The Florida Motorcycle Trip - come on along for the ride...
Day 5 : Wednesday April 25 The Florida Keys
This was a day of awesome bridges. The whole road from Key Largo to Key West is about 100 miles of bridges. I am saving all of the bridge photos for the special "Bridges" page at the end. It is such a great road - there is much to see and the ocean is all around. The bridges are low, close to the water, so it is a layed-back ride, not a white-knuckler like the high Mackinaw bridge in Michigan. The weather was calm, which probably helps a lot. I wouldn't want to be here in a hurricane! You travel at a moderate pace - about 45 miles per hour, but you seldom have to stop. It is just great. We didn't see any storm damage around here.
There was an old waterway road that went parallel to the one that goes from Key Largo to Key West. Some people had walked out along the old bridge, setup tents and coolers, and were fishing off the bridge. That looked like fun. The pelicans would sit on the rail and keep sidling closer to the fishermen, like they were saying "Hey buddy, how are ya doin?" prior to stealing from the bait buckets. There was a cool little settlement on the last abandoned exit on the road.
By the time we got to Key West the heat of the day was coming on a little, so we found a nice cool bar right on the water and had a few refreshing beverages. What a great day. If I ever win the lottery I will be doing a lot more of this. There were big fish - some were about four to five feet long - crowding in the water between the boats at the dock. People would toss them a couple french fries on their way out of the bar.
In the evening we drove back north to Key Largo and watched the sunset behind the Caribbean bar. There was a nurse shark swimming around below the dock. This was our second night in the Florida Keys.
Day 6 : Thursday April 26 The Florida Everglades
One of the things I have been looking forward to the most is seeing alligators. I'll go see them at a tourist stop if I have to, but I'd rather see them in the wild. As things turned out, I would not need to pay to see alligators. There were alligators everywhere. You do not go wading in the water here the way you do in Wisconsin. The first ones we saw were in the Everglades National Park, right near the entrance. We stopped the bike on top of a culvert that ran under the road, and the rumble caused this alligator to herd her babies under the road to the other side.
We would see alligators everywhere there was water for the next couple of days. My hat blew off once when we were traveling down alligator alley and I had to stop the bike and run back down the roadside to get it. There were alligators eyeing me up the whole time while Julie watched in amusement. The alligator in the lower left photo was floating in a small lake in a campground. When I would walk by, he would drift around in the water to look straight at me.
At another campground, we heard the males bellowing and saw a canoe-sized alligator cross the lake into the marshy area where the bellowing came from. We also saw alligators do this kind of subsonic vibration thing that would cause a shower of water droplets to rain upwards from the water above their abdomen. Weird!
The best photo of the whole trip turned out to be this one that Julie shot during a midday stop for a picnic. This is just a small portion of the whole image, click on the picture for the full size image.
There were plenty of funny signs in Florida, many of them hand-made. We would make up our own text to accompany the signs, like "Stop teasing the alligators! They have already eaten your hands and feet. Do not continue to annoy the alligators!"
There were some other funny signs, too. I had no idea that manatees preferred construction zones. We must be very careful around the manatees - they can be very dangerous.
All around Florida are prisons, and we had seen prison work crews in a few places over the last few days. Today we saw a prison jumpsuit laying in the ditch. I wonder where that guy went without his jumpsuit.
We drove down to Flamingo and saw the wreckage of a nice resort down at the waterside. At the end of the road, there is a concession stand that sold cold beer and snacks. We enjoyed the scenery and watched the animals for a while. This bird was sitting on a sign that said "Do not feed the animals." He looked like he would help himself to our lunch.
The Everglades are beautiful and seemingly endless, but mostly inhospitable to humans. At least to ones like us. I imagine the natives could have lived off the land pretty well down here. There are fish everywhere. Everybody down here says that this is the best time of the year. Surprisingly, there aren't too many bugs.
After a fun day poking around in the Everglades, we went back for our last night in Key Largo, so we treated ourselves to a nice dinner at the motel. Their kitchen was very good. We ate outside, and two cats came and patiently watched us eat from a polite distance. I saved two small pieces and when I was done eating I gave it to them. They ate it and left. It was funny how we all seemed to know what was expected of us.
