Johnston

Before we left the campground this morning, Mom saw this across the road from us and borrowed my camera to snap a picture of him. Good to know she's still enjoying such little things.

Mom hadn't been able to attend chuch for a couple of weeks, so I took her back to Titusville this morning to a Seventh Day Adventist Church I found on the internet. There was also one in Daytona Beach, which wouldn't have required driving backwards, but it was farther and I wouldn't have been able to get her there for the Sabbath School, which she likes. It was a pretty nice church, they had a concert for the main service today. (I forgot to grab the camera before everybody left.)

After the service, we ate a picnic lunch on the lawn behind the Church, which was quite nice.

This took us into the afternoon of course, and since I'd gone back south to get to Titusville, we'd actually gone a negative 10 miles so far today! Since we only had about a 1/2 day left and I wanted to get to Saint Augustine by tonight, I figured we had about enough time for one side trip at the most and it should be Merritt Island NWR. It has something called a "Manatee Observation Area", which sounded promising. We had some doubts after reading my Aunt's comments, but thought maybe they'd fixed the road since her visit so we'd give it a try.

When we got to the turnoff, it appeared to still be a sandy road, but it was quite compacted so I kept going. The observation area was not very far past the turnoff, maybe a block or so? There were a few people around and others fishing on the other side of the canal. I wasn't very optimistic since we'd learned at the Manatee Center that manatee like to go out into the open bay when the weather is nice, but figured it was worth a try.

Wow!

We did see three manatee, they sometimes swam directly in front of us, sometimes off to the side, then back. We stayed there at least 30 minutes and saw manatee's the entire time we were there. The sign says they just like that area, scientists aren't sure why but suspect minerals in the water. Sometimes as many as thirty have been seen at one time - I was just happy to see three.

The first thing you might see is something like this. Often, that's all you see.

The water is shallow enough here to see the animals much better however. For a change, I actually used a filter to good affect here! The water was a little difficult to see through, but with the polarizing filter I could actually see, and photograph the animals much better.

Now, here's the real treat - three manatee's in the wild:

I also wanted to go to the visitors center, but am afraid I didn't check the map first. With Mom navigating, we actually went to the Cape Canaveral National Seashore Visitors Center, not the Merritt Island NWR Visitors Center. So we ended up seeing different things. Merritt Island NWR is a major birding location - but if I upload any more bird pictures I'll probably break Travellerspoint, so maybe it's just as well we went a different direction. We were also running out of time (the Seashore Visitors Center was much farther out of our way), so we didn't take the time to really check out the area as much as we'd have liked.

We did stop by a place called Turtle Mound. Before Juan Ponce de Leon landed in Florida in 1513, there were as many as 40,000 Timucuan people living in this area. The mounds and middens were created as they discarded shells, animal bones and other refuse. By the time the Spanish withdrew from Florida in 1763, there were only a few Timucuan remaining and they went to Spain with the Spanish. Earlier settlers didn't understand the archeological value of these mounds and used many of them for road building material. Turtle Mound is one of the few reminders we have left of the Timucuan. The mound isn't much to see in itself, it is now covered with tree's and brush and the NPS has built a raised trail to the top so you can climb it without damaging the mound. However, when you think about how it was built with only discarded shells & bones, it's pretty impressive (maybe 100' x 50' x 25' tall? That's just my guess from climbing it.)

We stopped at the visitors center and bought a few postcards and such, then hit the road. I was bound and determined to get to Saint Augustine tonight - and we'd used up almost all of the day and were still in the same general area that we'd stayed in last night! So I headed over to the Interstate, I-95, and just drove North. Of course, I picked the most expensive campground in the area (not picked really, I just turned into the first one I could find). It's on the beach however and just a few minutes from St. Augustine. Just for kicks, I decided to check out the beach. Mom was really, really tired, so I thought she'd be asleep before I got back - but no, guess who decided to go for a night walk with me?

Good night - and please enjoy the manatee video! (Didn't want to slow things up trying to edit it and make it fancy, if you turn the sound off - it's not too bad just as is.)

