23/04/10

24/03/10 reporting on 23/04/10

Yesterday was Florida Keys day. We got up earlyish and had a quick breakfast and hit the road as the drive to West Key is surprisingly long. I didn’t imagine the drive from Miami to West Key would be 160 miles each way along one long and slow road. TomTom says that it takes over 4 hours each way and was pretty much right. The road was full of road works and traffic lights, so fairly irritating to drive, but the scenery was fantastic. The sea round the Keys is bright blue and green, like in the postcards. Most of the actual islands were fairly small and filled with the general American tourist town stuff.

The final Key is called Key West and is the most southerly part of mainland USA. The town is pretty nice, very touristy but once you get past that it seems like a nice place. We found the marker for the southernmost point of mainland USA and took a couple of photos. There is a virtual cache there too, so hopefully we can log that next time we get to the internet. The other thing that West Key is famous for is being the beginning point of highway 1; mile 0. The road follows the east coast of America all the way to the Canadian border in Maine.

On route back we tried a burger from Wendy’s, a first for us. It was very good. We had the “Double Baconator”: two quarter pounder burgers with two layers of bacon and cheese and the right amount of ketchup. It was similar to an XL bacon double cheeseburger from Burger King, but with two layers of bacon, also the bacon was a nicer; crispy and tasty but not too salty. The Baconator is a more balanced burger than the Double Down, however I would have said that the balance was still shifted too much to the meat side, could have done with some salad and a denser bun, but so far the best burger. In a word: Bacony.

When we got back to Miami we once again failed to find any wifi, so you’ll have to do without our gripping tails for a little longer. We did, however, find a laundrette. Much needed. When we went in we found that no-one spoke English, not the owners, nor most of the customers. After much hand waving and a bit of help from a customer who knew a few words of English we finally managed to convey our message of “we want to wash our clothes but don’t have any detergent”.

Right, we have found McDonalds, thus wifi. So uploading time :)

Cube out