Boating with Sunset Delight: Florida: Marathon

Day 222

We were up early this morning so that we could meet Kenny and Jeanne from Daybreak at 9:00 to go grocery shopping. We went with them to Publix to stock up since they had a car today. Truly there is only so much that fits in a backpack, so the offer of a food shopping trip with the benefit of a car is amazing. I bought all the big things that fill a backpack all by themselves like rolls of paper towels.

It took a while to stow everything including the meat that had to be repackaged before being frozen. By the time I was done with all that work, Clark said he had talked to some fellow boaters who planned on biking out to Pigeon Key. Funny thing, we had planned on doing that before he even talked to our friends. Great minds think alike they say! Our friends planned on stopping at a restaurant for lunch. With dinner plans for tonight, Clark asked me to make sandwiches for a picnic to eat somewhere on our way out to the 7-mile bridge.

Before leaving, I got into more comfortable biking clothes, i.e. biking shorts, since I never know with Clark if a bike ride will be short or long. With words like "Seven-mile bridge" in the trip plan, I decided to play it safe with bike attire. By the time we got our stuff together, our friends had already left for their bike ride. Since we had our own agenda, we did not expect them to wait.

It seemed to me that we no sooner got going on the bike path heading west from the marina than Clark pulled over to the side and stopped at a bike store. He checked the hours there and then continued down the road another few hundred feet and stopped again -- this time to look at an old marine store that was being liquidated because the owner passed away. I thought we would never get going on, what I considered to be, the planned trip. Little did I know that these two stops were part of Clark's planned outing. I have found I must have patience when biking with Clark as I never know when he will stop and for how long.

After a quick peak at the boat parts store (it all looked like junk to me), we continued on our way to the more interesting portion of our journey. As we approached the Seven-mile bridge Clark pointed out a side path to me that we could take, so we went down there to explore first.

Off-chute from path to 7-mile bridge

The side path came to a dead end, but we knew that before we started along the trail. At the end we could see the bridge we planned on taking. Clark grabbed a picture of the two of us before continuing on our way. We debated about eating our picnic lunch here or waiting until later. We were well past the normal lunch hour but decided to wait until we got out on the bridge to eat.

Seven-mile bridge in background

Depending on depth and bottom composure, the water took on a variety of colors from tan to green to blue. I particularly liked the green waters.

Biking beside Florida Bay

Looking down the trail back to Route 1

As we turned the corner to continue on our way to the Seven-mile bridge, we passed a section with an abundance of purple flowers. Having seen no other blooming flowers in the area, I was very pleasantly surprised by their very existence. Clark took a lovely picture with the blooms in the front.

Flowers in foreground with bike trail and bay in background

Unfortunately the ramp to go from the Seven-mile bridge down to Pigeon Key is closed due to disrepair. The only way to get to Pigeon Key is to take the ferry. We could see the Visitor's Center associated with the ferry stop from the bike path as we rode by.

Pigeon Key Visitor's Center

Pigeon Key Historic District

We followed the road signs pointing us to Pigeon Key and the Seven-mile bridge.

Seven-mile Historic Bridge entrance

No motor vehicles are allowed on this bridge which allowed us to enjoy the ride while only watching out for pedestrians and other bikes. At the beginning of the ride we found a large clump of people we had to work our way around. After that we had only a few people or other folks on bike here and there making for a very pleasant ride.

Pigeon Key in sight!

Getting closer!

Looking down on Pigeon Key from the bridge

Other side of road.

Whoops! End of the road, I mean bike trail!

Too far to jump over to continue on to Key West

As predicted, the ramp for bike or pedestrian access to Pigeon Key was closed for repair. Too bad as it would have been fun to go down and explore. Instead we sat down on the cement curb by the rusty railing and ate our picnic lunch!

Our picnic site

After our break and lunch, we headed back the way we came (no choice). As we pedaled along we met a couple who told us they had just seen a shark on one side of the bridge and a stingray on the other. We slowed down after that to see if we could spy any sea life. In fact I did see both a stingray and a large sea turtle. Unfortunately they were both very camera shy and when Clark appeared to take pictures, they vanished under water.

Couple who told us to keep an eye out for marine life

Looking on Wikipedia I learned that this bridge has appeared in a number of famous movies like the James Bond movie License to Kill, True Lies, Mission Impossible III, etal.

The scenery along our path today was very pretty - not so much the smells. My nose was assaulted multiple times along the way to and from Pigeon Key. We have noticed near our boat a very pungent and unpleasant smell of something rotten. After some investigative work, we finally determined that the smell seems to come from the piles of sea grass that wash up on shore and then sit there in the baking sun forming a natural composite pile.

As we traveled along the bike trail today, we noticed that our marina does not hold the exclusive on rotting sea grass smells. Besides the not-so-lovely smell of rotting weeds, we had various food smells to contend with as we rode along. We passed Porky's where I expect some people might run into the restaurant drooling over the smell of burnt pig grease. Personally I did not enjoy the smell one little bit and could not wait until we were past there. Unfortunately the next place along the line offered fishing boat tours where the smell of uncooked fish was overwhelming. Too bad those flowers we saw along the way did not give off a sweet perfume to compensate for all the offensive smells with which we had to contend.

Before returning to the boat Clark said he wanted to stop at both the bike store and the parts store we had checked out earlier. We have heard rave reviews about the bike store and so we had to check it out. To me it just looked like a bike store, and since we were not in the market for a bike, it did not hold my interest very long. I did look at their bike mirrors but decided against buying one as it required me to do some destructive work to my handlebar end covers that I am unwilling to do.

At the marina parts liquidation sale Clark found a large supply of propellers available. He did not know what size he needed so we needed to do some homework. Nothing else in the store seemed to be of interest though he spent a large amount of time roaming the aisles to be sure he did not miss anything. Finally we left there and headed back to the boat where Clark pulled out his specs on his props to see what our boat uses. With this information in hand, we went back out on the bikes to the parts store to have another look at their stock. Clark and the store clerk looked for a long while, but they did not find the right size, so once again we left empty-handed.

Just as we were leaving the marine store, Clark's phone rang. It was Susan Gunning saying that we needed to meet early for dinner if we wanted to get a table. The time had just gone 4:15, so we thought we had plenty of time before dinner. Oh well - in the looper world one must be nimble and able to change plans quickly. We jumped on our bikes and took off at top speed to get back to the marina PDQ. Through some miscommunication / misunderstandings of where we were and how fast we could get back to our boat, we missed a ride to dinner with John and Susan.

They left with our other dinner companions, Ken and Jo from Friar Tuck, to go claim a seat at the restaurant. Since the Sunset Grill is only about two miles from the marina, Clark decided we should walk, so we set off on foot. We followed the route we had taken on our earlier bike ride to get there. In fact we had seen the restaurant when we were out on our bikes. Essentially we knew where we were going though we had only seen the restaurant from the bridge - not up close.

On our walk to the restaurant we crossed over Route 1. We were fortunate to find a break in the traffic just when we decided to cross, so we did not have a long wait. We later found out that we could have taken a path that went under Route 1 had we only known it existed.

On the road to Sunset Grill Restaurant
I was so glad we found the "Fun Island".
Are the rest not fun??

We found our dinner companions on the second floor of the restaurant. I guess to get a seat on the first (more popular viewing area) floor, a person has to come much earlier in the afternoon.