To set the mood here's The
Conch Republic Song.
All the Key West Pictures
There
are two military
camping areas in Key West: Sigsbee and Trombo.
There's
them that likes
Sigsbee because of the facilities and the opportunity to rotate into
full hookup sites. There's them that likes Trombo because you can
easily walk downtown. We chose Trombo.
Apparently early on some of the Sigsbee campers were heard referring to
"Trumbo Trash". The Trombo residents responded by creating a
T
shirt.
Pictures of Trumbo
Watching Boats and Birds
Pictures of Sigsbee
A couple of quick Key West history notes
(mostly from HISTORY OF
KEY
WEST BY By
Jerry Wilkinson):
The
USS Maine was sent
to Havana, Cuba, in January 1898 to protect U.S. interests during a
time of local
insurrection and civil disturbances. Three weeks later, on 15
February, the battleship was sunk by a massive explosion that
killed the great majority of her crew. While the cause of this tragedy
has never been definitively
resolved, it was a precipitating cause of the Spanish-American
War that began in April 1898. Her last Commanding Officer was Captain
Charles D. Sigsbee, USN.
Henry
Morrison Flagler began spanning the Keys for a railroad to Key West in
1905.
When Flagler was told there was not enough land for his massive rail
terminal, he instructed his work force to "build some." Key
West
was enlarged with 134 acres of land fill pumped up from the bottom of
the
Gulf. The head engineer was Mr. Howard Trombo.
And a couple of interesting military organizations:
Company C, 2nd Battalion, 1st Special Warfare Training
Group Airborne) operates the SFUWO training facility on
Fleming
Key. It is a training site of the U. S. Army John F. Kennedy Special
Warfare Center and School at Ft. Bragg, NC. Mission is to train
selected joint SOF, DOD, allied, and interagency personnel as combat
surface and subsurface infiltrators, dive supervisors, and dive medical
technicians for the U.S. Armed Forces.
The SFUWO school is 1.8 miles from the Campground at the far end of
Fleming Key.
(Nice
Walk)
They
sometimes come through the campground on their morning run and wake us
up. And occasionally provide entertainment by jumping out of
perfectly good airplanes.
Joint Interagency Task Force is an interagency task force which serves
as the catalyst for integrated and synchronized interagency counterdrug
operations, and is responsible for the detection and monitoring of
suspect air and maritime drug activity within the Caribbean Sea, Gulf
of Mexico, and the eastern Pacific.
They live down south of the southern most point.
The Trolly Tour guys say that they are tuned into Castro's hospital
room and that once Castro dies Key West will become a ghost town.
Houses of Key West
Mallory Square
Sights of Key West
Sunset Key with Bill, Joan and "the daughters"
Sunset Key is just off Mallory Square.
Then of course there's the whole Conch
Republic bit.
Time to go home
Home