Logistics:

Miles Driven - 149
Camped at Bryn Mawr Campground on the Atlantic Ocean, just outside of St. Augustine, FL

Reluctantly, I pulled myself away from the lovely Long Point County Park and the plethora of exotic birds there. Mom and I had collected quite a bit of books and stuff during our trip to the Key's and since, so really needed to find a Post Office. Our RV is too small to store stuff on such a long trip, so from time to time we just box everything up that we've collected and mail it home. We finally located a PO off the main road in Melbourne and got rid of several pounds of stuff (and $$ to send it) when Mom met Ruth. She is also turning 80 in February and was thrilled to meet Mom and learn about our trip. Instead of getting upset about her age, she's decided to embrace it and is adopting the catch phrase for this year of "80 in 08" - pretty cool.

I figured Cape Canaveral wasn't very far up the road, so I could afford a little time to stop at a couple of beaches (not realizing that I needed more time at the Kennedy Space Center then I left myself of course). At least Brevard County has lots of beaches set aside for public use. We passed a lot of city or county parks along the beaches with plenty of parking (and no nasty RV's Keep Out notes). Most have short boardwalks to get over the sand dunes to the beach (without damaging the dunes). On one of these, we must have seen about a dozen of these little lizards just out sunning themselves. They were only about 3 inches long, so my guess is that they were juveniles.

Several beaches were lined with fishermen. Apparantly, there was a really good run of fish yesterday, so today a lot of folks brought out there poles hoping to clean up. Of course, the fishing wasn't quite as good today. The picture I uploaded doesn't show the fishing, but it is a good view of the beaches looked up here. There are lots of breaking waves, but it is a fairly steep beach, so they break fairly close in.

A little further (Cocoa Beach I think), we found a different sort of wildlife - surfers. The waves were forming a little farther out so this was probably a better beach for surfing (not being a surfer myself, I'm speculating a bit). However, these guys weren't much for surfers either - we watched for quite a while, but this is the closest I could get to any of them standing up on a board. They were very good at sitting on boards in the surf however.

Finally we got to Kennedy Space Center. There is a very large visitors center. Mom had banged her toe in the RV and it was quite black and blue, so I got a wheel chair for her - although she probably needed it anyway, this place was a little too big for her to walk around in even with her walker. Unfortunately, I accidentially left the camera set to 'movie', so when we asked some tourists to take our picture at the entrance - it took a movie. I captured a still frame from it to post, but the quality is poor - but it's one of those 'You Were There' shots, so I had to post it (sorry)

The Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex used to be run by NASA. I haven't visited it previously so can only provide conjecture, but my guess is that it was less flashy but had more meat? Another visitor told us that it used to be much better. A couple of years ago, management of the visitors center was turned over to a private company, who has definitely given it the look and feel of a theme park. I don't mind that so much, but it seemed 'dummed down' too much for my taste. For example, there were plenty of gift shops with lots of brick-a-brack, but only short little tourist overviews. If you want to learn about space travel, NASA, or anything above a 5th grade level, you won't find it here. The same thing is true with the informative signs and plaques around the complex - just summary level information that is designed to be easy to read and absorb, nothing too complicated.

OK now that I got that off my shoulder (there is no pleasing some people), let me tell you about what we did see. First, even if you don't like theme parks, you should probably leave yourself more than 1/2 day as we did - this is a very large complex and there is quite a bit to see. We started with a bus trip around the space center. There were informative videos on the bus and the bus drivers pointed out things along the way. Unfortunately, the bus didn't slow down at all, so it was difficult or impossible to take pictures, but I will tell you this: We saw manatee's, an armadillo, an osprey, a bald eagle, alligators and of course heron and egrets. Yes - there were three manatee's in a pond along the drive. The bus tour was of the space complex - but Cape Canaveral is also home to Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge and NASA works closely with the NWR to protect the wildlife on their facility. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get any shots of the wildlife, the bus just blew by them too fast. But we did see manatees!

