A woman was walking along Key Colony Beach outside the Glunz Ocean Beach Hotel & Resort when she came upon a plastic bottle with what she thought were dollar bills and sand inside, according to USA Today.
Judi Glunz Sidney, the co-owner of the hotel, couldn't get the bottle opened, so she brought it inside the hotel, where the receptionist helped her cut the top off of the bottle, where they then found a note written on yellow paper.
"My husband Gordon Scott 'Skinny' Smith loved to travel," read the note. "Call and tell me where he is...and let him travel on." The 'sand' was actually Smith's ashes.
Sidney then called Beverly Smith, Gordon's wife.
There was also a second note inside the bottle, this one from a man named Ross, which explained that he had found the bottle at Mile Marker 79 earlier this month at Islamorada, Florida.
"Please if you find him call Gordon's lovely wife and please call me and let us know where Gordon ended up," read the second note. "Put a new note in with him and let him travel on."
There was $2 in the bottle, which Ross explained was from Beverly to cover the cost of a phone call.
Sidney and her husband transferred the ashes into an empty rum bottle and added another note of their own, as well as another dollar. Everyone on the beach when Sidney found the bottle also added a dollar. The group then threw a beach party for Smith, passing around both the letter and the new bottle. They then drove the bottle to Seven Mile Bridge, where they threw the bottle back into the water, sending Smith on to continue his journey.
Beverly Smith says that she and her husband would travel to the Florida Keys every February from their home in Louisville, Tennessee.
"We'd blow in and everybody would have a good time," Beverly said, recalling that her husband would pass around moonshine to everyone at their campsite.
Gordon died in March 2012 after the couple returned from their silver anniversary trip to Costa Rica. Beverly then decided to send him traveling via the bottle.
"He loved the ocean," she said. "I wanted to let him travel a little and let him sail away."
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
