Hanging out at the Sands of Islamorada

Well we found a nice place that would take dogs here in Islamorada, and Boo loved being off leash and running with other dogs and swimming in the ocean. We checked in at the "Sands of Islamorada" at 11:30AM this morning and got to just hang out all day. Going off to an outside restaurant called the "Islamorada Fish Company" tonight and they will let Boo stay with us on leash at the table. BONUS!

Here we are at the pool side chilling with a beer and our Kindles.

Here is an Osprey her chicks that is roosting on the boat house next to hotel. Really cool. 

Close up zoom.

Here is a quick painting I did of the boat house and the nest.

"Islamorada Fish Company"  

Dinner was great and then they came out to feed the Nursing Sharks in the pen area to the right of the bridge in the above picture.

Here they are feeding the Nursing Sharks in the middle of the restaurant lagoon. 

Sunset at the restaurant. 

The Tiki pier waiting room when the place is jam'ed. It was used tonight.

Straight out from the hotel I saw something on the horizon and I used the camera to find it and take its picture. Did a little research (Google) and found out its a light house built in 1870 in Cold Spring NY and its still being used today. Unreal.

Alligator Reef Lighthouse straight out from the Hotel

The Lighthouse Board requested the Alligator Reef Lighthouse in 1868. The petition was repeated in 1869, and the following year Congress finally responded with funds for the project. Indian Key, situated four miles from the reef, was selected as the staging area for the construction effort.

The iron pile lighthouse was forged by Paulding Kemble of Cold Spring, New York, and then transported to Indian Key. The lighthouse would be situated thirty yards from daymarker C, and about two hundred yards from the deep Gulf Stream waters.

To receive the lighthouse, the reef was leveled and nine heavy cast-iron disks were arranged on the coral, eight at the corners of an octagon and one at its center. The foundation piles that would pass through the disks were twenty-six feet in length and twelve inches in diameter. A steam-powered pile driver raised a two-thousand-pound “hammer” eighteen feet in the air before gravity brought it crashing down on the pile. Each blow would drive the pile about an inch further in its 10-foot descent into the coral.

Atop the vertical foundation piles, eight lengths of piles slopped upwards to the lantern and watch rooms. Running horizontally and diagonally between the piles, a network of braces held the structures together like the filaments in a spider’s web. A one-story square dwelling was built on a platform high above the water to keep it safe from even mountainous seas. A spiral staircase sheathed with iron served as the tower’s spine, providing structural support and linking the dwelling to the lantern room, over 130 feet above the water.

The light was finished on November 25, 1873, at an expense of $185,000. A revolving first-order Fresnel lens filled the lantern room and produced a series of five white flashes separated by a single red flash.

Its amazing all the stuff that built in New York State and then shipped some where else for installation.