After yesterday’s adventure in the kayaks, I’m ready to get back on the trikes.  Although we would love to stay here and play for a few more days, our time in Key West is done.  It’s time to start riding back toward home.

It’s raining in the morning when we wake up.  Not a good sign.  We dally about in our room at the guesthouse, hoping for a change.  The forecast calls for scattered showers, and in fact it is not raining very hard.    We don’t have much choice anyway – our reservations are up – so when the rain takes a break we decide to head on out.

We load up the trikes and start our ride back north.  It’s pretty much a rewind of our trip down.  There really is only one road up and down the keys – so if you take this tour, Route 1 is the road you gotta ride.  We rode up along the seawall and past the marina.

We know once we get away from Key West, opportunities for breakfast will be few.    We are hunting for a promising restaurant when we spot La Creperie.  It’s actually not as promising as we would hope – it’s small, it’s in a somewhat run-down strip mall, and there is nobody around when we pull up.   But beggars can’t be choosers,  we have not seen anyplace else we wanted to eat, so we decide to give it a try.

We choose to sit outside at one of the sidewalk tables, so that we can keep an eye on our bikes.  The waiter brings us menus,  takes our drink order and almost immediately our opinions of the restaurant begin to improve. The menu lists lots of tasty sounding sweet crepes as well as galettes – organic buckwheat savory crepes.  There are also omelets, wraps and more traditional American breakfast offerings.

Looking for some caffeine to fuel the journey, I order tea.  There is a real choice of loose teas.  The waiter brings my selection to the table in a french press, along with a little timer to allow me to brew the tea for the proper time before serving it.   I though this was a very nice touch.  Nancy’s coffee is also served in a french press.  She is pretty picky about her coffee, but she remarked about how good this was.

As tempting as the sweet crepes looked, I needed more substantial fare for the ride north, so I went with the standard breakfast sandwich.  Nancy choose traditional breakfast and eggs.  All out food was very good, arrived hot and the service was terrific.  La Creperie in Key Plaza turned out a very pleasant surprise.  I would go way out of my way to eat here the next time I’m in Key West.

We dallied over breakfast hoping for some clear skies, but eventually we had to get on the bikes and head north.  Mostly it was just grey, and occasionally there were a few sprinkles.    I didn’t mind so much – it wasn’t raining hard, the rain kept me cool and I’ve ridden in much worse downpours.

The ride is pretty much the same as the ride down.  Because of the rain we didn’t really stop to take many photos, and there isn’t much to say about it that I didn’t already say in my reports of day 2 and day 3.  At least on the ride going north the trail is almost all  on the right hand side of the road – so we didn’t need to cross the road when we had to ride the traffic lanes across the bridges.

The rain came harder a couple of times, but we fortunately were able to duck under cover each time.  Once we managed to get ourselves and our trikes under the roof of a bus stop, another time we stopped at a gas station and sheltered under the eves.

It wasn’t a long ride – only about 30 miles – so in a few hours we arrived at our destination, The Parmer’s Resort in Little Torch Key.

This is a nice enough place.  The staff was having their office holiday party on the afternoon we arrived, so they were a little distracted and looking to close early.  But we arrived in plenty of time, and they went out of their way to get us a room that had a place to keep our bikes outside and out of the rain.

The resort seems to have some nice amenities – a nice pool with a hot tub, hammocks, lawn chairs, barbecue grills, tiki huts, lighted boat basins,  even a putting green.  The place is located right on the water and has 4-5 acres of nicely landscaped property. 

Under different circumstances, we probably would have enjoyed exploring it more.  But we were wet, tired and dirty.  All we really wanted was a hot shower and a clean place to lay down. 

After we showered and rested, we did walk around the property a bit.

After resting and relaxing for a while we discussed plans for dinner.    The rain had stopped by this time, and there was a seafood restaurant just 1/2 mile down the road that we could ride to.  But neither of us felt much like that.  In my day 2 report I mentioned that we had gotten Chinese food delivered when we were in Big Pine Key.  Here we have the option of that same Chinese restaurant, or of a pizza place that will also deliver.  Having sampled the Chinese restaurant a week earlier, we decided to go with pizza.

Big Mistake.  Huge!  We ordered a Margareta pizza and some chicken wings from a place called A Slice Of Paradise.  Despite that we were both starving, we could barely eat this pizza.   It was so bad!  The cheese and toppings just fell of the cardboard-like pizza crust.  The cheese was rubbery and tasted like plastic.  The sauce was watery.  The tomatoes were kind of orange and had no real flavor.   The chicken wings were nearly as bad – they came swimming in a bright pink hot sauce that was not at all hot, and the ranch dressing was tasteless.    Seriously,   if you ever get the opportunity to eat food from this place – run away!

After the horror of pizza dinner, we took another stroll around the property, then turned in early to watch a movie on TV.

Tomorrow is the last day of the ride – but we will end on a high note.  We’ll stay one more night in a really nice resort on Duck Key.  Hawks Cay Resort promises a welcome bit of luxury on the last night of our stay.  But first we have to get there, another 40 mile ride including the famous 7 mile bridge…