9/24/08 -- Southern Florida Traveling through Alligator Alley. Today represented the first day since we departed 3 weeks ago that we would turn back West. The drive through Alligator Alley was full of beautiful scenery. It isn't the scary cypress swamps that you would see in an old run of Scooby Doo, but a vast sawgrass plain. During our trip across the "Alley", we got to see a bit of sweet justice for the speeders we encountered on our trip through the outskirts of Miami. We were traveling along with traffic. The highway is 2 lanes in each direction, and we were (of course) traveling in the right lane. In front of us was a car traveling at our speed and to the left of it another passing it slowly (we'll call this Car2). To our left a third car comes speeding past (we'll call this car JerkDriver) and begins to ride the bumper of Car2 . This bumper riding went on until all of a sudden, the Car2 "lit up"...turns out that Car2 was an unmarked police car! JerkDriver instantly breaked and put serious distance between himself and the police car (guess the lights took the fun out of bumper riding). It was really nice to finally see one of these aggressive drivers get a little come-uppance. The police officer was obviously in a generous mood because he did not hang back to pull over JerkDriver. Our guess is that JerkDriver had to change his shorts when he got home.

Our destination today is Anthony and Pat's (Kevin's oldest brother). We plan to spend the evening with them. One of their neighbors is out of town and has offered to host our RV on their RV pad for the night.