Tuesday was a rest day for us. We hung around the campsite, swam a little, kayaked a little and I taught Taylor how to make virgin daiquiris.
Wednesday we went to Ft Zachary Taylor State Park and after the tour of the fort, found us a good place at the beach. This beach is about the best one in the KW area. Smathers Beach is another good one but it is man made.
The Ranger who provided our tour was very knowledgeable and added a little color to his presentation. He was able to tie this forts significance's to Fort Jefferson at the Dry Tortuga's. Fort Taylor has many cannons on display that came from the excavation of them out of the walls of the fort. After the Civil War, the cannons were put into the walls and then covered over with cement and brick and other debris they could get their hands on to get rid of them.
The Fort was then taken over by the Navy and it was used as a firing range for many years. When I first saw the bullet holes in the brick I thought it must have been from muskets but as it turns out; the Navy personnel were the culprits. The Fort has a 10 person latrine and the waste was supposed to be washed out by the tides but as it turned out the latrines were built in the wrong place and didn't work properly. The waste built up and then diseases from them caused many of the soldiers to die.
If you take the tour there are only 2 during the day; 12 and 2.
After the tour it was beach and water time. I took my float with me and Taylor and I headed for the water. We stayed until about three in the afternoon and then headed over to the Key West Cemetery.
It was a hot day to be hoofing it around the cemetery. We were able to see all the graves that Taylor had researched. We also saw some of the chickens in the area. Notice in the pictures the popular sayings such as: I told them I was sick and I'm just resting my eyes. I really liked the one about resting my eyes because whenever we would catch my Mama taking a snooze, she would wake up and say, "oh, I was just resting my eyes." You will notice that the graves are above ground and that's because of sea level.
Enjoy the slide show: Later...
5 comments:
You and Taylor are making me want to explore Key West!! Enjoyed the slideshow....once again!! Keep it up!
Neat stuff, but you guys make me tired just reading about it! LOL!
I don't know why there was a photo of guys without their shirts, but thanks for including it.
Love the hat on Taylor. Also like the new look of your blog. What did you mean when you said Taylor found the graves she had researched?
Margie, the guys w/out shirts were Navy Seals. Taylor had researched some graves in the cemetery and she found the ones that had the funny sayings on them. She researched her whole trip.
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