rum in a big sippie cup, and I spent probably 3 hours out as far as I could walk, just sitting in the water.. daydreaming about leaving it all behind again and making the skip to St John now instead of 5 years down the line. It was pure heaven.

We camped for the weekend at the campground there on one of the ocean loops. It was a very nice campsite, and it falls solidly into the top 10 on Mike’s favorite campgrounds list. It’s a bit more expensive than most state campgrounds, and you have to reserve spaces 6 months out to get a good one, but I’ll definitely go back. There are lots of cool places to swim near the campsite as well, you can go to the causeway side and swim there, or chose from about 4 different ocean beach areas to swim. The old train bridge is a really cool thing to see as well, you can walk to the top of it and get a great view of the better part of the island.

Next on my list of camp grounds to check out is the one on St. John at Cinnamon Bay.. it’s also right on the beach… ahhhhhh…. now where did I put that rum…

Roads? Where we’re going we don’t need roads….

You can’t drive to the Dry Tortugas National Park. You need a boat. Or a seaplane. Or really good swimming skills. It sits about 70 miles due West of Key West out in the middle of the ocean and holds the distinction of being the United States’ most remote national park.

I’d never even heard of this place until my second trip to Key West in August 2006, when we were looking for things to do one day. Back then it cost us about a hundred bucks per person for the ferry ride, which included bagles, danishes, and coffee on the boat in the morning, lunch out at the park, and a guided tour. At the time of this writing (2009) the prices have risen a bit to 145 dollars. Yikes. Thanks Dubbya. It’s worth it though, as this is one of those rare places on earth you absolutely cannot miss seeing before you go tits up, and you will not regret the adventure.

This is by far the coolest park I’ve been to in the United States. I’m a big huge fan of Civil War forts, and the Dry Tortugas National Park has the granddaddy of them all!

“The Slumbering Giant”

Giant is right. This fort is so big it boggles the mind. You really can’t get an idea of how huge it really is until you walk into the parade grounds and look around you – the inside area of the fort holds 13 acres of land.. It’s quite literally breathtaking.

The fort itself sits on Garden Key, but if you look at the aerial photos you realize that it’s more like the fort buts up to Garden Key, as 4 sides of it are exposed directly to the ocean. The fort is ringed by a seawall to help keep waves from deteriorating the exterior walls. The mote this creates is full of crazy, colorful little fish and is only a few feet deep.

In 1826 the federal government constructed a lighthouse on Garden Key with a caretaker’s house next to it. Three years after that, the government decided the island was a perfect place for a fort to help control piracy in the shipping lanes, and for the next 17 years they designed and planned, eventually beginning construction in 1846. The new fort surrounded the lighthouse and the house, and when the fort walls were finished, the old brick lighthouse was demolished replaced by a metal one atop the fort wall..

Like most things in Key West, the fort was never actually finished. This was due primarily to the advent of the rifled cannon, which made the fort obsolete.

In 1865 the fort was sent a very notable prisoner; Dr. Samual Mudd, who was being held for conspiracy in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Mudd acted as the forts’ doctor throughout the yellow fever epidemic at the fort in 1867, and because of his efforts, was eventually pardoned and released.

The fort and it’s surrounding waters were declared a national monument in 1935 by Franklin Roosevelt, and were designated as a national park in 1992.

Fort Jefferson is the largest masonry structure in the western hemisphere, and contains more than 16 million bricks!

I don’t want to try to repeat a lot of historical crap here, but if you’re interested you can get a better rundown of the vast history of Fort Jefferson at Wikipedia.

A La Plage!

There are three small beaches on Garden Key, one faces the shipping channel, so it’s pretty unhospitible, but the other two face the shallow waters surrounding the fort, and the snorkeling here is world-class. The waters around Fort Jefferson are filled with all manner of colorful sea life – there are even some american crocodiles out there – seriously!

The boat captain on our trip out told the passengers that when they were snorkeling, to stay away from the coral, the moray eels… and the sharks! Everyone looked at one another as if they were all thinking, eff that!  I’m not snorkeling now! He continued to tell us that if we left them alone they’d leave us alone, and that the ecosystem out in the Tortugas was so rich, that the larger predatory fish were never hungry, and generally had no reason to come after our tootsies. Great. It was so hot, everyone went in the water anyway - which by the way, is so clear you can easily see 30 to 40 feet.. absolutely beautiful!

Time flies when you’re having fun

I spent the better part of two hours wandering around in the fort taking photos while Christina and her Brother went swimming. I got a ton of really cool shots, but I tell you – I paid for it. It was August, and it was HOT out there. I did manage to jump in the water and cool off before it was time to leave though, what a relief!

