Florida Trail: Overseas Heritage Trail Day 2
January 7, 2022
Mile: 8.7 to 29.8 (21.1 miles)
Start: Key West Naval Air Station, Boca Chica
Finish: Parmer’s Resort, Little Torch Key
- Animals seen today: Chickens (of course), cats, iguanas, sharks, gulls, pelicans, chiggers, no-see-ums, land crabs, iguanas, loggerhead sea turtle
- Poisonous things seen today: Machineel (or poison apple) tree, poisonwood, Brazilian pepper bush, questionable tiki bar restaurants
- Keys crossed today: Boca Chica, East Rockland, Big Coppitt, Saddlebunch, Upper & Lower Sugarloaf, Summerland, Ramrod, Torch Keys
We rose groggily, looking at our 6:15am alarm in disgust. Our attitudes morphed into excitement as we wrestled down our tent shoving it into our bags, packed up our gear in the dark while trying not to disturb the other campers at the Sigsbee Navy campground. We threw our snorkels and masks in our packs so I guess we’re bringing them along with us on the trail in the Keys and headed out. In the bathroom I said goodbye to our campground neighbor Sally who had been so kind the previous days, always inviting us to dinner and drinks. We had politely declined to go downtown and explore Key West, choosing to try some of the fresh local seafood instead of having burgers and hotdogs. We also said goodbye to charismatic and interesting Charlie who lived out of his van and whose girlfriend was friends with Sally. Typical Charlie he left us with some hilarious and weird comments and we laughed as we made the mile or so walk off the base underneath the early sun rising off the sea.
Off the naval base and on the main road we balanced along the ocean wall looking down into the bay for sea critters as we walked to the bus stop. The only wildlife we saw was early morning runners and cyclists out working on their fitness. We took the Keys shuttle bus north to head back to mile marker 8ish where we had left the trail yesterday from the Naval Security Base. It was only a 10 minute ride on the bus but we were lulled to sleep by the air-conditioning, sitting down and the slow rocking movement of the wheels on pavement. Shannon’s eyes fluttered a couple of times and the late night drinking in Key West seemed to be catching up to us. We got so comfortable that we almost missed getting off at our stop and had to run up to the front of the bus as he was pulling away.
We were thrown back onto the road and trekked north about 8 AM, continuing along the Overseas Heritage Trail over dozens of bridges and sidewalks next to the busy highway. Being from the northlands, we weren’t used to walking through grass and getting instantly chewed up by mosquitoes and chiggers and biting bugs. We hadn’t put any bug spray on and by the end of our day, our legs would be covered in itchy red welts. Heck, I didn’t even bring bug spray because I thought walking on a sidewalk in the Florida Keys in winter wouldn’t warrant bloodsucking insects. I knew that by the Everglades we’d need some serious bug protection but I wasn’t expecting to be chewed up already.
Alongside the bike path were thick tangles of mangrove and sea grape mixed in with more sinister plants like poisonwood whose trunk oozed black with blistering caustic sap and the endangered machineel, or the apple tree of death, where the bark and sap are toxic, smoke from the wood cause blindness and a single bite of apple can be fatal. Thick boughs of brilliant red berries of the Brazilian Peppertree draped over the sidewalk where we dodged the rash-inducing foliage. It was a good lesson in botany this morning alongside the busy overseas highway. We dodged poisonous trees and cyclists in bright spandex until we reached a refueling spot called Baby’s Coffee. This was going to be our pump-up caffeine spot that was going to get us through the rest of the morning’s trek. It’s kind of nice to be hiking and when you’re running low on energy you round the corner to find a coffee shop!
Baby’s Coffee had a bit of history to it having been named after the baby son of a Cuban family who ran a cantina there since the 1920’s that author Ernest Hemingway supposedly frequented. Nowadays, New York City transplants Greg and Olga continued the coffee and cafe business. In a chain of islands really pushing the ubiquitous and delicious Cuban café con leche, or rich espresso with milk and a good helping of sugar, we’d have to say that Baby’s Coffee was turning a pretty good business.
We plopped down on a bench outside the coffee shop where emerald and vermillion feathered feral Key West chickens squawked and ran around like crazy in the parking lot. Seemed like from looking at the spilled espresso beans on the ground that these critters were all jacked up on some serious caffeine! A blonde lady came out waving a white rag on a stick chasing away the chickens who were eyeing the picnic table scraps and facing off to peck away at the reflective paint jobs on the tourists’ parked cars. I stayed and watched our bags while Shannon went inside to order coffee. There’s a lot of people coming and going so we just don’t feel comfortable leaving our gear out in the open despite them being stinky and having wet shorts and damp sports bras dangling off them. Trusting our gut instinct is so important especially after hearing about hikers on other trails having their shoes, packs and wallets stolen in town. Plus I didn’t want the chickens trying to eat our granola bars.