Day 7 : Friday April 27 Key Largo, Florida to Largo, Florida
We somehow ended up on a tollway near the Miami airport but managed to get past the airport before a massive traffic jam developed. On hiway 41 there were alligators galore. I really enjoyed this part of the ride. We had all day to get to Largo, where we were going to stay overnight with Julie's uncle Earl. By early afternoon we were in Fort Meyers. By late afternoon we were in St Petersburg. It was almost dark by the time we got to Largo, Florida. We went out for a bite to eat with Uncle Earl, then we checked out Julie's cousin Joe's shoe repair store. I had no idea there was so much machinery involved. There were milling machines, punches, lathes, and a variety of leather-working equipment. We stayed at Uncle Earl's condo that night. The next morning Earl was off to Washington DC with his his daughter LuJean and her family, so we were all up and dressed with bags packed by morning.. When LuJean called to make sure he was ready for the early flight, Earl pretended he was still in bed and had forgotten about it. He had her going pretty good for a while. Julie and I had to stifle laughter so she wouldn't hear us.
Day 8 : Saturday April 28 Largo, Florida to Perry Florida
One thing I noticed in Florida is that the high voltage transmission lines really sizzle in the humid salty air. In spite of Julie's directions, I managed to find the Salvador Dali museum using my technique of dead reckoning (aimless wandering). This was a rare victory for me.
Day 9 : Sunday April 29 Perry Florida to Pensacola Florida
Day 10 : Monday April 30 Pensacola Florida to New Orleans Louisiana
Wow, I was really looking forward to New Orleans for the music and voodoo and party atmosphere. We got plenty of it that as we were lucky enough to get a Holiday Inn Express hotel room right in the French Quarter. It was a real nice stately old building with high ceilings and fine furnishings. The place was well maintained and the staff was very friendly. There was a parking ramp behind the hotel. 90,000 We ate some good food at a deli and started walking around town. The architecture is very detailed and ornate. In the later afternoon I started drinking a few beers. It looks like there are some hardcore revelers around the streets any night of the week. I don't know how they do it. The places without live music had cheap drinks, while the joints with live bands got a ton of money per drink, and you had to buy at least one drink per set. We watched a decent blues band for a while, but I was looking for more of a New Orleans sound. There were a bunch of high class cover bands playing in bars, but we kept on until we found a little place with a band with two clarinets, a piano, and drums. A third clarinet guest artist joined them later. I got a huge kick out of the music. I was so full of energy that night I think I could have stayed up all night, but it was a good thing I didn't, because...
Day 11 : Tuesday May 1 New Orleans Louisiana to Tupelo Mississippi
The next morning we were up while it was still cool. I got the bike loaded up and drove it out of the parking ramp. Over 96 thousand miles, and this was the first parking ramp the bike had ever been on. The old Harley sounded excellent in the ramp, but I was careful not to crack the throttle. because I didn't want the old building to crumble on top of me.
As we waited for a traffic light, I looked down and saw a big cloud of white smoke come out of the front of the engine. I turned down a side street and cut the engine and pulled over. The wire coming out of the voltage regulator had fried itself right off, right at the rubber wire boot. Julie went on a run for some duct tape while I cut the burnt wire away and sliced the rubber insulator to splice the wire back together. We taped it back together and called the local Harley dealer. After giving us detailed directions to the store, the salesmen finally admitted that they only had t-shirts, no parts. The nearest "real" Harley dealer was in Gretna. The bike fired right up, and we headed over the bridges to Gretna. When we got there, they said "no bikes over ten years old are allowed in here - store rules". Also, they had no mechanic. The last one had left quickly after damaging several customer's bikes. But, they had a replacement voltage regulator, and they didn't care if I replaced it in their parking lot. It took me nearly an hour, and we got to also enjoy the circus of two black gangsters hanging out while one had the oil changed in his beautiful new black and gold V-Rod. The other had six or seven cell phones and sat using them in a blacked out Lincoln with the engine running the whole time.
Day 12 : Wednesday May 2 Tupelo Mississippi to Port Allen Louisiana
Day 13 : Thursday May 3 Port Allen Louisiana to Paducah Kentucky
It was raining when we got into Paducah and we hung out under an awning outside a motel/boarding house waiting for the rain to pass. A guy came out and tried to give us money. We didn't take any. He probably doesn't have much problem giving it away. We went to the Paducah Harley dealer. It is one of the best in the country, in my opinion. They have a real shop with real mechanics, and they also know how to run the rest of the store, too. Highly recommended.
Day 14 : Friday May 4 Paducah Kentucky to Quincy Illinois
Day 15 :Saturday May 5 Quincy Illinois to Eau Claire Wisconsin
Odometer shows 99030. Total trip was 5287 miles. Average 352 miles per day.
See you on the road!