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.

Atlantis Launch

Friday, July 8 -- We made it!  We got to see the shuttle launch.  Wow, what an experience.  We got up at 3:00 a.m. to try to get a spot.  We drove up to the Space View Park, which was probably about 20 miles.  We must have gotten there to late to get the free parking because they hit us for $30 to park, but we got to park pretty close.  We walked around the park, checking out the situation.  It was already pretty full, lots of tents and people sleeping on blankets.  We walked over next to a bank and found what we thought was a better spot, so we walked back to the car and got our chairs and stuff.  And settled in.  It was now about 4:30 a.m.

We were under a streetlight, so Joe got his book out and read for a while, and I kept trying to doze off. We could barely see the lights on the launch pad across the river, and once it got light, we could only see the launch pad framework through binoculars.    Time went very slowly, but it didn't rain on us at all.  The crowd kept getting larger, and we moved over to a different spot when people in front of us raised their Easy-Up and blocked our view.  It was cloudy, so we didn't know if the launch was going to happen or not.
Daylight came about 6:00 a.m., still 5 1/2 hours to go. Here's the crowd in daylight, and the view we were watching across the river.  We saw 2 military jets and a NASA helicopter fly over, and a hovercraft (we don't know if this was military or not) kept patrolling the far side of the river.  There were several boats of different sizes out on the river -- they had the best view of all.

 Some people moved in beside us with a portable radio, so we got to hear what was going on from time to time.  Finally, the countdown started.  And stopped.  And continued.  Everyone was on their feet.

There's people everywhere now.  The cops blow a whistle every so often to get people to move off the street, but it seemed otherwise that they were allowing them to park about anywhere there was a hole.  Some of these people had huge cameras with them, and tripods.

And here it goes!!!!

Way cool!  We actually got to see it for several seconds before it disappeared into the clouds.  And the vapor stream hung around for quite a while.

 

We could have used Joe Myer's camera for this day.

We got back to the RV in about an hour, so we thought that was pretty good, considering the traffic.  And we slept all afternoon.  We had McDonald's breakfast sandwiches at 3:30, hamburgers from a park vendor at 9:30, so I'm not sure what meal is next, but I'm up from my nap, it's 5:00 p.m., so I should probably wake up Joe and fix us some dinner.  But what a day this was!

On to Cocoa

Thursday, July 7 - Today is a travel day, so we headed out to fuel ($3.459/gal here) and hooked up with Mike at McDonald's for a breakfast sandwich.  We took the very scenic A1A north through Melbourne, stopping here to walk over to the beautiful beach.

So you can see the sky was pretty cloudy, and we hit rain shortly after this rest stop.  The beach is very accessible along this route, with many parking areas, boardwalks over the sea oats to the beach, and restrooms and showers.  The waves were pounding in here pretty good, and there were a few surfers out.

A fisherman here had 4 poles in the water, but he never had any action while we watched.  We were hoping he would pull in something exciting, but no luck.

Part of the scenery here on this highway are the variety of mailbox posts.  We've seen lots of dolphin, manatee, and even some seahorse mailbox posts here in Florida, but we came upon some new ones today -- turtle, tiki hut, pelican, mermaid, lighthouse, iguana, and even a huge conch shell.  If we have time here (if the launch gets postponed) I hope we can find a subdivision with some of these that I can get photos of.   We continued on our way, on through Cocoa Beach where we had toured last month when we came over to the Kennedy Space Center, then headed over to the town of Cocoa and our campground.  At the stoplight where we were turning, a car beside us said it all.

We got to the campground about 3:00, and they were ready for us with registrations (and patriotic-ly decorated cupcakes) because they were expecting to be very busy.  They led Joe to the parking space while I got us registered, and the rain started then.  I got a ride in a golf cart to the RV to stay dry, and we hunkered down and watched it rain for a while.  We know the launch is very iffy, but we are keeping our fingers crossed.  And the plan is that we are getting up at 3:00 a.m. to go over to the Space view Park to try to find a parking space.

Key West to Port St. Lucie

Tuesday-Wednesday, July 5-6 - As we are leaving Key West this morning, I was thankful that we got through all these days here with no "tropical depressions/hurricanes" heading our way.  Actually, although we had some rain, the weather was pretty good because the clouds kept the heat a little lower (but not the humidity). After Trucker Joe got us backed out of our tight parking space, we got on the road about 9:45, after a 5-minute delay due to a rain shower.  Neither of us ever got in the water at the campground, although it was only 2 steps from our door.  We were always getting back at low tide, and although the water was clear enough to see fish, the current was pretty strong through here, so Joe was afraid we would be swept out to sea.  We saw several fish here in the water, but we didn't get out fishing poles either. 

As we were driving along, we thought we spotted another flying fish, but this turned out to be a blimp in the sky.  It is sort of fish-shaped, especially from a distance.

As we came upon the Bahia Honda State Park, we saw that someone else was in the parking spot we had a few days earlier.  But this was a good view of the campground here.

We passed a Veterans Memorial right along the highway that had a very pretty tree all trimmed up.  We didn't stop so I didn't get to see the memorial itself, but the tree had several different colors of blooms in it.

While it took us 4 days to get to Key West, it took us just less than 3 hours to get back to Homestead.  We continued on Hwy 1 until we got to I-95 at Miami, and that was a slow trip -- lots of traffic and stoplights, although the traffic had been no problem coming out of the Keys.  We opted to go over Miami on the freeway rather than driving through the city - a rare drive on an interstate for us.

Our next destination was the Ft. Pierce area, where my nephew lives, and Joe just decided to drive all the way today -- a total of 272 miles.  We found a very nice campground at Port St. Lucie, about 10 miles south of Ft. Pierce, and got set up about 5:00 p.m.

We got in touch with Mike and made plans for tomorrow, so we went up the street to Sonny's Barbeque for dinner, then drove out on Hutchinson Island to check out the beaches.

We made the whole loop back through Ft. Pierce, but it got dark on us so we called it a day (a long day!).  Wednesday morning we got directions to Bathtub Reef, a beach with good snorkeling, so we headed out there.  This is a really pretty area, with some beautiful homes and golf courses.  This was a nice beach, but the waves were pounding in pretty hard, and the lifeguard told us the snorkeling wouldn't be very good right now.  We got there about noon, at high tide.  There are 4 tides a day here, and low tide was 6 hours away, but then you could walk out to the reef because it would be sticking out of the water.  Maybe midway between the tides would be the time to snorkel, but we didn't last that long.  We did swim around some, but there were lots of big rocks underwater and I scraped my leg on one and it started bleeding.  I really was afraid the blood would draw in sharks, so I was a little apprehensive after that.

The coastline bows in here, and with the outer reef, it forms a bowl when, at low tide, the water is very calm and it's a very popular beach for families.  There was some surf here, but no one was snorkeling while we were there.  After a couple hours (we forgot our sunscreen), we headed back to camp for lunch and showers, and I threw our wet clothes in the washer/dryer at the campground.  I had taken a seasick pill in case we went snorkeling, and although it was supposed to be non-drowsy, while I was waiting for my laundry to finish, I could not keep my eyes open.  So when I got back to the RV, I laid down for 10 minutes, then it was time to go meet Mike, Lisa, and Corey.  We had a really good visit with them, went to dinner at a Mexican restaurant just up the street in Ft. Pierce.  Mike is always full of stories, so we shared some good laughs.

We head out in the morning back to the Cape Canaveral area, so we are keeping a close watch on the weather.  And it is not looking real good right now.  Rain is predicted for the next several days, so we are hoping the window is open for the launch to go off on time.  We'll be there!