Devall Travels

Time for our trip to the Keys. Off around 9am for the 122 mile drive to Marathon. I had planned waypoints en route a Theater of the Sea and the Dolphin Research Centre. Traffic was horrible in TomTom"s "fastest" no tolls route. I75 and some parkway or other. Did I say no tolls? Despite that being in the route setup we found ourselves on the Don Shula Parkway, a toll road. Hopefully the Sunpass in the window will have been picked up and Dollar will pass on any tolls. Once we finally got to Homestead and onto US1 we felt about better. A stop at a BK for coffee and we were down to Key Largo and the Keys. We passed the Sea Dell motel and as we were too early we went for lunch.  Barracuda restaurant. Great plate of shrimp and fries. With it still too early we went back up to Grassy Key and the Dolphin Research Center. Superb demos is dolphins in action. So many more noises than you saw on "Flipper". Older readers may remember the TV serues. We spent nearly three hou...

I had a look on booking.com after I had planned a few trips out from when we are in Weston FL.  We do like to have a trip down to the keys, but to go to Key West needs more time and also hotels are in the "sell a kidney" bracket.   So I had a look along the Keys and booked at Marathon Key. Reasonable price and 8/10 star review, plus it has free cancellation and nothing to pay upfront.   So the plan is we can call in at the  Dolphin Research Centre  or  Theater of the Seas  on the way down as they are nearer the mainland.  We can decide that later. I stopped at the  Theater of the Seas  way back in 1991 when I was "doing" Florida on a Kawasaki Z750 factory custom twin.  I have a picture that I can look out where I was sadly cuddling a sealion!   So another bit of planning coming together as hotels starts to release their dates and room rates to the booking sites.

Already? Time flies.  After the lamesville day yesterday and an evening watching John Boy Walton get married and three back to back episodes of The Middle, today is Keys Day. I dialled TomTom to take us to the Blue Marlin Motel in Key West and to avoid toll roads. So we left Mizner and headed south on 997. Over thirty miles of dead straight 55mph road. Boring. The main section between US41 and US1 seems to be Latino garden centre heaven. Miles and miles of nurseries. I used $25 of the timeshare visa on fuel. The Mustang seems happy on 87 Regular unleaded. And then we were on the Overseas Highway. In places you cannot imagine the view, made photographically impossible by the three foot high concrete side walls to the road, but is almost fantastic. I was  looking for the place I stopped in 1991 on the borrowed Kawasaki. I didn't see anything remotely like the dirt/sand pull off after one of the bridges. We pulled off at the Dolphin Research Centre on...