We left Key West this after packing and eating breakfast around 8:45 trying to beat a little of the heat. The skies were clear but the forecast for heat to reach into the mid 90's was there in our face. It kind of made me sad to leave Key West knowing that from this day forward I would working my way back to Virginia. Not that that is bad, because Virginia is a beautiful State, but coming home means coming back to work. Who wants to do that?
Lori had the video camera on top of her helmet so I would be able to show a little better the water that was all around the roads and bridges. At first scan of the video there is good news and bad. The first part of the video looks good and I should be able to pick out pieces and put it all together for viewing by tomorrows blog. YouTube by far takes the most amount of work processing the video and sound. Can you believe passing the 65 to 70 mile marker today in the Keys we actually hit a rain shower for 45 seconds to a minute? I was shocked to see my first rain in the Keys, much less a cloud.
It did not take long for the morning warmth to accelerate into mid-morning sauna. I told Lori that unless she had a burning desire to ride deep into the Everglades, we were going to skip this section and skim the northern edge of the everglades along highway 41. We passed through Homestead Florida and was approaching highway 41 around lunch time. I did a quick scan for food on the GPS and it didn't take long to figure out that if we didn't eat now, it might be 2 hours before we saw anything else. So we hit a Subway and got back on the road. About 15 miles back into the ride something hit me dead in the gut. I looked down at my odometer and it was showing 144 miles and in case you don't know, most motorcycles do not have a fuel gauge. I have a 6.9 gallon fuel tank and been filling up around 150 on the odometer and putting in 5 gallons of fuel. Because I'm pulling the trailer, less fuel mileage. I reach down to the GPS, searched for fuel in front of me and the closest was 61 miles out. Uh, that is going to be really, really, close. I will be on reserve and if the station is closed, I'm most certainly toast. Decsion time, make a U-turn and retrace 15 miles for fuel or chance it? Up in front of me about 1/2 mile I could see a couple of signs, so I decided to go that far and if was nothing, a U-turn it would be. Lucky me!! It was a fuel stop. To show you how bad this could have been, next fuel station turned out to be 40 miles further and I had 0(zero) signal on the cell phone and it was 95 degrees. Let's just say Lori would not have been happy walking amoungest the gators and heat. Whew!
Gators! Yes we saw lot's of gators in the water along the road. I didn't really want to stop to take pictures because the way the road was laid out and it was hot. Riding in the Everglades is kind of weird because you get the feeling out there it is just you and no one else for miles and miles. Lori took some nice shots in the glades to show how there is nothing around and she also got a couple of nice shots of Thunder heads while we were rolling through Naples.
Tomorrow we ride around Lake Okeechobee on a estimate 275 mile ride. I heard on the news this evening that the Shuttle launched. Man, if this would have gone off 1 day later, I would have made the trip back over to the east coast to see it, but it wasn't meant to be. Tomorrows weather looks like 91 for a high with a 30% chance of afternoon Thunderstorms. Ok let me end this so I can start working on todays video.
Today’s mileage = 290
Total for the trip = 2589
Day 12 at EveryTrail
Map created by EveryTrail:GPS Geotagging
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