Saturday / Sunday 20/21 October 2018
Today is Sunday morning and we have everything packed and are ready to start travelling homeward bound. We’ve had a marvelous time on our road trip which took us to a few southern states: Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and now back in Florida to catch our flight back home from Orlando.
We met up with a number of Americans who were fascinated with our story saying that they themselves hadn’t visited so many states. We also met up with my dear friends, Carolyn and Aad and Ruth and Jay and we all had a chance to catch up with each other’s news.
As I had mentioned in my first page of this blog, I have always been fascinated with the making of America , how all these brave travelers sailed over the great ocean and settled in this new land. Of course there is also the dark side to all this, how the native Americans lost their land and how the African slaves were brought over to work on the plantations. We saw the church in Savannah were Martin Luther King used his famous words in his sermon…… I have a dream…… Many sacrifices took place but finally it seems his dream has been achieved.
Yesterday morning we left St.Augustine and drove down the A1A instead of going onto the Intersection 95 south. It was already 11.30 am and we had 130 miles to drive to reach our last destination. We were already experiencing not just warm weather but hot reach the 90’s F or 30 Celsius.
My plan was to see more of the ocean coastline and perhaps stop at some interesting spots. After all this was the road through Flagale Beach, Ormond Beach and Daytona Beach. Well what we did not know was that although Daytona Beach is a Mecca for car and bike races on the sand, this weekend it was the Biketoberfest. It seems the German Octoberfest is catching up in the US becoming nearly if not more popular than the traditional St.Patrick’s Day in March. This is an annual motorcycle rally which attracts motorbikers especially as the pros compete in the Daytona International Speedway motorcycle races. So we had to stop here and watch the fun – Gerry claims he’s never seen so many motorbikes all together and mostly Harley Davidsons – well I certainly hadn’t seen that many bikes in all my life……. and not only motor bikes, but also bikers kittens, bikers in all shapes and sizes and age, so many tattooed people sauntering among the stands.
Well Gerry could not stop admiring these bikers but after some time we needed to stop somewhere to have something to drink and a snack. We made it to the lighthouse at Ponce de Leon located on a land tongue and here too were hordes of bikers. We managed to get a seat at the bar and while enjoying the view we had some beautiful oysters for our snack. After that we went back to the highway as we had another hour’s drive to reach our hotel.
Well now Gerry has packed all our stuff into our rental car and we’re off to the airport……
