Day 99 - Nothing To See Here People
Trip Start
May 19, 2008
1
101
161
Trip End
Nov 08, 2008
Bradenton,
Florida,
United States
Monday, August 25, 2008
As we left the camp-site we stopped at the rangers office to complain about the condition of the restrooms. Unfortunately the manager wasn't in and the young girl manning the office wasn't authorised to do refunds, although she did admit that they do have issues with the work (or lack of it) of the ranger who was supposedly cleaning the bathrooms yesterday.
From Chiefland we took the 98 south, a very long, very straight, very boring road. It's lined with tall trees on both sides so there is absolutely nothing to see except road and tall trees
Huge Webs
! Along the way we had a short, heavy downpour but it was all over in 5 minutes. By lunchtime we had reached Clearwater where our road finally took us near the coast, albeit alongside the intracoastal waterway. We stopped for lunch by a bridge over the waterway and watched the big birds fish while we ate. Then it was over the bridge and onto highway 699 which took us down the coast towards Treasure Island and St Pete Beach. Mel had been here 18 (!!!!) years ago and remarked how much more built up it was now, which unfortunately meant that we didn't get to see much of the beach or sea, just apartment buildings and very nice houses.
Rather than battle through St Petersburg and Tampa, we took the Sunshine Skyway Bridge across the bay to Bradenton. It's an impressive bridge and despite being about 10 miles long the toll was only $1. Once we had battled with the road signs through Bradenton, it was about a 15 mile journey to reach our campsite. Unfortunately it was rush hour and so took us about half an hour. As we pulled into the park the ranger was just locking up for the night and so told us to pick any pitch we liked and he would catch up with us later. We chose one close to the shower block, which we are delighted to report were very clean, but even that short distance involved running the gauntlet to escape the mossies once we had washed off our insect repellent
More Boring Road
. There are a lot of them out there again. We made it back to the bus just in time too, as the storm clouds that had been building, decided to give us some rain.
Miles travelled: 185
Total miles travelled: 9806
Days on road: 79
States visited: 18
National Parks visited: 11
