Issue link: https://viewer.e-digitaledition.com/i/1196019
22 | WINTER 2020 eaving the frigid home base behind and basking for months in a postcard- approved tropical setting is the kind of behavior that dreams and retirement funds are made of. Whether you're thinking domestic or international destination, here are four top snowbird destinations to warm your wings. Defrost in Key West Everyone knows about the Florida Keys. At least on a map. There they are, reaching into the Caribbean like a beckoning finger — labeled with all those fictional-sounding (but real) names: Key Largo, Fiesta Key, Conch Key, Grassy Key, Sugarloaf Key … Last and foremost is Key West — the south- ernmost, sea-encircled town in the continental U.S. Just 77 miles north of the tropics and a fabled world unto itself. Key West marks the end of the Overseas Highway with its mile-long swath of tourist shops along Duval Street, its narrow side roads flanked in old wooden homes and gnarled banyan trees and, of course, its selfie-bait "0" mile marker sign plunked at the corner of Whitehead and Fleming streets. While visitors come and go here — riding those Old Town trolleys, museum hopping, beach lazing, sportfishing and noshing at Capt. Tony's Saloon (aka "Florida's oldest bar" where former Key West resident Ernest Hemingway quaffed between chapters) — snowbird residents here get to put aside all the tourist-fueled checklists, settle in and actually call this fanciful, palm- lined outpost home. There are two kinds of Key West snowbirds, notes keywestislandnews.com: "Those who live here and those who vacation here." A quick glance at all the multimonth rental offerings on this isle — ocean-view condos, gingerbread- style cottages, Old Town manors, a "chateau" on neighboring Shark Key — confirms you can be whatever type of winter escapist you want. Kick the cold in Cabo Gray whales aren't the only smart creatures migrating to the breezy lagoons and bays of Mexico's Baja California Sur for the winter. A L