The first big complex we drove by is where the Shuttle Orbiter is prepped for missions, then assembled for relaunch with it's external fuel tanks in something called a Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB). This is one of the larger buildings in the world, but is hard to grasp as such because it just stands there kind of by itself. For point of reference, each star on the US Flag is six feet across. There is also some hurricane damage visible on the side of the building.

Another way to refer to the VAB is as the largest single story building in the world. The shuttle is in it's normal, horizontal position when it returns from space and is cleaned up and preped for the next mission. The VAB has giagantic cranes inside that raise it to the vertical position to connect with the fuel tanks. Then leading from the VAB to the launch site is an 8 mile long 'crawlway'. It kind of looks like a light tan highway in these shots, the tan is because it's made of gravel/rock (I doubt if any other surface could manage the weight it has to carry).

The space shuttle/fuel tank assembly is moved from the VAB to the launch site using a giant crawler. There are two of these, the only ones in the world of course. They can move at 1 mph empty, or 1/2 mph fully loaded.

Fortunately for us there was a shuttle sitting on one of the launch pads. It was scheduled to go up this week but the launch has been postponed until February. A lot of people had come to Cape Canaveral to watch the launch, so were disappointed when it was delayed. From what I could tell, this is a fairly frequent occurance these days as NASA tries to eliminate risk from what is an inherently risky venture. Don't get me wrong, if you can prevent another Challenger disaster I think you should, but there is also a cost to avoiding risk too much. Anyway, it was kind of exciting to be able to see a shuttle actually sitting on the pad waiting to be launched.

BTW - at least the revamped visitors complex is very ADA assessable. Many facilities had multiple stories and every one of them had elevators, so Mom didn't have to skip any activities unless she wanted to.

At the overlook between the VAB and the launch sites, they had one of the shuttle main engines on display. It had been retired after 15 shuttle missions (and 63 test firings), a very complex device. (Mom is in the picture, I didn't do a very good job adjusting for the light, so it's pretty dark on that side).

The bus next took us to the Apollo/Saturn V exhibit. First they took us all into a room where they had set up the actual Apollo launch control center, but modified it to run as part of a simulation of a Saturn V launch. It was actually quite good (after all my complaining). The external shots of the engines firing are all on three giant display screens above the control room and the video was quite impressive. This picture is dark, because the control room is dark while a launch is going on - I took one of the room with a flash after the simulation was complete and it just looks dead, so I like this (dark one) better...

We went from the launch control room into a giant building that houses a complete Saturn V rocket, including the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) and Apollo spacecraft.

There are a few exhibits around the room, not many, but a few. Here is a picture of an Apollo space suit and one of Mom touching a moon rock.

After the Apollo exhibit, we got back on the bus to the main visitors center. They have a new ride called the "Shuttle Launch Experience". It is basically an amusement park ride, but based on the space shuttle launch and used a lot of astronaut input to make it as realistic as possible. Camera's and backpacks have to be locked up before the ride so I can't share an pictures except the outside of the building. But the ride shakes and rotates and makes if feel a little like G-forces and of course with a lot of noise and video. It only lasted a couple of minutes but it was a lot of fun. (Mom opted out of this one, but she was able to watch it from the observation room).

In the main part of the visitors comples is a full scale replica of a space shuttle you can walk through and also some of it's external tanks. There were also other exhibits, but by this time the visitors complex was getting ready to close so we had to end our visit here (with a brief stop at the gift shop).

After this, we didn't have enough time left to visit the NWR so drove up the highway and found an RV park. I plan to take Mom to church in the morning, so we'll see - Saturday could be a fairly short blog day again.

