We only spent one day on the East Coast and despite cycling all day hardly passed any public beaches or coffee shops. The place is lined with enormous mansions – more like palaces (apparently Trump has one here) , with immaculate gardens tended by a small army of gardeners, and, in places, guarded by armed guards. Occasionally there’s a group of highrise apartments or a retirement complex, all owning the beach too and you just don’t see the sea for miles. Along this whole stretch every single plant and blade of grass was manicured to within an inch of it’s life and it made Disney’s fake America look like a run down shanty town in a war torn country.
As we turned inland we crossed the railway line and the homes immediately were much much poorer. The other side of the tracks eh?
Incidentally, no one in the rich houses said hello, once we were in the poorer area we started getting waves and hellos. Presumably the rich the world over don’t want to mingle with us commoners!
We got to test the tent out for the first time and found that the pegs don’t go in well on tarmac! The sites here are built for the RV brigade and we had to use our French with the Quebecois next door to get permission to pitch our tent on some of their grass. This is mini Quebec and it certainly explained why we kept getting “Bonjour’s” as we cycled.
The ride out of the built up coastal area left us with the option of staying at the Lion safari park or using WarmShowers. The park was $50 a night and apparently you get to listen to lions roaring all night so we opted for warm showers – a group of fellow cycle tourers, back packers and others who offer free camping in their garden or even a bedroom. Our host were the parents of a girl who cycled from New York City to Miami after finishing her degree in 30 days! They we’re so kind – as appears to be usual for the Americans – and we had a great room, spent an evening chatting and they even gave us food and drink too, and no lions to keep us awake.
This would be our last stop in the built up jungle of the Florida coast as we now turn inland to begin heading diagonally up through the centre of the state toward the Gulf coast.
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