Day 262 - 266, Miami to Key West

Day 262, 80 km

I left Leos's and Dave's house at 11 am. I did some sightseeing in Hollywood and Miami and found a lot of phone repair shops. I hoped somebody could help me to install google maps again but nobody could...

 From the bridges to the outermost islands I saw a lot of luxurious yachts.

 And the beaches were wonderful. But the weather was cold and windy.

 Here I tried to "frame" a picture with my bicycle.

 In Miami they had a strange bus/train going on rubber wheels  on bridges over the roads. Often two cars were attached to each other.

 The whole day I rode through urban areas,

until I in the evening reached south Miami. There I had an address from wwoof.org which I wanted to check. I thought I had come to an organic bakery but actually I had come to a guy called Sanford, who was the father of the friend of the baker. He let me sleep in his garden which was one acre (about 0,4 ha) and looked like a jungle.

Day 263, 70km

Next morning Sanford showed me his garden. He had several ponds with fish.

 Some of them he ate, some of them he only had because they were beautiful.

He also had a lot of different trees, many of them with tropical fruits like bananas,

and Star Fruits

 They tasted delicious!

 He offered me to volunteer in his garden. I told him that I first wanted to go down to Key West, the most southern point of the US and that I then would come back.
He gave me a snorkel and cyclopes so I could investigate the corral reefs.

 After I had left him I decided to see how slowly I could ride. After I had tested to ride as fast as I could the week before, I now wanted to know how often I could stop along the road without getting restless.
In the evening I came to the first island of the Keys. When I saw this sign I considered if it was so wise to plan go wild camping...

 But i found a good safe sleeping place near the visitor center.

Day 264, 80 km

Soon I found an Underwater State Park on one of the coral reefs and stayed there until noon. In the museum I learned to know the difference between Alligators and Crocodiles.

 I used my Cyclopes and investigated a ship wreck from 1715. There was a lot of colorful fish, I am sorry I could not take pictures of them!

 In the afternoon I passed a region with a lot of Coconut Palms.

I bought one but unfortunately I lost it...

 I have to buy another when I pass it again!
The weather became warmer and I had a good tailwind.

 It was a wonderful day and in the evening I found a bay where I was all for myself where I made dinner in the sunset.

 I had heard that the sunsets never were as beautiful as on the Keys.

 And even after the sunset the sky was very beautiful!

Day 265, 115 km

Next day I came to a State Park where I decided to walk through a typical forest of the islands. They call it hammock. There was I Natural Education Path, about 4 km. I thought I could go through forest so I walked my bike through the narrow path.

But this I regretted because I had to go back to where i started and the terrain was very difficult to walk through with a loaded bike.

 But it was a wonderful trip and I learned a lot.

I also biked over many bridges and wondered of the boats were over-motorized.

 Now it was really hot but still there was a good wind.

 When I stopped in the afternoon at a beach I met a German guy called Wilfried. He told me I should not miss the sunset in Key West. He told me that everybody watches it every day and took a lot of pictures of it. And when the sun finally disappeared everybody applauded!
 I decided to ride the last 50 km in three hours and came exactly in time to the sunset-event.

 People already were everywhere along the plazas and docks.

 They were taking a lot of pictures and movies.

And the sunset really was special!

Day 266, 65 km

I decided to take a vacation day. In the morning I woke up already at 3:30 when three roosters sharing the same park as me, crowed loudly.

Then I took a long nap in the sun at a beach. 

I watched how the Pelicans caught fish.

I decided to do some more sightseeing at the harbor. 

 In a museum I learned something about the history of Key West.

  This is a picture of a mangrove shrub north of the island. The water is very shallow almost everywhere.

Now I have come to the most southern point of the US and will slowly go back to Miami.

Here a little about my plans for the next three months:

I just made a reservation on a cruising ship leaving Miami on April 20th and arriving Barcelona on May 1st. Then it is "only" 3200 km to Stockholm, so I plan to be back in Stockholm on the last of May. I also plan to visit some relatives and friends along the way, especially in Paris or Zürich, Köln and Berlin. But not Graz and Vienna this time...

I have not decided yet what I will do eight weeks until the ship is leaving. I think I will do some woofing and maybe even go up to New York when the weather is warmer.

Day 255 - 261, Tallahassee to Miami

Day 255, 40 km

I left Barbara and Kevins house in the morning.

