Daytona

Saturday, July 9 - We headed up I-95 this morning about 20 miles, then cut back over to Hwy 1, which is also known as the Dixie Freeway, so we've been with Dixie for several days not.  (I've been trying to take a picture of this highway sign for days and just today finally got one.)
We worked our way over to A1A again and followed this scenic highway, but most of our view was blocked by condos with just an occasional glimpse of the ocean.  As we crossed the causeway, we went over Bird Island, which was literally exploding with birds.

When we got to the entrance to Daytona Beach, we turned to go over to the Daytona International Speedway so we didn't actually go down to the beach here.  You can actually drive on this beach, which we may come back and do.

We found the racetrack and took the "All Access Tour," which lasted about 2 hours.  This place was really busy today with lots of people from the shuttle launch stopping by to tour.  Joe called Jeff just as we were walking in to see if he wanted to give us his credit card number so we could buy tickets for all of us for next year's race, but Jeff didn't seem willing to do that.  This monument is Mr. and Mrs. William France, who designed and owns this track as well as Talladega (and maybe some others). 

We took a tram ride that took us to the garages, pit road, the lake, drivers meeting room, broadcast booth -- we saw the entire track and all of their facilities.

This track has 31% banking in the corners, and there was an "exhibit" that demonstrated how steep that really is.  The Petty Ride or Drive-Along was taking place here today, and we saw some of those cars driving on the track.  Joe got to do this Ride-Along in Phoenix a couple of years ago.

Here's the driver's meeting room, and us in Victory Lane.

They also have motorcycle and motocross races here, and an entire Bike Week.  Ricky Carmichael, the winningest motocross rider ever who is now driving in the NASCAR truck and Nationwide series, designs the track for the Supercross Race here.  Bridgette and John are big fans of Carmichael.

The view from the broadcast booth was pretty awesome -- you could actually see the whole  2 1/2 mile track, the same as the Brickyard in Indianapolis.

The tour concluded with a video presentation of all of the Daytona winners crossing the finish line, then we got to walk past Trevor Baines' car that he won this year's Daytona 500 in. 

We spent about 3 hours here, but got on the road again shortly after 3:00.  We headed up to Gamble Rogers State Park at Flagler Beach right on the beach, where they had one campsite left that would fit us, and we could not reserve it.  Fortunately, it was still available when we got there, which only took about 30 minutes but we drove through some heavy rain for a few minutes.  We got set up and walked over to the beach, and the water was surprisingly chilly -- much colder than it was just 100+ miles south at the last beach we were at, on Hutchinson Island.  But it is very pretty here.

We were still tired from our early morning yesterday, so we had an early night.  But I got up about 7:00 this morning, and when I opened the front curtain and saw the sun over the ocean, I, of course, had to go take some more pictures.

This is a pretty nice campground, and it's the closest to the ocean that we've got to camp, so we're feeling pretty lucky.