Logistics:

Miles Driven - 79
Camped at Holiday Village (RV Campground) in Mims, FL

Shortly after we headed out this morning, I spied a Toyota Dealership on the right side of the road with a really tall service entrance door! I've had the RV serviced several times during the trip, but have generally had to use a generic quick lube type places. For some reason, the Toyota dealers in the northeast do not like to service RV's. However I prefer to go to a dealership on occasion so they can check for odds and ends that a generic service place wouldn't know to check. Since I hadn't had the oil changed since Delaware, we pulled in. They fit us in and didn't complain about the height or weight of the rig (as a previous dealer had done), and got us back on the road again for much less then I'd expected. We should be good to go now for another trip around! (just kidding)

With the rig properly serviced, we got back on Hwy 1 heading north. I figured we weren't going to see any water or scenery on Hwy 1, so attempted to head east again to Hwy A1A - but found another unscheduled route change instead (our term for getting lost). A few traffic circles and zig zags later, we were back on Hwy 1 going north. Not one to learn my lessons quickly, I took yet another road to try to go East. It didn't take us to Hwy A1A, but did run into Hwy 707 which follows the waterway that separates the barrier islands from the mainland. I finally found what I was looking for in Florida - an undeveloped section of waterway (it won't be for long, they're putting in new homes along there also).

This was a lovely drive even after we got back to homes lining the road. At least they were single family homes rather then condo's. There might have been some more expensive ones as we approached the town of Port Saint Lucie, but were more old style high end homes rather then the over the top mansions we'd seen further south. There is a nice 1913 fixer (complete rebuild actually) for sale for $850,000 if you're interested? No? Well then we'll move on to Fort Pierce.

Fort Pierce was established in 1837 on the Indian River Lagoon and named after it's first Commander, Col. Benjamin K. Pierce (President Franklin Pierces older brother). However, the homesteaders who first tried to settle in the area moved to St. Augustine after an altercation with the local Seminole Indians. Homesteaders didn't return again until the 1860's, making Florida one of the last frontier territories to be developed.

For our purposes, Mom just wanted to visit the Manatee Center, which is located in Fort Pierce. This does not keep manatee's in tanks, but is a place where they can be frequently seen and had exhibits and information about them, including an excellant video. It is located at the outlet of a creek where the power plant discharges slightly warm water. When it's cold, the manatee's like to hang out there because of the warmer water. The day we visited was quite warm and sunny and no manatee's had been spotted in the harbor all day. They prefer the open bay when the water's warm enough. But we went through the center and enjoyed learning about the 'sea cows'.

While we didn't see any manatee's, we did see some rather odd looking fish. The volunteer said they are needle fish and quite common in this area.

Across from the Manatee Center is the Visitors Center for Fort Pierce. This is located in the 1905 Seven Gables House, one of the earliest homes in the county. (The original did not have glass doors, those were added for the Visitors Center).

The folks at the visitors center were kind enough to straighten me out from going completely around in circles. It seems there are two separate barrier islands across the "Indian River", North and South Hutchenson Islands. There are separate bridges to each one - and if I'd gone the route I was planning (to the bridge I could see), it would have taken me to the South Island and back southwards again. They gave me directions to the North Bridge, which we took. Both bridges are draw bridges and the span I was on was open when we got there. I had just enough time to hop out and take a picture of the South Bridge (Identical, just goes to a different island). I'm sure the cars behind me were scratching their heads... Tourists!

Eventually all the boats passed under and I had to get back in the RV, which I managed to do before the draw span closed. Shortly after arriving on the other side, we saw signs for a Seal Museum. We weren't sure what this was exactly, but it was still early so I decided to check it out. (The earlier brown signs didn't have as much information as this.)

Yes, this is a museum about the U.S. Navy Seal's, or Frogmen. The program was started in WWII to provide troops skilled at underwater demolition and water-reconnaissance. This is an example of a WWII Frogman's equipment:

There are exhibits showing more information about how the unit was formed, the types of equipment and weapons used (and also used against them). They are organized by era, WWII, Post WWII, Vietnam, and modern. Outside are some standing exhibits of the types of craft used.

While the museum was built just to be a museum, it is located at the site where the units originally trained - the beach at Fort Pierce. This is now a county park and the beach is open to the public.

Take a close look at the bottom of this sign. I believe this will be my new catch phrase -Dept. of Leisure Services!

