We ate dinner at the hotel. We had Latino food. Not really sure what made it latino except that it said "Latino food". It tasted good but then again when you ride every day all food is good. Except for that spicy texan/mexican last month. Tomorrow's weather is supposed to be stormy thundershowers with possible tornadoes. So Hap signed us up for another night at the Day's Inn. We spent most of the day off, doing nada. Watchin tv, playing games, doing laundry, washing our sleeping bag. Big Agnes was gettin kind of dirty so we through her in the tub and dryer. We were alittle concerned about washing our expensive down sleeping bag but she seemed to come through it just fine. Hap was feeling down from his cold, so it was a good day of rest. The weather report was accurate as the storm hit about 1 pm. There were several tornadoes but none in our area. They stayed north of us thankfully. We ordered some chinese food to be delivered for dinner. The wind really blew all night long. It was supposed to change direction so that we would have a tailwind or wind from the northwest tomorrow. Sounds good to me.
Today we woke up to beautiful sunshine. It was in the 60's and yes we did have a tailwind! We headed east on Rt 98 along the coast. We decided to take Rt 399 toward the city of Gulf Breeze on Santa Rosa Island. About half way down the island there was a sign that said "road ends in four miles." Hey Hap what do you think that sign means? Isn't there another bridge at the end of this island that we can take back to Rt 98? There sure is! So why does that sign say THAT? Oh, I'm sure it's just a guideline. It doesn't really mean that the road ends for bicycles. So we kept riding east and sure enough there was a big gate and very big signs that said road ends. Mmmm...we asked some walkers if a bike could ride the road and they said yes. And that some other bikes just went through. We called the police dept, a bike shop and neither of them knew if we could get through. So we called the park ranger for Gulf Shore. Yes, the road is for sure closed. MMmm....if we have to go back that is going to add at least 20 miles. What do you think?? Let's keep going. The road was there, it was just chewed up in places and had sand across it. We had to push across some sections. It was damaged in Hurricane Ivan in 2005. Finally we came to the end of the road and into the town of Navarre Beach. One thing we did notice was all of the houses for sale. We stopped for lunch at a restaurant and had a New Orleans Shrimp Po Boy. It seemed funny that we were in LA near New Orleans and had not had a PO Boy. I asked Hap if it was worth riding 1000 miles for and he said no. But it was ok. We rode across the intercoastal bridge to Rt 98 and headed east. We had about a foot berm to ride on. There was alot of traffic but everyone gave us room until we got into the town of Fort Walton. Then things got interesting. The shoulder went away and traffic picked up. It was interesting that there were signs up that said "Bicycles on roadway". I'm not sure why they had the signs up because no one seemed to pay them any mind. I think they are JUST A GUIDELINE or something. We had a couple of bridges to cross before we got to Destin. I think the best way to ride a bridge is to just claim the lane and go. It was alittle dicey. We got to the hotel and had a bonus of a whirlpool. We went out to dinner with some friends from Circleville. It sure was great to see some familiar faces. We had some great seafood. Ken and Connie took us down Rt 98 and showed us a detour that we could take tomorrow that would get us off of Rt 98 for awhile. And they told us about a 27 mile long bike trail. We are heading to Panama City tomorrow. Until then...........
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