Cocoa Beach, Florida

Well, we got half way to Orlando yesterday and stopped for a late lunch in Okeechobee after driving along the east shore of Lake Okeechobee. The drive north from the Everglades and the town of Hometown was highlighted by getting to a road block of crime scene tape stretched across the road I had planned to take and having to detour 10 miles out of our way and getting stuck with using a busy freeway but we finally got onto US27 and then highway 441. The area is agricultural and I enjoyed the wonderful smell of freshly disc cut dirt for the first time in a long time.

We stopped for a short break on the shores of the lake at a very poor looking town called Pahokee and talked to a couple of locals, one of whom was an elderly man who said he had been there for the hurricane of 1928. The entire east side of the lake is held back by a 50 foot tall dike which has been breached twice in the past several years. We were told this lake is the second largest in the U.S. I presume this means natural freshwater lake. We passed several locks which give ocean access to the lake for smaller boats. The small communities we went through all looked much the worse for wear after hurricane damage 2 out of the last 4 years.

At any rate, in the Taco Bell parking lot where we sat eating our burritos in the shade a couple in an SUV approached us to talk about our trike/trailer and Bentley. It turned out they also ride a Harley and have been considering getting a trailer. They are from Kentucky.

It also turned out they had just spent some time with their grandkids at Disneyworld and we asked them about pricing. After they went into the restaurant Von and I looked at each other and started adding up what it was going to cost us to go in to the park for one day. What with kenneling Mr. B, at least one night in a hotel, the kennel cough shot, park entrance fees of $85.00 each and an additional $30 each for the Animal Kingdom ride it looked like it was going to be close to $500 dollars. Ouch! I had just spent almost 300 on new cots (from REI and which we will pick up in Atlanta on May 8)so we decided to forgo the park.

We headed east on highway 80, got to I95 and headed north towards Daytona Beach, 130 miles or so away. We finished the day with 293 miles and are staying in a Super 8 in or near Cocoa Beach. This is only about 15 miles from the Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral so we will be going over there and driving up US1 or possibly Florida A1A to Daytona Beach. I made reservations at a state park 10 miles north of Daytona so our total miles today should be fewer than a hundred giving time to do some serious sightseeing.