Shannon came back out so I ducked inside the crowded coffee shop where I, who usually hates coffee, grabbed an iced latte and was on cloud nine drinking “the southernmost coffee roast” in the USA. Shannon drank a cup of a delicious brew called “Sexpresso” while we rested our sore legs on a corner of a picnic table. Gary, the snappy and vibrant co-owner of Baby’s Coffee, chatted with us for a while asking about our hike and sharing with us all sorts of life and business advice. His story about his business journey and how he got started was wild. Being from New York City, he had gotten his start in the very competitive construction business where he met his wife who is an interior architect and they hit it off. They joined in a business venture making the best coffee possible in a place that was a little warmer than the bitter New York winters. His roasting business has been through ups and downs but today they ship all over the world and their coffee is amazing. As we were talking, Gary greeted every single person who came by his cafe and called all of the locals by name. You could tell he really cared about his customers, actually getting to know people drinking his coffee and giving good service which was just great.
Gary chatted us up for a good long while, telling us about “the Coconut Telegraph” where the people who live in the small community of the Florida Keys will tell each other about places that are good or not so good. This reference to the gossip chain on the islands (and apparently a Jimmy Buffett album) pretty much makes or breaks a business down here. As in business, Gary said it was so incredibly important to stay positive in all that you do in life and gave us some solid life advice which was really cool. At the beginning of starting his business they went through lots of challenges including their friends and family doubting them. He said it was tough but if anyone they surrounded themselves with whether it was their best friends or colleagues that didn’t believe in them, they had to cut them out of their lives because they didn’t have time to deal with negativity in their life.
“How can you criticize something when you have done nothing?” Gary asked, reflecting on former friends who chastised his hopes and dreams of being a business owner. It was a good point and made me want to start a business even more seeing how inspiring and open Gary was with having to make tough calls and decisions even in his personal life. He left us with mini espresso Baby’s Coffee cups and his and Olga’s contact info in case we get stuck anywhere in Florida that he would have someone help us out.
With me not being a huge coffee drinker I stupidly asked if the small coffee cups in my hands were for babies. Gary laughed and just shook his head in disbelief that I used to be an aerospace engineer. Ha! Oh well, you can’t win them all. The Trail Magic of Gary’s life advice, the “not for babies espresso cups” and his contact info were above and beyond. We left Gary and Olga’s coffee shop full of caffeine and all jazzed up, ready to rock and crush some trail miles.
The rest of the morning we flew up the trail making great time from our caffeine binge at Baby’s Coffee. Early in the afternoon we stopped at an interesting place called Mangrove Mama’s for lunch. There was zero camping fuel to be had until potentially mile 86ish so it was either granola bars for lunch, gas station hot dogs or a quick bite to eat at a restaurant. Like many restaurants these days, Mangrove Mama’s were short staffed because of Covid so lunch took a while but it was a nice break to rest our feet in the shade. I had a delicious shrimp salad and Shannon had shrimp dinner with veggies and fries.
As we were leaving, this super drunk lady saw us with our packs on and slurred her words asking us loudly what country we were from. I think she almost fell out of her chair with surprise when we said the United States probably thinking nobody in their right mind from the US would ever hike out here in Florida. We walked past her smiling and nodding as she struggled to come up with something smart to say. You could tell this inebriated hot mess of a lady wanted to start some shit with us so we just talked over her smiling and saying, “Goodbye!” and “Have a great day!” over and over again. When the lady wasn’t looking or maybe had fallen off her chair again, we dashed inside to the bathroom to fill our water supply up in the sink and took off.
In the afternoon we crossed through the Saddlebunch Keys using many bridges spanning clear teal water and calm seas straight out until where the ocean met the sky. I was feeling a little sluggish in the afternoon heat so we stopped on the side of a bridge to lay our packs down and rest for a little bit. The pavement really wears on your feet and since you can’t use hiking poles properly I feel like I was tiring sooner than if we were on trail.
