Sunday, February 21, 2016

Blue Beatle

  
When you jet across the country as opposed to riding a motorbike across the country one of the first things you notice is the jet gets you from San Francisco to Fort Lauderdale in a lot less time. You also notice that on the plane you are not as comfortable as on your bike, the food if any is not as good as  a roadhouse diner, and the scenery is very far away, and hard to see from a isle seat.

Alice's Roadhouse
 
Another thing you notice is you do not have any transportation when you arrive. We had the hotel, the maybe two star. They give themselves three   Roadway Inn shuttle meet us at the airport.  The van was large, clean and had a caravan attached for luggage. Not a bad ride through the maze of freeways and ramps.

The next morning we asked for a ride back to the airport to pick up our very own rental car. It seems the shuttle only runs to the airport at certain times set by the maybe two star hotel. We were in time for the cruise port shuttle and they agreed to drop us at the airport after the port stop.  The driver even asked all the passengers if we had any weapons as they are not allowed on any US port, and he told the guard at the gate that we had none. Of course no one actually checked.

All Clear On The Port

Back at the airport the rental car line was long but moved fairly rapidly and it wasn’t long until we were driving off in a blue VW Beatle.

It is a nice ride, easy to spot in a parking lot, drives okay but certainly is no BMW.

The second day of our life with our Beatle we took a trip south to the Everglades. After negotiating   the maze of highways ramps and toll roads we found highway 1 and proceeded to drive in parking lot traffic for aboot three hours. I guess that is not bad for a 70 some  mile highway drive around here.

We drove to the end of the road in Everglades Nation Park to the Flamingo visitor’s center

National Park Flamingo Visitor Center

The visitors center is a solid building survivor of several hurricanes, but not fully repaired since damaged by hurricanes in 2005. The only lodging is camping and only one campground is open but it would be a very cool place to stay watch the sea and check out the night sky.

Everglades National Park
 
The wind was blowing the day we were there so it wasn’t a great day to see wildlife we did however spot some manatees in the harbor, lots of laughing gulls, and several  ospreys sitting in some massive nests.  
 
Nesting Osprey


Also spotted was a Cat Bird. It poised quite nicely for a photo.
Gray Cat Bird

Once back on the highway we settled in to bond with our bug for the 70 mile 3 ½ hour drive back in parking lot traffic.

 

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