I definitely want to go back and spend the day snorkeling around the seawall. Maybe even spend the night at the primitive campground there, now THAT would be an adventure. I can only imagine how cool it would be to camp on the beach on a tiny island in the middle of the Ocean – that will be a future post on Conch Tales for sure…

I highly recommend that if you find yourself in Key West, you take a day and visit this amazing place, you’ll be glad you did!

Check out more photos of Fort Jefferson.

Another old Fort!

The East Martello museum is located in an old unfinished Civil War Fort on the south side of the Island right next to the airport facing the ocean. It’s not quite as impressive as Fort Zach and definately not as cool as Fort Jefferson, but it’s still an old brick fort, and that makes it worth a visit in my book! Also it’s the home of Robert the Doll, and I definitely wanted to meet him, so we hopped in the car and took a drive over. It’s biking distance (well the whole island is if you don’t mind a long-ish ride) but it was pretty hot, and we just weren’t feelin’ it that day, so we mounted the trusty 4-runner steed and hit the trail!

The East Martello is designed after a style of italian forts called oddly enough, Martello Towers.  Construction began in the early 1860′s and was never finished because the advent of exploding cannon shells made the fort Obsolete. It never saw any hostile action, and is the best-preserved example of Martello-style fort construction in the US, and also the very last fort in the world to ever have been built in that style.

The Bulwark (Outer walls) and the citadel (Inner tower) walls are 8 feet thick and made of solid granite slabs encased in red brick. The inside is similar to other forts of the time with intricate barrel-vault arched ceilings.

The fort is open-air and even in the dead of summer, the breeze blowing through the windows and the coolness of the surrounding marble and brick keep it quite pleasant inside. I don’t find Key west to be as hot as most people think it is, you just need to get out of the sun and you’re fine. And if you can go inside a structure made of solid stone you’re even better off! Add a Corona to that equation and I’d have been pretty much in heaven, but alas they didn’t serve any alcohol. I guess not everything in Key West is focused on drinking!

This is perhaps the most eclectic museum I’ve been to…

The East Martello seems to be in a constant state of… I don’t know.. disarray!  It’s a lot more like a huge garage full of antiques than an actual museum. Don’t get me wrong, it was a lot of fun, and the exhibits are worth going to see, and I enjoyed it quite a bit, just don’t be surprised if you feel like you’re wandering through someone’s basement.

Everything is dusty, and there are areas where it’s looks as though someone got halfway toward finishing a new exhibit or moving an old one when the happy hour bell rang… 3 months ago.

All in all the Martello has the overall appearance of a place that doesn’t get a lot of upkeep. This seems to be a common thread here in Key West! They say things move more slowly in the islands, and they ain’t lyin’. No one is in much of a hurry for anything. I’m down with all that though, so I really enjoyed the Martello; I love old stuff, and I love to see it in a situation where it’s not all roped off and behind glass in an air-conditioned sarcophagus. You can definitely lose yourself in the sheer reality of it all.

The outer perimeter (bulwark) section houses exhibits and such, including Robert. When you wander in from the entrance (where you’ll pay 6 bucks to come in) you hit the ‘gift-shop’ which is just a room with some tables and a strange mix of key west souvenir stuff. You can even get your own Robert the Doll doll! Christina was very adamant that I NOT get one. Damn. We wandered through the gift-shop, and eventually made our way out into the exhibits, and around the perimeter of the bullwark through all sorts of odd, eclectic jumbles of antiques and displays.

When you make it past the inside exhibits, you enter the courtyard at the center of the fort. There’s an 80 year old child-scale play house out here. I’m sure there’s some historical significance to it, but there aren’t any plaques explaining it, and I didn’t bother to look it up online. It’s full of dolls though, and you can duck into it if you’re brave enough to deal with the combined heat and creepiness of being stared at by about 40 really old dolls.

Take the tower!

It was time to hit up the citadel. We walked around the circumference of the courtyard which is mostly just overgrown grass and some gardens that appeared to have been kept up at one time, but now were falling to rampant growth.

I started wondering if they needed some volunteers or grant money or something.. not that I have any.

We came to the entrance to the citadel which was a really cool brick arch type thing.. only one way in! The sign said children only allowed under adult supervision, and I wondered if that included immature adults like myself, but I figured I had Christina with me, so I was covered.

This place really was cool, but if you’re claustrophobic, you might not like the bottom floor very much, it’s a pretty tight maze of corridors and rooms. Personally, I’m usually pretty claustrophobic, but didn’t find it unbearable. From here, you can mount the rickety old cast-iron spiral staircase in the center of the tower to reach the upper floors.

The Art of the Citadel

The citadel houses a display of ‘junkyard art’ sculptures by the now deceased keys artist Stanley Papio.

