Florida is hot and very flat!

 This Morning Angela and I woke up early in our very soft bed at the Duval Inn. We then walked down the street to the 24 hour Denny's for a full breakfast and coffee. We ate some good food and then walked back to our hotel to pack up and leave. We enjoyed the Duval Inn, very much it was like staying at someone's house, someone who has a pool. We hit the road pretty early since Angela had a plane to catch in Ft. Myers. Our trip back to the mainland wasn't so bad compared to yesterday's delays. The heat is the hardest part of this trip. It's tough to stay awake when you have the hot air blowing across your face all day. We had to stop a couple of times to grab a Red Bull and some "helmet off" time to cool down. We drove on a section of I-75 north which crosses florida. This road is more flat and straight than any road in Kansas. It took a couple of hours to get across but that was a big chunk of the drive to the airport. We made it in plenty of time for Angela's flight. She changed her clothes on the sidewalk and I stuffed her moto gear in my side case to carry home. I kissed her goodbye and got back on the road in the 96 degree heat. I decided to drive until 6:30 which would leave 400 miles for tomorrow. I stopped at the first motel I found and grabbed a first floor room and took a much needed shower. There is a Sonny's BBQ is next door so I had a simple salad for dinner and now I am back in room for the night.

Tomorrow night I will be back in my own bed. I am partly sad about this trip being over, but I also want to start living a normal life again. I have seen so much of this country in the past seven weeks, it's almost a blur. At least I will always have this website to look back at my memories on any given day. Tomorrow I will reflect more on how it feels to be finished with a trip of a lifetime. For now I will enjoy my last night on the road, and sleep like a rock.

Some additional photos from the Everglades.

Key West is Best

Angela and I left out hotel in Homestead this morning and drove out to the Everglades national park. We took the main road about 40 miles to the south, in an area called Flamingo.  All we found there were a boat dock and a ton of mosquitoes flying around our heads. The bugs down here were crazy; we had to deal with the swarms of mosquitoes and some biting brown flies. These flies landed on you and took about a second before they took a mean bite. After braving the Everglades in the summer heat, we got back to our hotel and checked out around 12:00.

The drive to key west was to be about 3 hours across a bunch of bridges and through some small towns. We were moving along fine until we hit a traffic snag 22 miles outside of Key West. A truck and a car had collided at the middle of a main bridge and stopped traffic both ways for around 2 hours. We eventually made it through and finished the hot drive to Key West.

We checked into out cute little bed and breakfast called the Duvall Inn just off the main drag. We quickly jumped in the pool to cool ourselves off from our very hot ride and long day. After a shower we walked down to the Southern most point in the continental US concrete icon. We took some photos then moved on to catch the sunset since this is the “home of the sunset.”  We missed it by a few minutes but it was still nice to be here after all these miles. 

We walked around the corner for some very tasty Cuban food, and a couple celebratory mojitos. After dinner we walk back down Duval street and enjoyed the cool night breeze and many other people enjoying the nightlife. This is a nice little town and I am sad to leave after such a quick stay. I need to get Angela to the airport in Ft. Myers around 5:00 tonight for her flight back to the airport.

Even though this is the final destination for this mega journey, I still need to get home, so a couple more days on the road until I have to park this beast.