#245 Conch Key One night with Leann

Leann had said I can set you up for I guess about maybe a thousand a month. Normally it would be 1800 a month but I am going to make you a deal. The only thing I had as a comparison was Leo's at Key West for 2500 a month.

I was so lost at the time I thought this was okay. I get to bask in the keys for several months. I might even stay for a year it would just be kind of cool. I must have thought she would have work and I would barter and it wouldn’t seem so expensive. My real problem was I was obsessed with the fantasy of being in the keys and I had blinders on. Cudjoe Key was 3,000 per month. I thought it was going to be an equal experience so it seemed reasonable sort of.

When I first spoke to Leann I got the address from her and googled it and tried to figure out what kind of place it was. They did a really good job of marketing because they had a website that would tell you the rates and a photo showing your balcony view. Almost immediately it would take you to a drone type panorama aerial flyover of the area. It's as if they wanted you to leave your room and just fly all over the bay which was in front. The ocean side on the east and the other side of the keys is the gulf side. She was on the bay with almost no waves so this drone would just make it seem like you had landed in Maui Hawaii.

This was a real comfort to me because know I knew, wow this place is going to be wonderful.

A few days later or a little while later I did a Google map of the address and when I was pretty close I turned it to the satellite view.

It showed a square building and she even mentioned she only had four rooms above a small store. It served as a place to buy small groceries and a boat ramp ticket.

I saw what looked like the RV sites nearby. I saw something that looked a little like an empty lot right beside a boat ramp. I assumed that was mine with water front access.

Right beside it was an older airstream and as I started looking around all I could see was really ugly looking 1950s trailers or really beat-up old RVs.

At this point it was really important to kick in into full denial mode.

In my mind I kept pushing forward with great optimism as that this was an older picture. I imagined Leann had bought this and it wasn't in the best shape but now she's bulldozed all that down and it's just a heaven on Earth because of that cool video I saw.

Now were finally here and it was an absolute dump. Before the hurricane it was probably a dump then after the hurricane it was a really destroyed devastated dump.

Websites can be really cool but it was absolutely nothing good about this place.

When I saw the conditions it was not only as I feared but a hundred times worse. All along the keys there was construction debris about 12 feet high. This wasn’t her fault but it was to be my home which was terrifying. I went in and met Leann and she showed me where I would be parked. She said just settle in and we’ll do the money in a few days.

My site wasn't next to the boat ramp and it wasn't like water front or like the cool video. The sites were old dilapidated concrete slabs that I couldn't even really fit on. It's like if you went to a concrete recycling facility and they just spread all the large chunks of concrete with rebar hanging out all over the place and it was about 28 feet long and your rig was 40 feet long I found out, by the way there's no electricity. I'm an electrician maybe I could be helpful. Well that's kind of touchy because we can't do too much until we find out what the County's going to require, we're going to have to have a licensed electrician to pull permits. Maybe you better not mess with it yet.

It's pretty bad and so I backed in and there's a guy with a generator beside me. It seems to be the kind without a muffler and it's going 24 hours a day. We could barely sleep. It amazed me to think that this horrible piece of garbage was 1000 a month. She was doing me a favor because it's usually 16 to1800 but she's being nice.

I couldn't help but being nosy and I talked to the full-time guy next to me and just said you know what price they charge for a place like this. He said she charges me $600 a month. I'm looking at the situation where she has just seen me coming from a mile away from up north.

I guess she decides instead of 600 a month I can probably get this guy for 1200 a month because he sounds desperate. I feel like I had been had.

I wonder if somebody came along after me and paid the 1200. I don't know but that really blew my mind that he was paying 600 and she was going to charge me 1000.

If every bone in your body screams leave now, listen, and we did.

We came to the Keys and then since there's no vacancy we might as well just go back north. All of this was a terrible mistake but now that we're here maybe we should swing by Key West. I thanked Leann for the one night stay but I was going to pass on the long term stay.

That's going to wrap it up for my Leann story.