Lethea & Les Travel (or 'Life in Camelot'): Key West

I was really excited to go to Key West, and since Les didn't want to have to drive the RV down the keys, we decided to leave it at the campground and drive the truck down. We made reservations at The Southernmost Hotel and headed out the following morning.

We were hunting for a fun lunch spot and wandered off the main road in Key Colony and found this cute little park were someone had built a very nice sandcastle.

The drive from the mainland to Key West is about 115 miles. We finally found a great place for lunch at the Island Fish Company in Marathon, which is about half way down.

When we arrived, we were happy to find that our hotel, The Southernmost Hotel, was a nice hotel in a great location on Duval Street; close to the action without being right in the middle of the noise and festivities of Duval Street.

Bikes and Scooters are the preferred mode of transportation in town, so we were happy that we had our bikes to do a little site-seeing.

Mallory Square is where people gather in the late afternoon to celebrate the sunset. When the sun goes down, everyone cheers and applauds! This is so very "Key West" where the atmosphere is casual and quirky.

Les was very relaxed as we have a beverage before dinner!

This is supposed to be the Southernmost point of the continental US, but it isn't really. That's a mile or so farther down the beach, but it's on the military base, so you can't really go stand there. Also, it's actually 98 miles to Cuba.

We splurged on Eggs Benedict at the La Te Da hotel for breakfast.

We were surprised to stumble upon the "Little White House". We didn't know about it and were delighted to find it. The historical marker reads:
"Built in 1890 as quarters for Navy Officers, the Little White House later was used by American Presidents William Howard Taft, Harry S. Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. Truman used the facility as a vacation home and functioning White House between 1946 and 1952. National legislation was drafted and official government business was conducted daily from the site. Perhaps the most important of these actions occurred on December 5, 1951, when Truman enacted a Civil Rights Executive Order requiring federal contractors to hire minorities. The house is considered the birthplace of the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Air Force as a result of the Key West Accords of 1948. President Eisenhower used the site in 1956 while recuperating from a heart attack. In 1961, the house was the venue for a summit between President Kennedy and British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan during the Bay of Pigs Incident. Kennedy returned in 1962 after the Cuban Missile Crises. Secretary of State Colin Powell and foreign leaders held an international summit here in 2001. The Little White House was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974."