Key West

It’s been way too long since I posted to my own blog, mostly because I have been busy as the official blogger on the Jews for Jesus blog.

My wife Kathleen and I were down in Key West recently. I was speaking in a church on behalf of Jews for Jesus. The church I was speaking at put us up at the La Concha, which is Key West’s oldest hotel. The La Concha is used as a hurricane shelter of last resort, and you may have seen it if you’ve ever watched coverage of hurricanes in South Florida, because all the media people stay there.

We wanted to do some fun stuff which was just purely tourist, so we walked a couple of miles from the hotel to the southernmost spot in the continental United States — only 90 miles to Cuba from here! Behind me you can see a heavy wrought-iron fence. This separates the spot we are standing from a Navy base, and barely out of camera range are some massive radar and satellite dishes. It was kind of sobering to realize that our proximity to Cuba actually made that a spot considered strategic by the military!

Another curiousity which was just at the other end of the street where we are standing in the photo is the southernmost house in the continental U.S. — not to mention the southernmost hotel, the southernmost guest house, etc. I picked up fairly quickly that there is some competition for the title of “southernmost!” In fact even though this house to the right bills itself as the southernmost house, there is a plaque attached to the wall of the next house over which proclaims it to be “the southernmost southernmost house.”

All my life, I have heard people proclaim the beauty of sunsets in Key West. So, shortly before sunset Kathleen and I walked to Mallory Square, where each evening they have a Sunset Celebration, complete with street performers, hot dog vendors, and all the other ways possible to separate tourists from their money. Hundreds of us gathered along the shoreline, where I quickly detected a problem in our viewing of the sunset — there was an ISLAND in the way! As we were soon to find out, unless you are on a boat out on the water or on the roof of someplace like the La Concha, you can’t see the sun hit the water. It was a big disappointment to both of us, and I remarked jokingly that I felt like an entire island had swindled me. I did manage to get this shot of a sailboat and the setting sun, which proves something I remember my photojournalist father once telling me: “great pictures are all about timing!