Theatre of the Sea - Florida Keys Islamorada

We left Florida City and headed down to Key Largo and along Hwy 1 through the Keys.  Our first stop was in Islamorada at the Theater of the Sea, a show of sea animals including dolphins, sea lions, giant sea turtles, parrots, iguana amongst others all within a salt water lagoon.  We were really impressed with the care they gave their animals, many of which had been injured by fishing nets and boat props...some turtles were swimming with lift jackets or weights to solve congenital buoyancy problems.  And the parrots.....wow, they solve shape and colour puzzles and can add and subtract all of which our 16 month old grandchild is incapable of doing (yet!!)

Traffic in Miami

Hey blog readers....we left Daytona Beach in glorious weather and headed south toward Miami via Hwy 95 as we were getting worried that we won't be able to do the Keys and New Orleans and get back home in time to meet our babysitting obligations. The traffic got very heavy by the time we reached West Palm Beach (and where is Cathy Morrissey when you need her??) and stayed really heavy for the next 100 km until Interstate 95 ended in Miami.  At that point we got onto Hwy 1 but things got really bad at that point.  It was 92F, Dave had his jacket on and was hot, Bev had her jacket off and was hot, it was stop-and-go for another hour!! Now, let me say that with the heat of the asphalt added to the heat of the bikes (which was burning Bev's right thigh), and the heat of the air we was loosing fluid fast.  We pulled off to re-group and consulted the GPS.  It immediately re-routed us over to the Florida turnpike = a toll road will less traffic. We then learned about the class system on Florida roads, excellent toll roads with not much traffic vs clogged regular highways and interstates.  We ended the day south of Miami in Florida City and will get to Key West tomorrow.  Here is Bev just before our first pool swim.........yeah for hot weather and palm trees.

Travel Day with great weather

Finally we have great t-shirt weather.
Given the southern hospitality, aside from the bike parking episode in Charleston, we decided to give Savannah Georgia a pass though we did pull off for lunch in a Savannah suburb called Richmond Hill. Nice, as we are from Richmond Hill in Ontario Canada. We made it to Daytona Beach Florida and will set off for Miami tomorrow morning.  On a final note, our hotel seems to be right beneath a take off route for the local airport.  I hope we can get some sleep!

Charleston

After figuring out how to deal with the parking issue (see earlier post) we did enjoy the town...albeit in 2-3 hour time slots. From the central market area we took a Carriage Tour through the narrow streets and admired the beautiful mansions and gardens.  The houses tend to be relatively narrow and extremely long in order to catch the breezes in the summer; contrary to popular belief most Plantation owners did not have big country mansions. Rather, they had ordinary small farm houses in the country where they farmed cotton, rice and indigo (with slaves) and the mansions in town.  The swampy rural areas of the low country had mosquitos that carried yellow fever and malaria, so the rich plantation owners and family built gorgeous mansions in town especially for the hot summers. We toured several museums one in the Old Slave Market and the other was the Old Exchange and Provost Dungeon.  The Slave Market was used in the mid-1800s through which 40% of all arriving slaves were processed, traded and sold...this made Charleston very very rich in the process.  The 1768 Exchange building is one of the last formal structures built by the British Colonial Government in the American colonies and it is where imported goods were traded and tariffs paid. An interesting point was that Charleston used to be called Charles Town, named after King Charles II.
Tomorrow we are heading south to try to get to Florida fast via the interstate ....the weather is still cool here.

DO NOT TAKE YOUR BIKE TO CHARLESTON SC

We set out for a full day of sightseeing in historic old Charleston. We followed the excellent signage to the Visitors Center and pulled into the parking lot in front of the Center. The sign on the lot said NO MOTORCYCLES and a nasty angry parking attendant came out of her booth and said YOU CAN NOT PARK HERE. I got off the bike and said where should I park. She said go inside and ask them in the Visitors Center but move your bike - By this time several cars had lined up behind us all trying to enter the parking lot. I went over to the booth and asked her where I should park while I went ask where to park. She said I should go around back. We got the line of cars to back up and got the bikes turned around in the narrow brick driveway and set out around the block. After circling two blocks we discovered a driveway behind the Visitors Center that had a sign that said that only motorcycles should park in the motorcycle parking spots - this was encouraging. We entered the lot and found all the motorcycle slots fenced off so we parked in a car spot and purchased a parking ticket using a credit card which we placed on Bev's Bike - we hoped it wouldn't blow away.

We went into the Visitor's Center and lined up to talk to a representative of the good city. We finally got to the counter; Bev politely explained our unhappiness with this discrimination against bikers - Dave was too angry to say anything civil . The woman behind the counter explained that a biker had been struck by a gate on a parking lot and had successfully sued the City (for a whack of money). As a result bikes were not permitted in lots with gates. She directed us to a lot several blocks away that had meters and allowed bikes. When we got to the lot we realized that we did not have enough change to park long enough to see anything and so we returned to the lot behind the Visitors Center where we could use a credit card to purchase 2 hr worth of parking.

We finally left the bikes in this lot and went to explore Charleston. When we got to the Market area we saw cars in metered parking spots with boots bolted on the tires. This town is serious about parking enforcement. Due to fear of having our bikes locked up we returned to the Visitors Center every 2 hours to purchase more parking tickets. In spite of our parking woes we really enjoyed Charleston and highly recommend it to fellow tourists who drive CARS.

Boone Hall Plantation

The morning we left Wilmington it was about 8 C/40 F and we wore every layer we could..including long johns and rain gear....geeezzzz where the heck is the spring???  We drove to Myrtle Beach and discovered miles and miles of tacky family oriented activities all along the road....the road went on forever and then we found out that was only NORTH Myrtle Beach.  So we got back onto Hwy 17 but still it took forever to get through the built up area.  The weather remained cold and a bit windy.....which reminds me...how do you gage the wind?  How about when you are high on a bridge hanging on for life on the bike and you wonder "what the heck is that beside me?"  Upon looking over it is a bird gliding on the wind going at the same speed as you about 12 feet from the bike.
We continued on through a large forested area and arrived on the outskirts of Charleston, South Carolina, where we stopped off to visit the Boone Hall Plantation.  It has a magnificent entrance lined with Live Oak trees and dripping Spanish Moss.  The mansion is the 3rd edition of the original; it was build by a Canadian in the 1930s !  There is an excellent black history presentation provided in a number of brick slave houses.  BTW, the weather warmed up mid-afternoon = yeah.  And Bev finally got to wash her bike.

Gales on the Outer Banks

PREFACE:  You know when you look at bikers going by on the highway, you think "wow, that must be so much fun!  bet they just smile all the time...."  WELLL, let me be a little truthful....it can be damn right scarey at times....and still you have to smile and that is hard.

So we set of from our motel in Nags Head in the Outer Banks amidst bright sunshine and high high winds (30m/50km).  Although windy we were doing reasonable well until we crossed over a high bridge onto Pea Island. There are no houses on the island, only the dunes separate the highway from the Ocean. OMG  the wind was so strong that our faces were being blasted with sand and the dunes were stretching across the road....now let me say, on a fully loaded bike riding on sand is not fun. When really bad we pulled over to a visitors' centre and the staff person informed us that the ferry sometimes doesn't run during such high wind as the water moves enough via the wind to make it too shallow for the crossing.  Well what a relief we had a reasonable excuse to backtrack and take a very long way around to Wilmington (of course we had to pass the dunes again).  Before going back Dave chanced climbing over the dunes to check out the surf....hmmm, he got a free exfoliation curtesy of the gale force driven sand and sand was still falling from his hair at lunch.