Florida Day 14

I got up at 6:30 a.m. to watch the sunrise over the Atlantic. While Sharon and Jack slept, I got a cup of coffee and a paper and sat on the sea wall in front of the hotel to watch the sunrise over the ocean. Sunrise was at 6:53 a.m. and was spectacular.

While I got back to the room, Sharon went down and ran. Afterwards, I ran 4.25 miles on the treadmill; I ran the last 1/4 mile at a 6:35 mile pace. We had breakfast at the Beach Club at the hotel and then Sharon took Jack back to the arcade.

Checking out, we headed to the the The Norton Museum of Art. When we started to change our plans, this is one of the things that drew Sharon to Palm Beach. It has one of the largest collections in Florida. It was a little bit of dissappointment for two reasons. First, Jack has been on the road and more than two and a half weeks and I think that he reached his limit. While he was great in the last two museums, he was a struggle at the Norton. Second, one of the pieces that Sharon was particularly interested in seeing was on loan to a museum in Spain. I was impressed with a Dale Chihuly glass ceiling with 693 hand blown glass sculptures in aquatic blues, greens and touches of gold.

By 1:45 p.m., we started north towards Orlando. With two quick stops, it took us almost three hours. As we drove north towards Orlando, we saw more and more damage from Hurricane Charlie. This included houses without roofs, lots of freeway signs and billboards down and hundreds and hundreds of trees broken or bent. This included the area around the hotel. After I dropped off the rental car, I walked back to the hotel and near an area off about 40 acres where almost all of the pine trees had been broken in half. Some of the nearby hotels were had sliding missing and one large building building was missing the lobby.

We had made a reservation at the Sheraton Suites very near the airport and the rental car return. After checking in, we went to find a Walmart to buy an extra bag for all the stuff that we picked up along the way! We had room service and tried to get everyone down early.