Papio (1914-1982) lived in Key Largo and made sculptures by welding junkyard debris into art. He was quite unpopular at the time with his neighbors because he would line the road near his home with his ‘art’. He was in constant battle with the local zoning department over his yard where he kept his ‘art museum.’ Papio never became famous in his lifetime, and only now is he considered one of the more important folk artists of his time.

We wandered around for a bit looking at all the cool sculptures and decided to take off to the roof. We hit the spiral stairs again and made our way to the top floor.

I make fun of the ‘rickety’ spiral stairs but in fact they feel quite solid for being over 130 years old. They sure LOOK scary though.

Fetchez la vache!

The view from the top of the citadel is pretty nice. You can see back toward the airport on one side, and out to the ocean on the other, and down into the courtyard at the silly english kiniggits down there.

Back downstairs and up front by the gift shop there’s another art exhibit in a series of air-conditioned rooms – a very welcome break from the heat of the tower top! There are paintings by local artists, and a few of Mario Sanchez’s woodcutting pieces. Cool stuff.

All in all a cool place to visit. You can see the whole deal in about a hour or so, just in time to find a place to put your feet up and pop the top on a frosty cool Corona. Don’t forget the lime! More photos here: East Martello Gallery.

I’ve always been a big fan of old war forts.

I’ve visited Fort Pulaski in Savannah, the Castillo de San Marcos in St. Augustine, Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas, and now this one here in Key West. Out of the four I’ve visited, Fort Zach is probably the least interesting, (Ft Jefferson wins hands down!), but it’s the closest to me (biking distance), so it earns points in my book! Just because it’s not the most interesting though doesn’t mean it’s not still a blast to visit.

I will give fort Zach props in one other area as well, it’s the least busy of all the other forts.. with Castillo de San Marcos probably being the most visited I’ve seen. You can wander around fort Zach with relative freedom, and with little disturbance from groups of school children and gaggles of sweaty tourists all bustling for the best photos.

Fort Zach is a 3-sided fort with barracks buildings blocking off the back side of the parade grounds at the center. Two of the sides are pretty much locked up and unavailable for sightseeing due in part i’m sure to the state of disrepair the fort has fallen into. it’s just not safe to go in those wings.  Strangely enough, the one wing of the fort you can wander in freely appears to be the oldest, and constructed of all original brick work. I guess they knew what they were doing back in 1845! The other two wings were rebuilt at some point with reinforced concrete, and we all know what salt water does to iron rebar in concrete.. I don’t know how they will keep it form disintegrating completely at some point in the future.

A brief history

Construction began in 1845, and was completed in 1860. The fort was named after president Zachary Taylor in 1850 after his sudden death in office.

Originally the fort was 3 stories tall, but in 1889 the top two levels were demolished to make way for more modern weapons. Too bad! It would have been much more impressive if it were still intact. I can’t find a photo from way back then, but I was able to dig up a painting. (to the left).

In the early days of the Civil war in 1861 the fort was seized by Union forces under the command of Captain John Milton Brannan, preventing it from falling into Confederate hands. During this point the fort was primarily used to threaten blockade runners. The fort saw heavy use again in the late 1890′s during the Spanish-American war.

In 1948 the Army, having no more need of it,  turned the fort over to the U.S. Navy. In 1968 a team of volunteers began excavating the abandoned areas of the fort, finding the largest collection of Civil War Cannons in the nation. When the top two stories were demolished and two of the wings filled in, they had used the old cannons as filler! Fort Taylor was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971, and designated a National Historic Landmark in 1973.

Originally the fort sat out in the ocean and was accessed by a 1000′ causeway, but due to the filling in of the areas around it to build the State Park, the fort is now landlocked. The mote was added in 1989 to give visitors a better sense of what it looked like originally.

When can I move in?

I wandered around in here for about an hour and a half. It’s not nearly as large as some of the other forts I’ve visited, and like I said, there’s not much to see in the two closed off wings, but the remaining red-brick construction barrel-vault wing is a very cool thing indeed. You can really get a sense of creeping claustrophobia in some of those dark small rooms. The lack of other visitors just makes it all the more creepy… I absolutely loved it.

You can really get a sense of what it must have been like huddled up inside here while cannons boomed and gunfire raged. The latrine is an interesting place to visit in the far back of the right wing. It was so dark I couldn’t get a good photo, but back in the day I guess the latrines were flushed by the ocean waves.. interesting!

They’re currently rebuilding the roof and renovating the old barracks on the back side of the parade grounds, so I wasn’t able to get in there to take photos, but I was heartened to see some renovation efforts. Maybe they won’t let this old treasure fall apart after all. I’ll definitely have to go back when it’s done and get some pix.

Up top

The view from the top is very nice, you can look out to the shipping channel that runs into Key West bight. The cruise ships go right by here too, and if you’re lucky one will rumble past when you’re up top.. I’m still amazed at how huge those things are!.. it’s quite a sight.

