In our home stretch to the finish line, the day began with a bit of rain, which mirrored our somewhat somber moods. It’s a strange feeling, after eight months living out of a camper, that we’re headed to a place we call home. The truth is, “home” doesn’t really feel much like home anymore.

Driving south on A1A, we spotted another member of the VW Bus family, a vividly orange specimen with a roof rack. That got us to crack a smile or two.

The rain let up a bit, and we cruised to the Jupiter area to make a stop at the Hobe Sound National Wildlife Refuge. There’s another park around the corner here that we frequent often, called Jonathan Dickinson State Park, but we skipped it today since we plan on returning to it sometime later this month for a mega geocaching run.

Hobe Sound NWR is another coastal refuge containing some of the most productive sea turtle nesting habitat in the U.S., along with 300 acres of the rare sand pine scrub habitat. Ninety percent of sand pine scrub has been lost to development in Florida, and this fantastic ecosystem is restricted only to Florida and one adjacent county in Alabama. The refuge is bisected by the Indian River Lagoon into two separate tracts of land totaling over 1000 acres.

Eliana and I walked a few of the short trails in the refuge and perused the visitor center which had some good exhibits and some live animal displays, mostly reptiles.

From Martin County, we continued further south to the ritzy and glitzy Palm Beach County, where there is a lot of flaunted wealth and prosperity along the beach. Eliana took the wheel, and has been getting better with the stick-shift, though neutral to first still needs a bit of work.

Once hitting West Palm Beach, the traffic on A1A got increasingly bad, and we’ve seen this area before, so we made a beeline for I-95 where things would go a bit faster. Onwards to Miami!

Hitting Broward County, we were only one county away from the one we claim residence in, Miami-Dade County. Eliana’s father, Gustavo, works in Broward doing mechanical diesel engine service, and we surprised him at his work. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him smile that wide, except maybe when Eliana got him a bike last Christmas!

After a bit of lunch with her dad, we reluctantly fired up Valentina for the final 50 miles of a nearly 25,000 mile epic voyage.

The all-too-familiar exotic and highly invasive Malleluca “paper” trees along Krome Ave. The USDA poisons them, but they reproduce very quickly, forming a monoculture of plants that greatly reduce the biodiversity of the area.

This waypoint has been on my GPS since we left back in June, and was visible on our screen once again...

It’s hard to comprehend just how FAR we’ve actually come.... one of those things you just can’t get your mind around. Is it difficult for you, too?

We DID it!!!

Arriving at Eliana’s house, we were greeted by her family, and of course, all her cats! There’s a lot of them... Socks, Mami, Ton-ton, Michiko, and a few other furry felines...

The good news is that even though this leg of the journey is over, our life adventures will continue, and I plan on keeping this blog active. And... there may even be a road trip “Part B” starting in May if we can pull it off. However, the updates are going to become much less frequent, as I need a break from blogging so I can turn this adventure in a book! Plus, we figure out what the hell we are going to do next with our lives.

Here are the GPS tracks around the continent that we’ve accumulated. I love this map!

This weekend (February 6-8, 2009), we’re just in time for participating in Volksblast, a huge air-cooled Volkswagen show and street festival in South Miami. Featuring over 200 VW’s an an estimated 10,000 spectators, you can bet we’ll be there as we SHUT DOWN THE TOWN! There will be 5 blocks of Sunset Drive cordoned off in the heart of South Miami, adjacent to Sunset Place, for the event.

Our shining star of air-cooled goodness, Valentina, will be entering in the judged competition, and we are keeping our fingers crossed that we leave with a trophy.

On Sunday (Feb. 8), we’ll be hanging out at our show spot all day, “showing off”, answering questions about our cross-country adventure, and catching up with our Florida friends. Show runs from 10 am - 4 pm. Hope to see some of you there!

Thanks for following, and stay tuned for pictures from Volksblast and our future adventures to come. Additionally, we plan on following up within the week with some trip statistics, including expenses broken down by category, number of national parks visited, and more.

Yours truly,

Marc, Eliana, and Valentina