Anyway, we're in Florida to experience the Country, so of course we had to spend some time on at least one more beach...

ps - I did find out what these birds are finally, they are Royal Terns.

In the dune plants along the walk back to the RV, I did manage to snag another butterfly.

So with a little beach time in, we decided to head north about 40 miles to a State Park and see if they had any camping sites left. We drove along a stretch where the road was close to the water (Indian River, the portion of the Atlantic between the islands and the mainland) and saw quite a few Heron, Egrets, Ibis, and Brown Pelicans. Although I was tempted, this time I didn't stop for pictures. We got to the State Park and fortunately they did not have any spaces available. And why was this fortunate, you might ask?

The State Park suggested we try a county park two miles farther up the road. The county park is Long Point and they did have space available right on the water at a very reasonable rate. They also have lots, and lots of birds - Wood Storks, Heron, Great Egrets, Ibis and many others. The birds seem to have gotten accustomed to people being in their park and the county has set aside special areas for them, including a wildlife pond and Scout Island (which you can walk around, but not camp on).

A lot of folks who stay here like to fish and the birds have figured out that if they hang out where the fish cleaning is done, they can get a cheap meal - including the camper next to us. We've had wood storks hanging out by our RV all day - also Ibis and a Great Heron. And yes, we stayed an extra day here. It is such a nice spot and I really had to get some work done (4th qtr est. taxes due, add more screws to the door, among other things). These are the pic's from the first night.

Disclaimer: ALL of the pictures from here down were taked from within 25 feet of the RV!

Here are some pic's from today (Thursday). BTW - this is just a small sample...

And finally, while we were eating lunch I spotted a fin out on the water. I grabbed the camera (of course) and think I captured a dolphin swimming near a brown pelican. Mom thinks it's a shark, but we're not sure. I took some video also (not uploaded) where it shows three separate fin's (dolphin's again, I think. They didn't swim like dolphin's however?). Actually, now that I'm editing the pictures and can zoom in a bit more, it looks more like an Orca?

(This isn't really a bird or any sort of wildlife in the normal sense, but he flew overhead while Mom & I were outside for a few minutes and I just couldn't resist taking a shot at capturing the flight. Nothing special, just capturing some ambiance from today.)

Logistics:

Miles Driven - 81
Camped at Long Point County Park

ps - thought I'd move this to the end, gets you into the meat of the blog sooner. Also, since Travellerspoint puts the weather in automatically, not sure why I was also doing it except to help the C vs F impaired (such as myself). Let me know if you want it changed back.

Well, we're in South Eastern Florida so it seemed to me we ought to spend some time at a beach or at least driving along the shore. Surprise, surprise - the beaches in south eastern Florida are lined with Condo's, hotels and mansions.

We continued driving north along Hwy A1A, the road that goes up the barrier islands separated from the mainland by the Intercoastal Waterway (or maybe they're not even islands, I'm not sure). Generally this is as close to the shoreline as you can drive (either Atlantic Ocean or Intercoastal Waterway). Some parts of the road ran right along water. It was also interesting seeing so many mansions - there's quite a bit of money in SE FL!

We could see beaches on occasion, but the parking areas had big signs - No RV's. It didn't matter how big or small, nor how much space was open - No RV's. Fort Lauderdale has a beautiful beach and had parking available (it was fairly early in the morning), but again big signs saying - No RV's. We kept driving and and finally found a county park just south of Palm Beach that didn't have any signs outlawing RV's! It was a nice park also. There was a small flock of Ibises were wandering around the picnic area - including both adults (white) and juveniles (brown).

(Thumbnail alert - on small photo's, you can click to enlarge).

Across the highway was a nice beach.

The flags indicated moderate hazard surf (yellow) and dangerous marine life (Portuguese Man O' War & Jellyfish I suspect). Here's a Man O' War that had washed up on the beach, very toxic and dangerous.

We didn't want to get stung by these things, but got out and enjoyed the water a bit anyway.

