Florida Day 6

When did my little boy grow up. We started this road trip with him driving and today, we are taking him to his first college visit. He is considering a career as a pilot so he wants to look at Embry-Riddle, an aeronautics university in Daytona. Since we going to be in Florida, it seemed to make sense to check out the school while we were here. The tour was at 9:00, so that meant an early wake up. It’s only an hour away but we needed to break camp and give ourselves a bit of extra time to find our way on campus. Plus, we had no idea what sort of traffic we might encounter.

We ended up having no traffic and we arrived on campus about a half hour early. But I would rather be early than scrambling because we are running late. The University is right by the Daytona speedway—home to the Daytona 500. The campus was nice but HOT. And I mean set out a tray of cookie dough and you’ll have cookies in ten minutes hot. The tour was long, nearly two hours, and extremely overwhelming—at least for me. As an aeronautical science major, not only would G3 be taking a full course load, he would also need to learn how to fly which requires hours and hours of flight time. However, G3 really liked the school and doesn’t seem as concerned about the workload as I am.

We were all famished after the tour. Breaking camp and driving to the school left us no time  to eat. So once it was over, we went to Waffle House. While we ate, we decided our next stop would be Canaveral National Seashore. I was surprised by how few people were there. The beaches in Cape Cod and Assateague are always crowded. Here there were only six other people on the beach. It was lovely. The water was incredibly warm and the lack of a crowd made for a very pleasurable swimming experience. It was great to be in the water and not have a single person—except for G3–near me. I also really enjoyed watching the Wilson’s plovers scampering across the sand. While I was watching them, G3 pointed out a pelican bobbing up and down on the waves.

Unfortunately, our swim was cut short by a crack of thunder. Shortly after we arrived at the seashore, dark clouds started to amass in the distance so we knew a storm was coming, but a short swim—if nearly an hour is short—was better than no swim at all. Minutes after we were back in the parking lot, I saw lightning in the distance. We changed out of our bathing suits and got in the car to continue our journey south. But first, we stopped back at the visitor center because a ranger had told me that sometimes manatees can be spotted in the bay behind the building and I was determined to see one. I had never seen a manatee before and felt like this particular trip to Florida would be incomplete without a manatee sighting. G3 and Kati opted to stay in the car. I approached the bay hyper focused on what I wanted. I put it out to the universe and the universe deemed me worthy. Not long after I settled myself on the dock and my eyes on the water I saw movement. In time, the movement became a bit more pronounced and then the manatee got close enough that I clearly saw her head when she briefly rose above the surface. Seeing her made me happy. That alone was worth the detour to the national seashore.

On the road that cuts through the park we saw several gopher tortoises. They were relatively big and moved swiftly—more so than you might expect. A few even crossed the road which doesn’t feel safe at all. Even though there are signs, humans can be careless. I hope they close the road at night to protect the tortoises from speeding, unobservant cars.

We are now sitting in traffic en route to Miami. The clouds are still dark and foreboding and we’ve heard a few loud claps of thunder but thus far we’ve just had a couple of short bursts of heavy rain.

The rain continued on and off, though mostly off for the duration of our drive. It was around eight o’clock when we pulled into the hotel. Yes, you read that correctly. We are not camping this leg of the trip. Kati was concerned that the heat and bugs would completely defeat her if we camped too close to the Everglades, so she booked a cheap hotel. My first impression of Miami is not terribly good. All we’ve done is drive through it but it’s a city. A city with lots of cars and too many people. I don’t feel like I’m near the ocean. I can’t smell the salty air, just the car fumes. I kind of feel like I’m in New Jersey with palm trees.

For dinner, we went to The Better Taco. Kati liked her quesadilla and G3 loved his street tacos, but I wasn’t a fan of the burrito. I think it was the rice. There was too much and I’m very picky about rice. I really just like the Asian varieties.