See the Restaurant Road Trip of America planning and uploaded GPS coordinates of the trip in progress, or follow me on Twitter.

The plan today was to get to Key West.

The idea for today was that I would have already been in Key West and I could rest today, but instead I started off driving about 450 miles. I took Florida’s toll road down and I managed to accidentally go past one of the toll lanes, which according to the sign is a $100 fine. The issue was that the divider separating the cash lanes from the Sunpass lanes was way too far up so by the time I realized I was in the wrong lane there was nothing I could do. I called the number on the ticket and they said just to mail in the $13.70 for the toll and it wouldn’t be a problem.

I hadn’t looked too closely at the driving part of the Florida Keys, but from seeing the movie True Lies it seemed like it was basically just over the Seven Mile bridge The reality is that it was about 100 miles. There was a storm just off Keys and while I was mostly dry I got to see another big storm. The Keys themselves were a pretty amazing collection of islands and bridges. I finally made it to the last Key, Key West, and headed right for where the furthest southern point should be. The other two furthest directions so far (north and west) have been without any kind of markers, but the furthest southern point was kind of a tourist spot with lots of people milling about taking pictures.

In Key West I had Foodio54.com give me a restaurant recommendation and it sent me to Red Fish Blue Fish Grill. I ordered the citrus salmon and it was cooked perfectly with a crispy outside and a soft middle. I think that combined with some excellent rice this was better seafood than the Alaskan crab in Anchorage (but the Alaskan crab was a close second).

Tags: Big Road Trip