I was expecting to be the only person mad enough to go to the laundromat this early in the morning - in fact, I had to wait for machines to become available as it was packed! This is obviously peak time.
We arrived back at the hotel in time for breakfast and then spent a couple of hours moving suitcases from the car to our room on the first floor to be repacked and then back to the car. A couple of the other B&B guest became curious as to what we were up to and soon came to have a look at our packed up car and attempts at repacking ready for the flight home!
By the time we finally came to leave St Augustine, I was shattered! But there was one last thing we needed to do before heading back to Miami, clean Fin! I know that hire car companies expect a little dust and dirt here and there but we haven't actually washed Fin now for several months and we have been down dirt roads, up mountains, through streams, we have been rained on, snowed on, covered in sand and then in Florida, all that has been baked on in the Florida sun. Fin's lovely bright silver colour has turned into a dull grey and we thought the hire car company might notice. So we found a DIY car wash just down the road, the automated machine ones were not going to be strong enough to get off this much coated on dirt, and headed there with a purse full of quarters to give him a good clean!
Once we finally left St Augustine, we followed the A1A all the way down to Daytona Beach. It was a typical laid-back Floridian journey past beaches and inlets, scattered with little tourist towns and nature reserves. It was very pretty.
We arrived at Daytona Beach and decided to park up in one of the public parking lots (which only cost a couple of bucks) so that we could have a stroll along the beach. If was off season and most of the hotels looked closed for the season and the beach was pretty empty.
We reached the beach and realised that cars were actually allowed down onto the beach and there was even a road marked out (with cones) so they could drive up and down. The beach is open to vehicles from sundown to sunset every day from May 1st until November 1st and access costs $20 for the entire day. It was unusual to see cars driving up and down the beach and probably something fun to do as its different but once you've driven up and down once, I'm not really sure what the point is. I guess a car makes a handy wind break if you're happy to sunbathe alongside the fumes and the noise.
Our next stop was Cocoa Beach, another large beach town on the East Floridan coast. Again we parked up in a public parking lot and headed towards the beach. This place felt more like a party town but that might have been helped by the beach-side restaurant we found with live music and an even livelier atmosphere!
We could have stayed in Cocoa Beach a lot longer, even with all the party goers and posers but it was getting late and we still had a long drive to go.
We arrived in Miami after dark but we were treated to an amazing sunset during the drive, one of those where you take hundreds and hundreds of the same photo as it just looks so good. I only chose of a few of these for the video!
It felt strange driving into Miami as we went along the same roads we were driving down 6 months ago when we started this journey, it felt like we were looking back in time as we went past the first hotel we stayed in, the bar / restaurant we went to on our first night and the sidewalks we walked down as we discussed the adventure we had ahead, the camping stuff we needed to buy and how big our cooler needed to be to handle all the beers we were going to buy!
We had chosen to stay in Miami Beach for the last few days of our trip, wanting somewhere where we could relax and party before we had to return to reality back in the UK. We have been to Miami Beach a couple of times before and decided this time to try one of the non-branded boutique art deco hotels. So we booked into the The Lord Balfour Hotel.
Parking was an issue. The valet parking would have made Fin inaccessible and we had a lot of unpacking to do that was going to take some time. We were eventually directed by the hotel to some street parking with a meter but it was expensive, costing $50 for the night, although it was just around the corner of the hotel so close enough to continue to go back and forwards with our stuff. We later found a public car park around the corner which was $20 for 24 hours and even had a 24 hour security guard, this would have been a much cheaper option and was only a 5 minutes walk.
We spent most of the night slowly unpacking Fin, getting funny looks from the staff as we went past them with case after case, camping equipment, cool boxes, even badminton rackets and chairs!
Eventually, Fin was empty and we were able to have a drink in the bar before heading to bed after a very long day.
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