You can see where all the cannons were attached and check out some of the half-excavated old civil War cannons buried in the concrete foundations of the newer part of the fort. You also have a pretty cool view of backside of Fort Zach Beach and the Submarine port at the Truman Annex.

For the week preceeding Halloween during Fantasy Fest, the fort becomes a haunted house with a Civil War and Haunted Key West theme. Definitely something worth checking out. Check out the Haunting of Fort Zachary Taylor website.

Truly a hidden treasure

It’s a bit hard to find if you haven’t been there before. It’s buried inside the Truman Annex, which in itself kept us away for a while. There’s a guard booth at the public entrance to the Annex, and it’s not very clear that it’s fully open to the public. In reality you just drive on through right past the guard. Apparently there are some local political debates raging about that guard house and the possibility that the Navy may add a gate. I guess the City approved the Navy’s plan to add a gate with the proviso that it never be closed.. haha. True Key West compromise.

Anyways, once you pass the guard booth, you are in the Truman Annex proper, and there is a very cool neighborhood there which used to be navy housing, but was sold to the City a while back. It’s beautiful.. quaint little cottages and conch houses.. it reminds me of Seaside in the panhandle or even Celebration in Orlando. Definitely worth a detour on your bikes to ride around a bit in here.

Once you ride past the neighborhood, you come across the old Navy Port where they used to house Navy submarines. The docks were decommissioned in 1974 because the newer nuclear subs were too large to fit there, and now it’s a favorite place for locals to go watch the sunset.

If you veer to the left as you get to the docks, you come across an entrance to the Naval station there and another gate leading to Fort Zach Park. It costs $2.50 per person on a bicycle or walking, and $4.50 for the first person in a car, $7.50 for two in a car, and .50 cents per person after that. Definitely worth riding your bikes in… Christina bought us a yearly pass that lets us get up to 8 people in at a time. It cost her $80.00, it’s since gone up to $120.00, but even then, when you go as often as we do, it’s a well worth it.

You follow the road a bit farther and you’ll pass The actual Fort Zachary Taylor on the right, and come to a parking area.

The Best Beach on the Island

I love, love, love this beach. I was never fond of going the beach until I visited the Virgin Islands a few years ago and experienced what a real Caribbean beach was like. I have a friend who owns a house on Water Island, right next to St Thomas, and it was on his beach – Honeymoon Beach – that I re-connected with my fantasy of island living. It was like a slap in the face, I’d been doing it wrong my whole life!

Well Fort Zach Beach is as close to that Caribbean beach paradise on Water Island as I’ve found in Florida. It’s rarely if ever anything close to crowded, the water is blue and crystal clear, there are tons of beautiful colorful fish swimming around, and the waves are minimal. The beach is rocky near the water, so you’ll probably want to wear water shoes if your feetsies are tender. There are picnic tables and BBQ grills peppered through the australian pines and palm trees running the length of the beach. The grills are clean and rust-free, and the picnic tables are in good repair.

There’s a pavilion on the beach that serves up sandwiches, ice cream, and even beer as long as you keep it on the deck area. I was surprised to find beer on the menu there as it’s a state park, and well you know.. they frown on you bringing booze in. (Not that I ever let that stop me). I haven’t had any of the food from there, so I cant comment on the quality yet, but when I do, I’ll come back and update this post.

Fort Zach Beach is on the south-westernmost tip of the island, so it’s kind of cool because you are right at the point where the Atlantic merges with the Gulf of Mexico. Around the west point, the gulf-side of the beach is lined with large boulders so you definitely won’t want to try to swim there. It’s a super-great place to watch the sunset and boat traffic. The cruise ships go right past here too, so that’s pretty neat.. they are so big it boggles the mind.

The entire park surrounds the fort, but it wasn’t always that way. The fort used to be jutting out into the ocean, but when the Navy dug the shipping channel and submarine port, the dirt was used to build the land that the park now sits on. So Fort Zach Beach is entirely man-made. Crazy.

If you go north-east up the coast a little from the point here, you’ll run into “Truman Beach”, it’s a tiny little stretch of sand abutting the sea wall for the Naval Port you passed coming into the park. The secret service had this small beach built for Henry Truman so he could enjoy the beach out of the way of the public eye. He visited it once, but returned to the public beach on the other side of the point, stating that he liked the public beach better. I’m not sure if it’s frowned upon to visit this little stretch or not, I’ve seen a couple folks hanging out there, but who knows.. I’ll have to try it myself some time.

This beach and park is so very cool, that I couldn’t see ever visiting the public beaches in Key West, I guess I should be happy that it seems not very many tourists know about it, either that or that they aren’t willing to pay to get onto a beach. I like it just the way it is, uncrowded, clean, and supremely relaxing.

I think I’ll go there now…