Back again!

I completed the trip to Key West on August 19 and several people asked me if I planned to document the rest of the trip.  I told them all ‘yes,’ but it sure has taken me a long time to get this far!  Since the trip ended, I spent a week with my daughter in Alexandria, VA and then came to Kansas to live with my mom while I look for work.  Looking for work, at least as a minister, is not progressing as well as I had hoped.  I am, though, truly enjoying the time I get to spend with my mom.   I am lucky to get the chance to do that, and lucky she is willing to have me!

The first day was from Orlando to Melbourne on August 14.  The GPS route we are sent each day tells us how many feet we ascend and how many we descend along our route.  We went up 384 ft and down 475 ft–basically flat, but back down to the sea. Most of the hills are usually overpasses when the numbers are that low.   The church we stayed in on Monday evening was called St. Sebastian by the Sea.  It was only about two blocks to the ocean.  Our total trip that day was 76 miles.

At St. Sebastian’s we learned that this is a prime spot for sea turtle nests and that we had arrived during the right season.  If you wanted to see a sea turtle, you needed to go down to the beach at night–no flashlights allowed, and just look around.  I was too tired to stay up, though I did consider it.  Two people from our group, though, did go out.  They saw a couple of mothers coming out of the ocean to lay their eggs, and they also saw some sea turtles hatching and making their way to the ocean.  The reason you can’t use flashlights is because the turtles use the light of the moon to guide them to the ocean.  Any other light throws them off and they can’t find their way.  Somewhere along the line, someone had enough foresight to regulate building along the beach so that even the houses there do not have lights that show up on the beach.

One of the people at the church has a daughter who works at a state park near there.  They knew of a couple of sea turtle nests that they were able to rope off and protect.  Another one, though, they didn’t find on time.  It was very near a campground restroom and the little newly hatched sea turtles were all over the lit restroom.  I think they managed to save some of them and herd them out to sea somehow.  You can’t pick them up and carry them to the sea–I think it is like trying to help a butterfly out of its chrysalis.

Tuesday of the final week we traveled very close to the beach for the first 40 to 45 miles and then turned inland toward Port St. Lucie.  As you can see, it was another beautiful day.

Just about every morning, I started out the day with a smile on my face and in my heart.  It is a wonderful thing to be on a bicycle trip–especially when we are able to get help if we need it.  I know it’s not for everyone, but it is one of the most fun things I can imagine doing.  If I were to do anything different, it would be to have a few extra hours in some of the places that looked interesting, but that I had to pass up to keep up with the group.  On days when we didn’t ride, I often had trouble sleeping–not enough exercise that day!