Lovely beach, much more like I was expecting for eastern Florida. OK - I expected the Condo's and development (I have been here before), but not the lack of access (I have not been here before in an RV). So now I'm wondering why everyone goes so far south - why not just stop in mid FL? Oh well, maybe they like it hot, humid and crowded. That's probably not fair of me, most people who just fly use a rental car, or drive and stay in hotels or drive a big rig and two a small car behind should do fine. Can't expect the whole world to cater to my travel preferences (but I can ask, right?)

Anyway, since we're on a trip to travel - not just to sit on beaches (I think), we got back on the road and continued North. Having done some beach sitting, I decided to switch to the Interstate (I-95) for awhile and really make some tracks. We did make pretty good time too, at least until we saw a brown sign just a little north of Palm Beach for a place called Jupiter. Jupiter, it seems, has a Light House and a Florida History Musuem.

Disclaimer: No, I am not a Lighthouse fan particularly, nor a Butterfly collector, nor a bird watcher, nor a... Or at least I was none of these things before we left on this trip! It's just that if we see something of interest, we stop. Since we've been following the coast down from Maine, we've passed a lot of lighthouses and stopped at several. Maybe I just find a lot of things of interest?

So we stopped at Jupiter. I had to get off the freeway anyway since Mom had an important phone call appointment to straighten out her Social Security benefits (which she was able to do successfully BTW). While she completed her phone interview, I checked out the museum grounds. This is located on a channel & river with an outlet to the ocean so it must be a place where fish concentrate. There were quite a few different shore birds at the waters edge. I've posted pic's before of these same types of birds, but still thought these were cool because of the mix of birds together in the shots.

OK - enough of the birds (maybe you think I've gone to the birds?) Mom got off the phone and we went through the museum. This is in a building that was built for US Army as married mens quarters at the beginning of WWII. The Army needed to establish a station to try to find German U-Boats that were torpedoing ships off the Florida coast. Since Mom was also born and raised on the west coast, all this U-Boat activity off the east coast surprised her as much as it did me.

After the museum, Mom went back to the RV to relax while I decided to climb the Lighthouse (of course). George Meade also designed this structure (seems he was a pretty good engineer even if he wasn't the best Civil War General). The Lighthouse was located at the top of a small (46') hill so the brick structure wouldn't have to be as tall to still get the light high enough.

The reason the lighthouse was needed is that the Gulf Stream is closer to the Florida coast here than any other place. There were no Americans in the area nor any community except for the Seminole's, but there were a lot of wrecks along the coast here due to the proximity of the Gulf Stream. The Lighthouse was the first structure built in what is now Palm Beach County and for many years was the only presence of white men (& the keeper's families) in the area. The area was thick with Mosquitoes and was quite unhealthy. This was in 1855 - 1859, when the lighthouse was built, so this section of Florida was populated fairly late.

There are 105 steps to the top (plus 50 or so up the hill, so the total climb is a bit longer then some). The steps at the top are fairly narrow, but at least are connected to the walls.

At the top is a first order Fresnel lens. The windows in the tower were for air flow to help keep the flames burning (they didn't have electricity in 1860 when this was first lit.) Whale Oil was too expensive so in the 1800's the lanturns burned lard. This was switched to Kerosene in 1910, the electricity in 1928. The lighthouse building was restored in 2000, which was a very expensive undertaking. At least two local celebraties bought bricks to assist with the cost, Perry Como and Jimmy Buffett (who has also apparently written a novel based in part on the Lighthouse). During the restoration, the glass in the Fresnel Lens had to be individually removed, restored and replaced. There are at least 25 separate pieces of glass in each of the four side panels. If a piece of glass gets broken, they just keep it or fix it in place the best that they can. The formula to make the glass has been lost and Fresnel Lens glass cannot be replaced.

The exterior glass also has an interesting shape. The triangle sections make it easier to curve the housing around the lens.

Of course, the view from the top was great. BTW - the house on the left in the top shot of Jupiter Island is (or was) Perry Como's. The second shot shows more of the inlet & ocean. Some 11 lucky Coast Guard families live in these houses on the grounds (it is still an active USCG station, but only used for the residences at this time).

