Hank – We said goodbye and thank you to Jen and Ryan and hit the road. Today’s plan was to stop by the Salvador Dali Museum in St Petersburg and then drive on to Moody Air Force Base near Valdosta, GA and spend the night there. The museum was recommended by our Warm Showers host Chris Hipskind back in south Miami. Thanks, Chris!

When we crossed the Sunshine Skyway Bridge going into St Petersburg there was a man with one leg over the wall and a Deputy Sheriff nearby talking to him. (The photo above is from a web site that tracks suicides and attempts on this bridge and it’s what we saw driving by.) As we headed down from the top there were other emergency vehicles on the way up. Apparently, suicides and attempted suicides are quite common on this bridge. It looks like the low rail makes is easy. Fortunately, this man got some help instead.

I enjoyed the museum very much. One room had works by Dali and Rene Magritte, who was also a surrealist artist. I’m not much of an art buff but I really enjoy people who make their mark in the world by being themselves early in life and fiercely continue throughout their years.

The drive to Moody AFB was uneventful. The room at the inn was disappointing. I haven’t seen a cockroach as large as the one we had here since I was in basic training at Lackland AFB almost 44 years ago.

Kathy – We had such a great time visiting with Jen and Ryan. We are grateful for all their wonderful hospitality. We will miss them but know we will see them sometime this next year as they visit Spokane…with their new little baby! I love how they are not finding out the baby’s sex nor letting people know the names they have picked out. It’s just like the olden days, its all going to be a wonderful surprise.

So we said our goodbyes and headed north in our rental truck with the bikes in the back. We have rode our bikes down the entire east coast of Florida so we are using the rental truck to drive up to Alabama. Looking at our long range plans of finishing our bike trip in Spokane the end of August or beginning of September, we are a bit behind schedule. Maybe not necessarily behind schedule, but we realized our trek back across the U.S. (after reaching San Diego, California) is going to take much longer than we anticipated. So we may get a rental now and then to make up some time. Remember, we are not purist riding every mile. Our plan is to ride in all 50 states over 17 months while staying safe and having fun. I guarantee you we are getting in the miles. I haven’t added our totals up lately, but we predict we have over 6,000 miles of riding in so far.

Anyway, the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida was well worth the stop. The art is simply surreal. 😉 Really though, his art work is so interesting and amazing.

During the drive north I caught up on blog post. We were having too much fun and got a few days behind on our postings. Happy to be caught up.

For a lower cost we decided to try another military base lodging. Our destination was Moody Air Force Base in Valdosta, Georgia. Well, let’s just say we did not choose wisely. The room keys didn’t work so we had to drive back over to the main office building. The air conditioning didn’t work so we had to change rooms, requiring another drive over to the main office. It didn’t work in our second room either. Then we find out that the air conditioning it set centrally at 74 degrees. They advised us to open the windows. It wasn’t much cooler outside than 74 degrees. Our air conditioning unit (in either room) was not turning on automatically like the other rooms in the building. So it’s pretty hot. We only found one cockroach in the room but it was as big as 3 – 4 of the regular size ones put together. We’re not changing rooms or going to a hotel because it is so late now that we just want to crash. Let’s just say I’m gonna rethink these military lodging facilities in the future.

No bike riding for us today, only car riding which is much faster. Tomorrow we arrive in Montgomery, Alabama. Looking forward to seeing some of our old co-workers.

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