Monday Oct 21, 2013 Key West to Marathon - 51 miles - 271 miles cum

Today is the day to start heading north. Keith and I got, packed and got ready to leave. We wanted to leave right after breakfast. Breakfast started serving at 8:30A.M. and we were sitting at the table exactly at 8:30 AM. The La Te Da serves the best breakfast as part of it's package. Today was not an exception. We also had the experience of sitting next to a couple of "women". The only problem was one of the women was obviously a man in drag. He was over 6' tall, wearing a lot of perfume and was pretty ugly. Keith and I talked about them all the way home.

North bound!

We finished loading the bikes and were on our way by 9:30AM. We had to negotiate some construction for a mile or so but then we were out on the highway and headed to Marathon. We were making pretty good time but it was getting hotter by the minute. The humidity was very high it made the actual temperature of 86 feel like 98. We were sweating constantly. We were drinking a lot of water in addition to some Gatorade we bought. We found a very nice restaurant to have lunch. It was open air and with the ocean breezes and the overhead fans made if very pleasant. We relaxed and had a nice lunch.
We finished lunch and the waitress filled our water bottles with ice and water and we headed for the bikes. That is when I discovered that I had the first flat tire of the trip. I took the back wheel off and removed the tire and tube. When I went to get the spare tube out of my front bag, I discovered that I had left the spares in the trailer bag. I had to open up the big bag and dig down to get my spares. Eventually I fixed the flat. It was a wire puncture. I found the hole but the wire was gone.
We made it to Marathon and checked into the same motel we used on the way down. Although we liked the Hurricane restaurant the last time, we decided to go across the road to the steak house across the street.
We had a very good steak dinner and shared a bottle of wine. Very nice end to a good cycling day.

Old railroad bridge with old highway on top.

Another view of the old railroad bridge with roadway on top.

Would be nice to vacation here!