It was still pretty early at this point, but I was tired (from playing with the video editing software too late), so we pulled into a State Park across the street and, surprisingly, they had space! We hadn't plugged in for the last two nights - and had managed to spill the better part of a box of cereal in the rig, to say nothing about beach sand, so I spent the rest of the remaining daylight vacuming - but the campground was nice and we enjoyed it. Mom gathered some scrap twigs and pine cones and actually started a pretty nice little campfire!

Logistics:

Miles Driven - 88
Camped at Jonathan Dickinson State Park near Jupiter, FL

Logistics:

Miles Driven - 108
Weather - Warm & Muggy, Light Breezes (e.g. Shorts & Swimsuits)
Camped at Hallandale Walmart (Between Miami & Fort Lauderdale)

Musings:

Mom is in no hurry to leave South Florida, she was pointing out Trailer Parks today where I could buy her a unit if I was so inclined. Hopefully, by the time we start moving west again the cold snap up north will have passed and she'll forget all about it. Maybe I'll haul out the shots we took at Flamingo and remind her how cold it got down here?

Narrative:

Long Key State Park, where we stayed last night, is the only SP in Florida where all the campsites are on the water. It is so popular, people book it up as soon as they start taking reservations (11 months in advance) - at least for December & January. The ranger said there is usually space available in other months. We just got lucky and happened to stop by after someone cancelled!

Checkout time is 1 PM, so we stayed as long as we reasonably could and didn't get much travelling in today. But we did get a full morning of relaxing on the beach! Mom actually managed to catch me in action:

I decided to spend some time picking up shells (mostly it was an excuse to putter around in the water), this beach had some little, tiny spiral type shells that I thought would be fun to bring back and share with folks. Of course, it takes a whole lot of little tiny shells to fill a small cup... Anyway, while I was playing around and standing in about six inch deep water, I heard a splashing sound close by. A few feet further down the beach was a stingray!

Of course, the first thing I did was jump out of the water. The second thing I did was grab the camera and called Mom. A few other folks from another campsite came over and we all enjoyed a rare treat. My hunch is this one may not have been too well - I don't think you're supposed to see ribs, he was also missing his tail although it didn't appear to be a recent wound. I'm not sure they normally come up to the edge of the water like that, but maybe they do, I don't know much about these animals. He seemed to be keeping an eye on us and hung out on the edge of the beach like this for five or ten minutes, then took off.

Somehow we did manage to hit the road again just before Checkout, but here are just a few more shots of this special place to remember it by...

We stopped for gas a couple of Keys later, I couldn't resist taking a picture of the side of the convenience store building. This is what they use for stone down here. The Keys are the tops of ancient coral reefs that are now hard and turned to stone (fosselized?). This makes their rocks most unusual.

In Islamorada, near the end of our Keys journey, is a Memorial to the victims of the 1935 Labor Day Hurricane (9/2/35). The town suffered sustained winds of 200 mph for an extended period. The fancy 1912 Railroad was destroyed as well as some of the bridges that had been built between islands (Hwy 1 was not completed until later, so the RR was the only link between Key West and the mainland other than by boat).

We did succumb to one more tourist trap, but a tasty one? We found a Key Lime store that was open, and indulged in some more pie slices as well as a few other treats that may or may not make it home...

Finally, we made it back to the mainland and drove up Hwy 1 at least into South Miami. The traffic started to stall, so I decided to take I-95 and bypass downtown Miami. Mom wanted to do some more sightseeing (Biscayne Bay) but I think we need to start heading north and eventually west. Like all the other states we've been in so far, we won't see everything we want here, but we have also still seen a lot!

The freeway wasn't much better than Hwy 1 - it just didn't have stopsigns. After crawling along for another couple of hours we finally made it to a place called Hallandale, a few miles shy of Fort Lauderdale. The local RV campground is booked up until next April, so we found a Wal-mart and will continue our journey in the morning. Who knows, we might even find something interesting?