Exotic Erotics Then Burgers!
We left Fort Lauderdale and drove down A1A to visit Hollywood boardwalk. We got to the parking lot. It was also my first experience with paying for parking for a beach. Not just to drive on the beach like we do in New Smyrna Beach but just to park. I knew we weren't going to stay long so I parked the car and I went up to the machine. The minimum was like 4 hours. I was just going to say screw it and walk away but I noticed that someone left their little scrap of paper the receipt still in the machine. So I took it and I put it on my windshield. We walk down to the boardwalk. It was big! It had separate lanes for pedestrians and bikes. It reminded me of Santa Monica Pier but on the ground. The beach was nice. This and the sand also had a dirt feel to it.
On our way back to the car, I found coconut on the ground (my first) and snagged it. Took some pictures also and set off. We drove through all the beaches to Miami and then went inland to visit the St Bernard de Clairvaux Monastery.
This was the oldest monastery in Spain then William Randolph Hearst paid for it to be shipped over the United States. Because of financial trouble, they stay sealed in boxes. After he died, two people bought it and paid for it to be put back together again. That's why it is in Florida now. We didn't go inside because it was a little pricey just to go inside and take pictures. So we took pictures of the outside grounds which were beautiful and continued on our way.
We found the erotic museum with a little difficulty. We couldn't really see a sign for it so we parked and walked around. Turns out it's a second floor in a business office building. Everything was awesome! Lots of beautiful paintings! Sculptures too!. I snapped a couple pictures of very modest pieces to share. I did love that they had the Clockwork Orange white murder weapon there.
After that, we headed over to the burger joint called BurgerFi. We walked in and it smelled amazing. Then we went on our way after having some burgers.
Our goal was to get to the secret camp on Key Largo before nightfall. It was a bit slow getting there. Ugh, traffic....
We did get there, right before dusk. It was an intersection of two off streets. We parked a bit away and checked if there was indeed a site. Glancing behind the two red signs, there was a path between the boulders. After about a 30-second walk down the path, it opened up to a rocky beach. Behind us, off to the side, was a patch of grass. We didn't want to get busted and we didn't want to get really want the bugs to get us so we hurried.
My mistake was that I didn't bring the tarps. The one night it actually rains is the night I didn't prep for it. Haha! So at midnight, after the first little rain storm already soaked the cheap rain cover that came with the tent, we went to the car and grab the tarps and threw them on top of the tent. There was some rain inside the tent in the morning but there could have been definitely a lot more. We were lucky to catch it. Pretty nice for free secret camp. Only boat that saw us with a fishing boat called in-counch-nito so we figured it was fine especially after night.
