Titusville to Lantana, Palm Beach

Monday 4th January 2010

We drove south from Titusville to Lantana which is just south of West Palm Beach; Palm Beach being an island (joined to all the other barrier islands and the mainland by bridges) and West Palm Beach being on the main land.

Having already visited Cocoa Beach briefly with Sarah and the family we knew that the area is fairly well built up with endless traffic lights and no views of the ocean so we started our journey on highway 95, but only stayed on there until we had passed the area by, then joined the A1A for the much slower but prettier drive. Shortly after joining the highway we saw a racoon trotting down the side of the road, the only live racoon we saw our whole time in Florida.

After a short while we decided to stop for a break at Sebastian Inlet State Park with frontage onto the Atlantic Ocean and the Indian River. We took a walk along the pier which was dotted with people catching an amazing amount of fish (I can’t remember the name of the fish, but it did have ‘blue’ somewhere in there). Leaving the pier, we started to walk up the Indian River inlet and something made me stop and ask one of the guys fishing there how he was getting on and if he was fishing for anything in particular. He had very strong opinions on everything and he became very talkative: He doesn’t like Obama; 'Obama is just a puppet that has no idea what he is doing. He has cancelled some defence programme that was the best thing since sliced bread to save money; then there’s this health care for everyone - will never work, it don’t work in other countries, it won’t work here. He told us that although he is Catholic he doesn’t believe in welfare – ‘if you can’t feed ‘em, don’t breed ‘em’.' He went on at some length about his taxes and how much he had to fight for his rights, he has no intention of paying more than he has to just so 'they' could give it to these families who have been on welfare for generations. Then he started on about Iraq; ‘if you grow weed in your house’ he said ‘and you see a report on the news that the police are coming to bust your ass, you clear out the weed before they turn up’ referring, I believe, to all the media coverage before the invasion. I did think about asking him why he thought that Sadam didn’t use all these weapons if he had them but thought better of it. Round about then his buddy came over and we made our escape.

Our next stop was for lunch and we managed to find a deserted beach, a miracle in this area, before moving on to our destination for today. The weather has been bright and beautiful and the wind down here is not as cold as it was for the pass two days up in Titusville.

After we arrived and booked in to the motel we drove down to watch the sunset at the beach, even though Palm Beach faces east. It was here that I used our first US parking meter; essentially, a veracious coin devourer - in the car park - not on the beach!