There’s only one road in and out of Key West – which is part of its attraction. And what a road it is !!!! Featuring the iconic Seven Mile Bridge it stretches over 100 miles through the Keys from Key Largo at the top to Key West at the bottom.

Obviously, having just one road means there is absolutely no alternative route should something to wrong.

Unfortunately something went very wrong coinciding with our recent visit.

About half way through Key Largo the traffic ground to a halt and it became apparent we were eight miles out from an incident of some sort. Being eight miles out turned out to be a fraction of the 30 mile tailback it became.

The information from the local Monroe County Sheriff’s office seemed uncharacteristically sparse and simply said the US1 was closed south and north bound.

So we waited, and waited and waited and crept through Key Largo as traffic ahead bailed out. The amazing beach front hotels, restaurants, dive shops and gift stores were passed agonisingly slowly as I checked for updates and looked up the traffic cameras to see if I could work out what was happening. All I could really see was vast stretches of empty road beyond the boundary of Key Largo and solid lines of traffic backing up right beyond the top of the Keys.

After about 3 hours a notice popped up on the Monroe County Sheriff’s website to say the road was now open. Gradually we picked up speed and when we got to the site of the incident all we could see was three black and tan Florida Highway Patrol cruisers with their lights flashing parked up along the side of the road.

Later in the day the news stories started appearing about the incident and it explained a lot about the extent of the closure and the lack of obvious ‘fender benders’.

A woman had been struck and killed by a State Trooper heading south on US1.

https://www.local10.com/news/local/2023/02/13/fhp-trooper-hits-kills-pedestrian-in-key-largo/

Given there were emergency medical facilities just a few hundred yards down from the accident site she must have been very seriously injured not to have survived.

All FHP vehicles have heavyweight crash bars up front so any typical pedestrian collision protection built into cars don’t apply.

Anyway, the upshot of the delay meant we missed getting into Key West before sunset.

However, as we drove those last 90 miles along US1 we were treated to an hour long spectacle of the sun setting ahead of us – something I will never forget.

On arrival in Key West we headed straight for the old harbour which had a great atmosphere after dark.

The drive from Sarasota where the RV was parked up was supposed to take 7 hours and included traveling across the Southern Everglades. That in itself came with some drama as we passed by a large wildfire that was heading rapidly for Interstate 75

Travelling back to Sarasota the next day we saw the extent of the fire – that had been successfully extinguished.

The still smouldering remains of trees and large areas of blackened shrubland could be seen right up to the Interstate – so we made it through just in time the previous day.

Fortunately the drive back up was pretty uneventful, aside from the possibility of running out of fuel along Alligator Alley – that doesn’t have an abundance of Gas Stations.

But we made it back in good time ready to collect the boat the following day.

That, ultimately, was the purpose of travelling 2000 plus miles back and forth and down and up the length and breadth of Florida.

The boat is a true American classic – a Chris Craft Silver Arrow built in 1958.

Towing it back to Louisiana was not uneventful though as the trailer was in a lot worse shape than the boat and needed a major revamp half way back.