46 miles today in the Florida Keys
I was back on the bike today & it felt so good. No flat tires or broken spokes, just a day of sightseeing , which is so much better at under 15 mph than in a car, train or airplane. We started out by arriving 10 minutes early at:
The sign is oversized based on the size of the factory, but we waited the 10 minutes and I had:
Tasted quite good, but at $10 it seemed overpriced. Most of the rest of the ride today was a combination of trails, bridges & riding on the shoulder of the road. One of the bridges had to be 3 miles long, but there weren’t any large hills associated with them like in Louisiana & Alabama.
Key Largo is pretty wide, so we rode quite a few miles, but never saw water. As we got further along & especially on bridges - it was ocean on the left and gulf on the right. It is pretty common to see signs that say “No fishing on bridge” & there was plenty of that restriction here. Surprisingly there were also a couple of places where a second pedestrian/bike bridge was built that allows fishing.
This is what it looked like as we approached, but the picture doesn’t do it justice. There were literally hundreds of fishing poles sitting on the ground with each person apparently responsible for 3 or 4 at a time. I don’t know what happens if you hook a fish & if no one is holding the rod, why the fish can’t just pull the whole apparatus over the concrete wall. A bigger problem we had on the bikes was weaving our way through a couple hundred yards of fishing poles and people.
Travel a little further down the road & you come upon some stone sculptures that are unfinished.
No sign or explanation of what they are or how they got there. A little further along we came upon a boat that looks like a race car.
Finally, just a few miles from our hotel was the Dolphin Research Center. It is a non profit that rescues dolphins & also breeds them. Pretty educational & we got to see some interesting dolphin activities including people who grab onto two dolphin fins and get pulled around.
There was even some non dolphin creature walking around.
The water around here sure has a green color to it.
All things considered - a very good day. Tomorrow Key West.