Well, it's time to get up, pack up, and get going! Well, not so fast. The first time one does something one wants to be careful and do it right. Besides, waking up at 6 AM is just not part of the agenda.
1 PM rolls around and we decide to take off. Packing up was slow but without incident. Fortunately, check out is at 2 PM from state parks. I guess they take into account that people 'with rigs' might not be able to do it too quickly (unlike a hotel where they want you out anytime between 10 and noon, typically).
One of our greatest past-times on this trip is listening to the nine-CD audio of the Lord of the Rings. By now we are well into CD #3. On this day we almost complete CD #5. Still four more to go!
Well, looks like a fairly long haul down the coast (highway 95 and then the rest of the way via the Florida Turnpike). Pam wants to get as close as possible to the Keys, so David books them in to the Gateway to the Keys Best Western, which is 'the last stop' before the Keys in Florida City, Florida. We are now destined for a fairly long spot of driving on this day. We are all glad to get far since we will be minimizing our travel the following day heading in to our camping spot in the Keys (a good plan).
We stop for dinner at a Sbarro's (an Italian fast-food / eat-in type place) on the Turnpike. The Florida Turnpike is a bit like Highway 401 (in Canada along the route between Montreal and Toronto for you non-Canadians reading this), except it has stopping spots in between the two directions, meaning they can share the same spots - a neat idea.
At around 9 PM we finally roll in to the Best Western. We pack ourselves into one room, fortunately they let us. The room is fairly large, so it works out OK. This place has a free breakfast (we sit out on the enclosed area by the pool) and we indulge. A little e-mail and last minute wrecking our web-site, and we are ready to go .. almost.
Pam and David spend the morning getting last minute supplies for the trailer. Unfortunately we had discovered that we could not get in to one part of the trailer because the lock froze (too much salt along the route down). We thought that we left our extra set of wood footings (for sandy spots, eg. in the Keys) and the plug adapter for our electrical hookup in this compartment, so we stop at a couple of places and arrange alternatives. Also, we decide to pack up one suitcase of unnecessary things and send it (via UPS) back home (via as slowest and cheapest a route as possible .. wonder if it will be there when we get back?).
About that wrecking the web-site comment, James and I were working on it and we went to upload the site and discovered, to our dismay, that the AOL upload failed miserably and resulted in jibberish at our site, which is worse than used to be there. We messed around for a bit, timed out, and left it that way while we went down to the Keys. Sad, oh well, have to fix it later, once we have phone access again. Hopefully, we will have access at our 'cottage' in the Everglades.
Finally, around noon, we check out and head off together, even further south, to the Keys.