As we stretched our legs next to the ocean, we caught a glimpse of an enormous olive green and black striped iguana who watched us carefully, side-eying us as he scrambled over the wave spattered coral pilings. Between the four-foot-long scaly lizard body, the long striped tail and sharp dorsal spines, the iguana looked like he hadn’t changed much from the time of the dinosaurs. We must have startled him as he scrambled off the spray-soaked seawall, jumping into the fossilized coral boulders and disappeared amongst the twisted thicket of mangroves until all that was left was the sound of his two-foot-long banded tail slithering against the dead leaves.
As we watched the spiny iguana take his leave, I turned to the ocean where the royal teal waters churned slowly against the overpass stanchions trying pull the concrete away from its foundations with the outgoing tide. A dark reddish brown object rose from the depths and I realized that it wasn’t a rock or seaweed like we’d typically spy from the bridges. The round creature was an absolutely enormous sea turtle swimming under the bridge through the channel. She surfaced, her dappled brick and tan colored block-shaped head rising above the bands of crashing foam. We squealed with delight at the massive turtle, her shell stretching over 3 feet long and probably weighing close to 200 lbs. A quick breath in of air and back down the loggerhead sea turtle plunged into the depths, her boat rudder sized fins propelling her enormous body forwards into the lagoon. How magical it was to slow down for a moment and witness such a thing!
The trail dipped into the woods alongside a mangrove wetland with thick waxy branches overhanging and dangling into the pathway. Knobby knees of the mangrove roots poked out of the mud like a bed of wooden nails. As we hiked along we stirred up a 10-inch-wide pale blue land crab lurking in the shade of the mangrove roots. He waved his oversized claw at us in annoyance and moved insanely fast out of the way, scurrying into his burrow at the sound of our footsteps. It scared us a little bit since we didn’t realize in addition to venomous snakes, man-eating crocodiles and alligators, poisonous fish, poisonous coral and deadly plants that Florida also had freakishly large land crustaceans running about.
A late afternoon rain squall picked up and we nervously walked under the dense understory of palms and mangroves interspersed with the fatal machineel, or the death apple tree, and poisonwood. A drop of rain falling off the machineel or poisonwood trees onto bare skin can cause blistering and painful inflammation. Carib indigenous people actually used to dip their arrows in the tree’s sap to poison them for hunting or war. We definitely didn’t want to have any falling sap or runoff from the wet trees to fall on us so we scurried around any overhanging branch that we saw and put our hoods up to dodge the falling poisonous drops.
We crushed the miles as the Caribbean sun sunk low on the horizon. Our destination was on tiny Little Torch Key and we dashed across the highway, heading down a side road to a residential area nestled deep in the mangroves. Signs were posted along electric line poles looking for any evidence for a woman who was killed and her body dumped on the Torch Keys in the 1980s. It’s pretty wild out here amongst the hundreds of tiny islands off the coast of south Florida and seems like it would be not that difficult to get away with crimes just based on the sheer inaccessibility and anonymity the ruggedness of the land and sea provide.
We dragged our feet slowly up the final half mile to our hotel which was cute with clean bungalows next to the water. Palm trees fluttered like stiff striped ribbons as the afternoon squall passed and settled into the calmness of evening in the lagoon. Shannon snagged some lemonade and four homemade cookies from the hotel lobby and we dragged our ragged selves into the Parmer’s Resort room. Clothes were washed in the shower and sink and then we immediately laid down to rest our legs and feet. It’s always tough the first few weeks of a thru-hike as now matter how hard you train, your body has to transform from soft, blistered foot pads to hardened muscles and feet as tough as leather.
The only place for food nearby was a tiki bar venue with not so promising reviews about locals asking if you got food poisoning after eating there. With no car and little energy left for more walking or potential food poisoning, we opted for instant mashed potatoes, Spam and cookies for dinner while our feet were propped up on pillows. Later on, I had a little energy to go outside and check out the hammocks around the property and thatched chickee huts on the water. A beach with imported sand and a tiny swimming area was splayed tidily behind me while I was experimenting with night photography. The water was calm and the lights across the bay reflected like mottled stained glass rippling startling across the smooth inky navy blue lagoon.
All of a sudden the water behind me in the beach area erupted in a thrashing of tails and waves. I jumped up and kept my balance on the dock as I scanned the darkness for movement. Almost as soon as it started, it was all over. Stillness came over the bay and I guessed that maybe it was a shark or enormous fish that had just surfaced. Whatever creature was out there, it didn’t sound or look small. Later we found out that the tiki bar only a quarter mile down the street has resident bull sharks that come by frequently. Aw geez – I’m definitely not going in the water here now!
