Tripometer – 15,612 mi
Gas Gauge – 1239.387 gal
Location – Tomoka State Park, Ormond Beach, FL
Lodging – $25
Cans of OFF – 4
We’ve been by the shore for two days now and neither of us have seen the ocean, so for lunch today we drove into Daytona Beach to find some food at a restaurant right on the beach. Throughout this trip we’ve been using a cell phone app called ‘Bring Fido’ to find restaurants, hotels, attractions, etc. that allow dogs. Today that app led us to Sloppy Joe’s right at the heart of Daytona’s Boardwalk. It was relatively cold, right at our limit to sit outside in fleeces and still enjoy our lunch, but we persevered because we really didn’t want to leave Ranger in the car in the heart of Daytona Beach. We weren’t expecting much from the food as our number one priority was to sit along the beach for our meal but we were both blown away by our meal. Kelly’s lunch was a noteworthy chicken sandwich but Paul’s BLT was insane. Paul has long been a huge fan of BLTs with extra tomato and this afternoon’s meal was the object of his desire. The BLT was served with a pound of bacon. I repeat, a POUND of bacon. Needless to say both Paul and Ranger enjoyed his lunch.
After Kelly finished work in the afternoon we went in search of a swimming opportunity for Ranger. As we’ve learned on this trip, his favorite activity is playing fetch at the water’s edge and the poor guy hasn’t been swimming since we camped at Grand Isle State Park at the southern tip of Louisiana some two weeks ago. The waitress at lunch suggested we try Lighthouse Point Park a few miles south of Daytona Beach.
As we pulled up to the entry gate at the park, the attendant, seeing Ranger in the back seat of the car, exclaimed “you must be here for the dog park!’. We knew we were in the right place. We searched high and low in the park for any place to take the dog swimming but there were ‘No Pets’ signs everywhere! All of the beaches were wildlife sanctuaries and even the rock jetty was off limits. The lifeguard on duty directed us to the bay side of the island where there were more signs to keep your pets on a leash (while swimming???!?) than there were to pick up poop. And there were a ton of those too… Back home, ‘Keep your pet on a leash’ is not a dog park, that’s called a ‘park’. We left $10 poorer and disgusted with Daytona Beach’s idea of a dog park. (We did grab a couple of nice pictures of the lighthouse though.)
As we headed home we stopped to run a few errands including looking for a place to grab our fishing licenses. We plan on being in Florida long enough to warrant an annual license for both of us. We weren’t successful in that either.
We’re headed south tomorrow in our continuing quest for warm weather and a water view. We don’t have any real tourism plans for Florida beyond warm weather, water for Ranger and good fishing. Tomorrow is Friday so we were ecstatic to find open reservations at Sebastian Inlet State Park on a barrier island near Vero Beach about an hour south of Cape Canaveral. We’re hoping to be able to find a park nearby for the following week with a good cell signal because there is to be a SpaceX launch to the International Space Station on Tuesday. We were hoping to catch a rocket launch while we were in Florida but being able to see a SpaceX launch would be beyond cool. Keep your fingers crossed, we’ll see if Sebastian Inlet has cell signal (the cell signal app is rather ambiguous about the strength of Sebastian Inlet’s signal).