13.6.2012 – 13.6.2012  31 °C

We left KW quite early this morning as we wanted to really try and make an effort to start our trek north westwards towards New Orleans. For the first few hours we just re-traced our steps up the Key’s towards Key Largo. The sea this morning is the colour of molten lead.. just gorgeous! Clear blue sky, molten grey water dotted with mangrove covered cays.. Really pretty!!

We grabbed some tasty treats from a local bakery for morning tea and consumed it whilst gazing over the gorgeous Keys. By late morning we had hit the main causeway back over to the mainland.. From here the trip turned into a comedy of errors!! I was driving at this stage and was following the signs to Miami. I was avoiding the Floridian “turnpikes” (which is their word for toll road) because of my experience in Austria (where I copped a 120 E fine for not pre-paying my tolls). I knew the main toll road into Miami was electronic only and without knowing how the rental agencies deal with tolls I wasn’t willing to run the risk. Therefore, we were stop start the whole way into and across Miami.. Gosh it was crazy.. Hours later we finally found Miami Beach, which we all wanted to at least see, and flaked out in a restaurant to have some lunch. Driving in heavy traffic that is continually stopping (and where you don’t really know where you are going) isn’t my cup of tea.. The other VERY annoying thing is that downtown Miami (which you have to drive thru to get to the beach) has bridges that open up.. So we spent quite a bit of time stuck in traffic jams waiting for some rich person to drive their cruiser thru the canals… For the record, the North Miami Beach today is not that crash hot.. Beautiful coloured water, light grey, coarse-ish, coloured sand covered in umbrellas and lounge chairs (that are for hire). No waves but nice warm water. We didn’t bother to go for a swim.. we were all heartily sick of Miami and the ocean just wasn’t going to cut it for us (if there were waves, maybe a different story…)

Ok, so after lunch our driving issues continued. We had a broad plan to head for Okeechobee Lake (NW of Miami and W of Palm Beach) and stay somewhere around there.. We had found out what the go with turnpikes was (it is a flat fee of $2 admin plus whatever the toll is) so we hit the Fort Lauderdale turnpike. These roads turned out to still have toll booths so we paid up and were finally able to get up some speed and make up some distance.. As we were driving up the turnpike D had the brilliant idea (I will add here that neither myself or M disagreed with him) to go and have a look at Palm Beach, home of the very rich and famous in Florida. Sounds like a good idea… until, we hit major road works that meant that the beach part of Palm Beach was closed off and we needed to take a major detour.. After another 40 mins or so of aimless driving and discussion about whether we REALLY needed to see this beach we actually found the mansions of Palm Beach and worked out that most of the beach is off limits to riff raff like us!!

At this point, we just told our sat nav to find us the closest motel chain that we had heard of (and knew it wouldn’t be $500 a night) and crashed in a hotel!! Actually, we found quite a nice one for a pretty good price, and after a hot tub and swim in the pool we had the energy to finish out the night doing laundry, watching a great electrical storm and having some dessert at the resident restaurant. Funny story about the restaurant, D and I went in to have some dessert.. There were 5 items on the dessert menu, of which, only 1 was actually available for purchase!! The menu read that it would be cheesecake with bananas and strawberries.. sounds ok, until it came out… The cheesecake was deep fried!! It looked (and tasted) a bit like a Maccas hot apple pie but with cheesy stuff (?) in the middle.. This was covered in stewed strawberries and over ripe banana.. AWFUL.. No other way to describe it!! The meal was funny though, because another item on the menu was chicken drumsticks with Belgian waffles…. The menu description was something like this “chicken pieces with waffles, accompanied by whipped butter and your choice of dipping sauce”… I’ve now seen everything!! Mains and Dessert all wrapped up into one god-awful meal!!!! J ONLY IN AMERICA!!

Song of the Day– The Beatles, Hard Days Night