I don’t want to leave.

This recap starts with Sunday, March 5th.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned this yet, but ever since we left Fayetteville I’d been having some problems with my neck and shoulders. As in, I had this giant knot behind my right shoulder blade. I felt it the most then I moved my head up or down. It definitely got worse when we were in St. Augustine and had not improved by the time we hit the Keys.

Michael got online and found me a massage therapist, in Key West, who took appointments on Sundays. We figured we’d spend the rest of the day on Key West. Easy peasy, as the saying goes. My appointment time? 9:30am.

This meant an 8am departure time, which was a little tough, but we made it. Actually we left 10 minutes early. My 60-minute deep tissue massage was wonderful. Painful. Totally worth it. So good, I was kind of out of it for a good 30 minutes afterward.

Maybe that’s why I wasn’t super upset at what happened? As Michael was backing the truck up out of the tiny parking lot and into an alley, he backed up into this hedge, and I heard this horrible sound. I jumped out to see what had happened. Turns out that hedge was hiding a concrete barrier. My bike was the source of that horrible sound. My front wheel now has a broken spoke, plus two bent ones, rendering it unrideable for the time being.

It was an accident, really. How were we to know about that stupid hidden concrete barrier?

Anyway, after that adventure we went for breakfast at Harpoon Harry’s. Cheap and good! Then we checked out the Key West Artist’s market.

Lots of jewelry, soaps, woodwork, and handmade chocolate. It was cool. Then we walked around the docks.

Michael decided he wanted a Cuban Coffee. These shops are all over the lower Keys – we saw them the whole way down Highway 1. We decided on Cuban Coffee Queen since it was right there on the docks.

Michael offered me some. I took one sip and handed it right back. It was soooo sweet! Apparently it’s brewed with sugar. Suffice it to say Michael did not mind not sharing.

We did take a little drive through the rest of the town. We drove past Ernest Hemingway’s house (there was a long line to get in), and the southernmost point bouy (there was an even longer line to get your picture taken with it). We walked the dogs for a bit and then decided to call it a day. We still had that 90-minute drive and we needed to stop at the grocery store along the way.

Back at camp I found another way to set up the Revel Gear lights. Now that we are surrounded by actual trees, there are a lot more possibilities for these solar-powered lights.

It was like sitting in a little tree house and this spot became my favorite just about every night. And, as it turned out, we had a lot more nights at Long Key State Park.

Monday morning, we walked the dogs over to the entrance station. When I asked about renewing for site #60, I was asked how many days I wanted. How many can I have? They looked at my paperwork. You’ve been at that site for 2 nights, they said. You can have twelve more. I opened the door to the building, to where Michael stood outside with the dogs (dogs aren’t allowed inside any State Park buildings) and said, we can have 12 days. How many do you want?

All of them, he answered, and the staff couldn’t stop laughing.

We settled on 4 more days, which gave us a departure date of Friday, March 10. Back at camp we got out our receipts and did a little math. See, we have a weekly budget (Sunday through Saturday) that we work very hard to stay on. Generally, we even come under. But between the massage, the day in Key West, groceries, and camping… on Monday we were at 86% of our budget.

Damn.

So like I said, paying for camping is destroying our budget. But we love our site at Long Key. I mean… the views!

Then there is the wildlife. I’ve seen osprey, egrets, cormorants, stilts, and magnificent frigatebirds. Three bald eagles (one adult and two juveniles). Then there are the lizards. Little geckos are everywhere, but we saw a giant iguana in a tree, too.

Of course, at nights we’ve seen the scavengers – rats and raccoons – but they kind of go with the territory. We’ve dealt with bears, so putting our food away at night just isn’t a big deal.

Other things to love about Long Key: we’re close to a nice grocery story at Marathon Key, and that Marathon also has a nice dog park. We wore the dogs out there the other day.

Monday night we got a special treat: a bluegrass jam!

Well, not really a bluegrass jam, but a music circle all the same. Backing up a step or two: our first night at Long Key, we stayed at site #16. One of our neighbors came over to introduce himself, as he has a red Toyota Tacoma. Tom and his wife Pam spend their winters in southern Florida. Tom was wearing a Telluride Bluegrass Festival t-shirt, and he and Michael got to talking. Turns out Michael knows their son, former daughter-in-law, and grandchildren. Further, Tom plays the mandolin.

So we let Tom and Pam know we’d managed to extend our stay, and they told us about a little going-away party for the folks at site #48. They were headed back to Michigan in a few days so they were throwing a pizza party with a music circle afterward.

We skipped the pizza party in favor steak, potatoes, and veggies, but brought our instruments down sometime around 7 or so. The circle was huge! Only about three people were playing. Somebody even found us chairs to sit on. These were all the nicest people. Guitar, mandolin, and ukelele, plus Michael’s mando and my dobro.

After a few songs (mostly country, but I took a few breaks and managed to sound pretty good!), I was asked if I had anything I wanted to sing. I belted out an old Bill Monroe tune called “Can’t You Hear Me Calling.”

Look, I’m not trying to toot my own horn here. I can hold my own as a  singer and I used to sing in a bluegrass band called Steel Pennies. Also, I cut my singing teeth on the Lyons Jam, and that was during that jam’s heydey:

So singing and playing in front of this group of strangers was not a big deal. But after my song, there was applause, and somebody actually said: “It takes a lot of guts to sing like that in front of a group of strangers!”

I smiled and said thank you.