October 29, 2023 Day 22 Davenport Florida to Florida City Florida 237 miles
Today is mostly cloudy which makes it seem cooler. The sun does peak out from time to time. The wind is much stronger today. It is amazing how it seems to always be a cross wind.
A baseball team is staying in the same hotel. They are playing in a tournament. The players look about high school age.
The road remains 3-5 lanes in each direction for quite some distance. Businesses line both sides of the road almost continuously. I think we are going through different towns you just can’t tell where they start and stop.
Lots of apartment complexes and still more under construction. RV parks are everywhere. The rigs are parked very close together. Also numerous prefab home parks. Traffic is terrible. It’s like Eagle Road in Boise only on steroids. The speed limit is usually 55 MPH and we can do that most of the time. However, there seem to be a few drivers that try to do 80 MPH no matter what the limit is on the signs.
We encountered several sections of road construction. Fortunately they weren’t working today. Finally the road dropped down to only two lanes each direction. Every time we came to another town the road widen out again.
Finally we got to stretches of open land. Boy is it flat! A few orchards and a few fields of sugar cane. Palm trees are beginning to replace the deciduous trees. We drove along a couple of lakes and canals were in some stretches. Egrets were along the canal banks.
We found a park with a gazebo where we ate lunch. A couple of small lizards were nearby. At least 10 boat-tailed grackles were in the trees and occasionally on the ground. A gentle breeze was blowing so not bad.
Another area had several nurseries and they were really busy. Everybody must be planting fall plants. Open air restaurants are crowded as well. Lots of people out doing things.
We got to our hotel about 3:45. On the bed was a swan made out of a towel and a wash cloth. I think the cleaning person worked on a cruise ship at one time. We stopped for a little bit and then took off for the grocery store to get salad mix for supper. Well that was interesting. They had garlic sold by the clove as well as by the bulb. They had at least three vegetables that neither of us had any idea what they were. Yellow yams had been cut down but were still the size of a small cantaloupe. Malanga islena is on sale. That is a round rough hairy skinned root vegetable. Didn’t look appetizing to us. Then we came to the meat counter. Today’s sale was fresh chicken feet and premium chicken hearts. Pigs feet and fish heads were available too. One of the fish heads was significantly larger than a salmon head. Cookies were different too. Many of them didn’t have English names. Up by the check stand was a cabinet with Cuban bread. Looked like French bread.
We can no longer understand most of what is being said. Everyone seems to have their own language. We neglected to bring our sign language tools. Maybe we need to put those on our travel checklist
Spoffords Travel 