2019 Motorcycle Trip to Key West Florida

Just about Christmas time, Tim dropped a hint about a spring get-away. Who knew that we’d have records amount of snow nor how much we really needed to get away! The goal was to trailer the motorcycles to northern Florida and then ride to the Keys.

Who knew that the trip down would be such an adventure. Our goal was to drive straight to Wildwood, FL near The Villages where we could park the van for the week as we hopped on the motorcycles.

We got to about 100 miles north of Chattanooga, TN when the Alternator died. Seven hours in a podunk repair shop and we were back on the road. 30 miles later, the Serpentine belt (that they had replaced) was shredded so Fred and Tim had to replace on the road.

Once we reached Wildwood, Florida, we got on the bikes. We started about 7pm and it was 85 degrees! Heavenly! We headed to Cocoa Beach to meet Karen's aunt. After the visit, we took highway A1A down the Atlantic coast making our way to Homestead to spend the night.

Key West, Florida

The ride out to Key West is really cool; it covers dozens of bridges connecting dozens of the Keys and includes the famous "Seven Mile Bridge". At the bitter end of the highway in Key West is the official "end: of Highway One!

We all felt that we owed it to ourselves to take a Booze Cruise on the Gulf to see the famous Key West Sunset...we loved it!

Roxanne is truly happy when she can actually get in the water so she talked Tim into joining her on a snorkeling tour. The third largest coral reef in the world is about 7 nautical miles off the coast of Key West. We both loved it...that is until Tim was the first one to encounter the 7 foot reef shark that swam up to about 10 feet away from him! Yes...time was freaked!

The Sanders (who are our motorcycling/ice cream eating heros) had a great photo of their bike in front of Southern Most point in the United States. We got there too late to command the space to do that so this was the best we could do.

Fred and Tim had to go visit the Southernmost House....

...and Bar too. The part you don't see in the picture below is how big this chair was and how drunk Tim and Fred appeared as they tried to get into it! It was darn funny!

Everglades National Park

One of the bucket-list items was to take an AirBoat ride in Everglades National Park. While we did that, the highlight was Fred trying to befriend an alligator that only hissed at him to keep him away.

A special treat was to spend Thursday night at the house of an old friend (ok...he's not old..he's just been a friend for a long time). Jeff "Peat" Maas and his wife Bonnie live near Naples Florida and invited us to stay the night. We had drinks and talked well into the night. Thankfully Peat did not have to work Friday morning.