May 3, 2025 Breakfast - Starbucks Impossible Sandwich. Lunch and Dinner - Broadway Subs Beast Sub

May 3, 2025 Breakfast - Starbucks Impossible Sandwich. Lunch and Dinner - Broadway Subs Beast Sub

Today was an all sandwich day as we were on the move all day with no time to sit down to a proper meal.

We started at 8:10 at Starbucks in Homestead with a quick cup of coffee for Suzette and a cup of chai for me plus a Starbuck’s Impossible sandwich that contains a slice of cheddar, a sausage patty and a fried egg sandwiched into a ciabatta roll that was heated. I actually liked the sandwich and at $5.75, it was an adequate breakfast at a reasonable price.

We then drove to Biscayne Bay National Park for the Heritage boat ride across the bay sponsored by the Institute that provides private guided tours. Emily works for the Institute and signed us up for the tour. There were around 30 people on the tour.  It was explained to us that Biscayne Bay was a large coral reef 10,000 years ago before the last glacial period at a depth of around 25 feet.  During the last Ice age the water level dropped, which exposed the coral and it died. Now the ice has melted and the water has partially returned leaving the bay at 4 to 8 feet deep. We first went south to what was once a river channel to the Atlantic next to the south end of Elliot Key. On the way we saw a pod of bottled nose dolphins with young.

Then we went to the outlet beside Elliot Key and heard the history of how The Park was founded in 1968 initially as a national monument by President Johnson and how a black man named Lancelot Jones was instrumental in helping develop the park by refusing to sell his three keys to developers and took much less when he sold to the Park Service.

We then boated to Boca Chica Key that had small beaches and lots of picnic areas where we went seashell hunting and split 1/2 of the Broadway Beast sub being 6 inches. The sub had sliced Turkey, ham, roast beef and provolone cheese plus pickles, sliced tomatoes, lettuce and Mayo.

We drank a coke we bought at the gift shop before the trip and a brownie we bought at Broadway Subs and the small bag of potato chips that came with the sub.

We the returned to the boat at 1:00 and returned to the Park Visitors’ Center at 1:30

            The Boca Chica Lighthouse

We then drove to Miami International Airport and returned our rental car and  checked our luggage with Southwest around 3:00. Miami Airport is huge and it is a long way from the rental car return center to the baggage check area.

Our flight left at 4:00 so we hurried to our gate and made our flight and our luggage made it onto the plane also.

Southwest has computerized both baggage handling and reservation history, so they appear to know when baggage is loaded and when all the scheduled passengers have boarded and will hold the plane until those two functions are accomplished.

For example, we had only a 45 minute window in Houston to change planes and they held the flight to Austin, the intermediate stop, for several minutes until it was confirmed that our luggage had been transferred from the Miami flight to the Austin/Albuquerque flight.  Pretty neat.

On the 2 1/2 hour flight from Miami to Houston we ate the second 1/2 of our beast, making it an all sandwich day of food.

Finally, on the flight from Austin to Albuquerque we ordered a small bottle of  Old Turkey bourbon and a coke to celebrate the completion of another successful trip.

We brought back three pounds of salt, a wool runner for our bed, two liters of olive oil, a lot of llama wool socks, two seashells, and fifteen bottles of wine plus lots of wonderful photos and memories.

I also built my stamina to a new higher post op level that will serve me well in the near future.

We were happy to be back home.

Bon Appetit