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Day 5
Got up really, really early because I fell asleep really, really early so I decided to get an early, early start. I left the hotel and went searching for a car wash so I could remove the fifteen million bugs that decided to die on my windshield. When I was able to see again, I continued onto journey to Key West. The weather was beautiful and traffic was very light.
I stopped for gas outside of Palm Beach and saw a perfectly still lake with lots of reeds that would have been a great picture, but there was no place to pull over. I was very disappointed.
The ride through southern Florida was mostly non-eventful, except that I almost got caught in a speed trap outside Miami. Floridians drive much like we do in New Jersey, using the speed limit more as a recommendation than a limit. The speed limit was 70 and traffic was moving about 10 mph faster, and I was moving with the traffic. Then I saw a motorist pulled over by a highway patrol office, so I immediately slowed down. When I rounded the curve I saw about a dozen police cars, and every one of them had pulled someone over. I had never seen that many police cars at a speed trap before. I was fortunate that they were all preoccupied with other drivers and didn’t pull me over.
I stopped at Biscayne National Park to get a stamp. I now have the Florida stamp; after I get a stamp in Maine I will have the “four corners”.
As began the ride down the keys I was very excited, this is something I had wanted to do ever since I saw the movie “True Lies”. The weather was just about perfect and there wasn’t a whole lot of traffic. The view was amazing: the sky was a brilliant blue, the sea was a shimmering blue-green, even the marsh grass looked pretty, this would be the kind of ride that motorcyclists dream of. Key West was just over 100 miles away; I figured I would be there in just under two hours.
As I rode through the first key I was fascinated with the scenery and shops. The second key was interesting and it was neat riding on the bridges. The speed limit dropped to 45, but I assumed that it would only be for a little while. As it turns out, I was wrong; the speed limit was 45 for much of the ride along the keys. After the first several keys and bridges, the ride was no longer exciting, it became rather monotonous. Not only was the speed limit 45, for some inexplicable reason people found it necessary to go slower than the law allowed. The closer I got to Key West, the hotter it became.
When I got to Key West, there was a lot more traffic and it seems that I caught every light red. By the time I got to where I was staying, I was tired, hot and sore.
The condo was nice, I turned up the air conditioner, relaxed and waited for Chris & Joe to arrive. They got in around 6 pm and we went to a grocery store for food and beer and wine. Then we went to Duval Street for dinner. We had a nice dinner and then wandered around Duval Street for a while. When we got back to the condo, I found the pain I was feeling in my foot while we were walking was actually a huge blister. We spent the rest of the night drinking.
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Jeanne
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Ride thru the Keys
You described your ride thru the Keys exactly like our ride last Feb.! It's unbelievable, isn't it??? I wanted to scream by the time I got there (and I love to ride in the car) and once we arrived it was so hot we couldn't stand it! Thank goodness for air-conditioning!