35.6 mi / 13.5 mph / 114 ft. climbing
Home: Rodeway Inn

We emerged from the tent to find that we suffered no losses overnight in our war with the raccoons. While I certainly awoke to plenty of noises throughout the night, my “alarms” of carefully-arranged dried palm fronds never went off, and our bikes appeared untouched. Were we unnecessarily agitated by their repeated feints last night? Had they just been messing with us? Or was it my brilliant defenses that protected us and our food? We’d need to run the experiment a few more times to accurately assign credit/blame, and I don’t think any of us are interested in that.

One of the noises as I drifted off last night didn’t come from outside, it was a gunshot-like pop that came from within an inch of my ear: one of the last internal baffles in my inflatable pillow lost its grip, and in the process tore a small hole, forcing me to get up and get a bag of clothing from my bike to use as a pillow, the way I used to do it before I got soft. The zipper on Rett’s side of the tent has also been coming open when she closes it (something especially risky/annoying in this buggy campsite, so she exclusively entered and exited on my side of the tent last night and this morning). People who own homes (vs. renting) often gripe about the maintenance responsibilities/costs, but I’m here to tell you that maintenance is a neverending job even if you’re homeless!

The warming trend continued, and it was actually hot enough in camp that we were moving to spots of shade while packing up. The rainfly had been dripping with condensation on the inside, but after hanging it on a tree limb in the sun it was bone dry by the time we left.

Continuing down the barrier island, we started out right along the broad Intracoastal Waterway. Rett was in go-mode, and I was trying to encourage her to enjoy the beautiful view (since we had plenty of time before our 3pm motel check-in), and I got a surprise helper in that task: a dolphin! I first saw one quite close to the boat docks, then a couple more further out in the water. We switched to the broad sidewalk along the road so we could more-easily watch for more and stop.

Eventually land came between us and the water, and I saw a side road entering the Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge, labeled “Historic Jungle Trail”. That sounded pretty amazing, and while I knew nothing about it, I knew the heat maps showed that a lot of cyclists used it, so I threw it out to Rett, and she was game even if it added a bit of mileage. Unfortunately about a quarter mile into the 4-mile “trail”, our tires were sliding out in the sand, so we quickly made the call to abandon this spontaneous excursion and return to the highway, before we added even more than a half mile of wasted time and distance to our day. Sometimes Rett gets frustrated with the time that I need to research our travels, but moments like this prove that we simply aren’t on-the-fly go-with-flow people, and the research is a necessary expense.

Vero Beach is where Rett’s grandparents (on her dad’s side) retired to, and thus where Rett made a childhood/teenage visit or two, so I enjoyed listening to the memory wisps that passing through the area floated up. Most of the housing developments we passed were far too gated and “exclusive” to match anything from those memories, though surely much has changed in 25+ years. As we neared the south end of the island, we began passing taller developments that seemed to be involved in sick competition to label themselves with the most anodyne, forgettable name. “Atlantic View”, “Ocean Harbor”, and “Waters View” all came in quick succession. And then a Sands development listed its subsections: Lakeview, Lakeshore, Riverwalk, Riverside, and Riverpointe! We were thrilled when “Aquanique”, which would normally be gag-inducing 90s schlock, at least went for something!

No bridge crosses the Fort Pierce Inlet, so we were forced to cross back over to the mainland. They’re in the process of building a new, much taller bridge, but since it’s not done yet we got to stay on the lower old drawbridge (though it still climbed a bit so that “normal” boats could pass under it without needing to lift for every single one). The downside of the construction not being done yet is that our route to US-1 was closed and we needed to do a short detour (including a surprisingly steep hill anyway!) to get to the busy highway. It didn’t take long to feel that we had crossed a cultural border we were warned about yesterday, into South Florida’s aggressive driving zone.

We picked up Taco Bell and checked into our motel after four nights of camping. My lower back was doing its once-every-four-months revolt, this time coming on slowly over the last couple days, letting me think that it might come and go without much drama. But when I creaked off the bike at Taco Bell, there was no chance that it was going to allow me to lift the rear of the bike to engage the kickstand (I leaned it against a tree). The on-off loosening meant that by the time we got to the motel a little later it was no problem, but I was certainly glad to see that our room had a good supportive chair and a proper desk that I could sit at, at least once Rett moved all the furniture around by herself so we could get the bikes in the room!