Daily Narrative    We give Key West two enthusiastic thumbs up.  We rose moderately early and headed out to find a little breakfast.  We quickly found "Diner Shores" at the Atlantic Shores Resort next door.  We came to realize shortly that we had stumbled into the diner of an "alternative resort" in a town where, much like Provincetown, many more customers are male than in other places we have traveled.  Service was great, breakfast was excellent.  We went on to do the tourist trudge up one side of Duval Street and back down the other.  While being a typical tourist area, with t-shirt shops never more than a few feet away, Duval is none the less an interesting and entertaining street to wander.  We immediately found The Chicken Store, a small shop on the least touristy end of Duval, which is a sanctuary and rehabilitation center for the feral (wild) chickens that roam Key West.  The shop had many chickens in cages recovering from injury and a few running around loose inside.  The shop raises money by selling all things chicken related, many by local artists.  Their informational web site is www.thechickenstore.com.  Like good tourists, we bought a hat and t-shirt before we left.  We walked on down Duval, in and out of many galleries and one bar, Sloppy Joe's, which claims to have been Ernest Hemingway's favorite establishment.  Brian had a beverage in the hope that it would improve his writing.  After our walk up and down Duval, we retreated from the 90 degree heat to our air conditioned sanctuary.  After a quick dip in the pool, Brian worked on some web pages and Theresa lounged pool side, researching the small lizards that run around on the sidewalks here.  When it had suitably cooled off outside, we walked over to what is billed as the southernmost point in the U.S. (shhh, don't tell Hawaii), where an entrepreneurial photographer named Shorty snapped our photo.  We headed back up Duval, for the Hard Rock Cafe, and had a bite to eat before returning to our oasis and hitting the hay.

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Daily Pictures

The Bus wakes alone in the parking lot outside of...	...the Santa Maria Motel that Brian and Theresa are sleeping coolly inside of
The courtyard out our front door	The pool out our back door
These cool little lizards are running around everywhere	Where we had breakfast at the "alternative" resort next door
A little momento for our scrapbook	The Chicken Store, very cool.  For a little info take a look at www.thechickenstore.com
A chicken in rehab runs loose in the Chicken Store	The very intriguing Ripley's Believe It Or Not facade on Duval Street
The big white churches have a different flavor here than in New England	In Key West all kinds of things are elaborately decorated, from muralled vans...
To beaded bicycles	The "bar where Hemingway drank", which we figure is a little bit like saying "the place where Brian and Theresa parked"
Not many towns could pull off a large pink and green corner building	Brian having fun in the pool, really...
But he really needs to start checking those pockets first	Theresa doing a little lizard research
Got one!	Our intrepid couple at the Southernmost Point in the continental U.S..  Next summer we intend to drive to Hawaii
Shorty, our photographer	The low key Hard Rock Cafe, where we grabbed a little dinner

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