Kevin took this nice picture and e-mailed it to me later. Since I could not use their wifi (my computer did not like it) I decided to update my blog at McDonalds. I also made some investigations about my journey down to south Florida and about what ships were going from USA to Europe. That took several hours and first in the afternoon I left Mc Donalds. I passed a phone repair shop and remembered that I still had chinese software in my smartphone which did not allow me to go to google play. That meant that I clold not download any apps and I could not install a swedish keyboard. The guys working there said that they could wipe out all chines software so my phone would be as new for 20 USD. But they could not! The only thing that happened was that they wiped out Skype and Google maps, which I used every day. For several hours we tried to get back these apps but we could not. Finally they gave me a big and heavy old Garmin GPS for free. I asked how I could use it and they said that it only took some minutes to download the maps the first time. I took the GPS and thought I could do it next day because now it was already half passed six and dark.
I left the shop and pedaled 40 km SE, until I found a good sleeping place. It was raining but very warm that night.

Day 256, 150 km

It was a wet and foggy morning. The road was good and there were many flowering trees along the road. It really felt like spring!
In the middle of the day I tested my new GPS but it does not seem to work. What shall I do with it? I decided to take it with me at maximum one week and see if I could find somebody who can make it work. I slept outside the gate of  a state park.

Day 257, 145 km

Again it was warm and that day it rained a lot. It was a nice feeling to ride through the rain without rain-clothes and still being warm!
At noon I met a touring couple from Canada. They had come from Miami and were going to Mississippi. They invited me for a cup of coffee and we had a really good time exchanging stories and experiences.
They recommended that I should visit a state park called Homosassa Springs.
I decided to do it and arrived there in the afternoon. There I could see Manatees (seacows),

hippotamus,

 alligators

 flamingos,

 spoonbills

 and many more animals which were common in Florida. I liked the underwater observatory a lot. Whan I was there there was no manatee around but a lot of fish. I watched them for a long time, until the park closed for the day.

Then i continued some more kilometers and slept in Brooksville.

Day 258, 165 km

The morning was sunny but soon it became cloudy again and it begun to rain. It was Valentine's day and my birthday. My children had asked all my relatives to sen a picture and some lines to me and I got a LOT of mails that day (certainly more than 70). I also got a mail from Cindy who I had visited in San Francisco. She had been cycling a week in Florida and was going back to Miami to stay her last night there before going home. She wrote me that I should contact Dave her warmshower host and ask if I could stay here as well. So I did and he soon answered that I was welcome but I should be there on Saturday before 2 pm because they were going to have a big Valentine's party with more than 100 guests. He thought it would be nice if I could come in time to be there from the beginning.
I decided to try to do my best although it seemed quite impossible to go so far so fast. I answered all my emails very shortly (if you are one of them who wrote to me, now you understand why...) and pedaled a lot that day. At noon I nevertheless I bought a chock lade cake and a lot of different fruit. I stopped several times to check my wonderful birthday greetings. My daughter had made a collage with Photoshop. The picture showed my kids who had come over the ocean to be with me on my birthday!

In the afternoon I chose some smaller dirt roads to avoid the noise of the traffic.

 In the woods I found a bob cat which was killed by a car

and  among all other trees along the road

I suddenly saw wild growing oranges in the canopy. (you also see them above)

 And when it was dark I passed a lot of orange orchards. I did not see so much but I could smell the blossoms. I smelled like sweet, nice perfume.

Day 259, 180 km

It was raining all night and even in the morning, but this day I finally had tailwind! I made a lot of kilometers on highway 27 and passed a lot of orange orchards.

 They had blossoms everywhere.

 In the evening I again had an option to take a backstreet (720, close to the lake Okeechobee) and found out that they were growing a lot of cane sugar there

 The marshlands were drained with channels  and in the channels there grew the same kind of floating water plant which you can buy in aquarium stores in Sweden (can't remember the name)

Behind me the sunset was wonderful!

I continued to south bay and found a good sleeping place on a piece of an abandoned old highway.

 Day 260, 115 km

I went up as soon it became day and took this picture:

Then I pedaled as fast as I could south, towards Miami. I had a good tailwind and I made 115 km before within 5 hours! 

I arrived at the house of Dave and Leo already at 1 pm and had a lot of time to calm down, because the party started first at 6 pm(!). But this was good for me, I really needed the rest.

 I could help to decorate  (on the driveway we placed candles in paper-bags as lanterns) and I even had time to eat dinner with Cyndi.

 Leo was a very good baker

He and Dave had made more than 18 different desserts!

 Here you see the driveway in the dark, when all candles were lit,

 and here you see some of the 128 guests in the kitchen.

Day 261, 20 km

This day I had a resting day. We took our hosts' van and drove it to a buffet restaurant called Sweet Tomatoes.

The food was delicious!
Then I served my bike and rode it to the coast to dip the front-wheel. Now I really had made America from coast to coast!