Home James!

Kissimmee FL to  Summerville SC 400 miles

Day 54


Beautiful weather and an easy ride, a great end to this trip. 

We waited until after Orlando's rush hour to leave the Tropical PalmsRV park.  It's on the far side of Orlando, which means traveling right through the city.  The ride through was not bad at all. 

Walking Brandy before leaving the Tropical Palms RV Resort

Great place and close to Disney...our third time here.

Someone dressed the cypress knees as bride and groom at the park

We took I4 to I95, then drove to Daytona Beach to pick A1A, the scenic ocean route that travels up Florida's east coast along the barrier islands...for the most part.  It's a gorgeous drive, and we like to ride along at least part of it whenever time allows.

 Today we stopped at Ormond Beach along the way at one of the many beach accesses.  We turned the generator on for the A/C for the dogs, grabbed our beach stuff and went down the stairs to the beach.  The beach, which stretches for miles, was ours for as far as we could see, except for one lone fisherman.  We were amused by watching a crab venture out of his hole in the sand, and then run back into it whenever he detected any motion nearby.  We walked a little, noting how immaculate this beach was...no broken glass, no cigarette butts, no plastic washed up.  Apparently, the current does not wash junk up on this stretch of beach like some others we've visited.  Couldn't stay longer than an hour, still had a long ride, over four hours ahead.  Climbed in the RV, realized that the beach is nice, but air conditioning is even nicer, made lunch, and ate looking out over the Atlantic Ocean.  Ah...

We could even keep an eye on the RV

Beach all to ourselves, nice!

Determined to get sand between our toes one more time

Didn't know he took this one of me digging to find that crab in the hole

Back to the Interstate and Florida and Georgia's beautiful roads.  Their I95 is so much nicer than South Carolina's section.  We always have mixed feelings crossing into our home state, we're glad to be nearing home, but embarrassed by the terrible condition of our most important interstate.  It narrows to two lanes each direction and is in desperate need of resurfacing.  Well...at least it keeps people from falling asleep, with all the bumping around.  We've been watching Georgia's remaking of their stretch since before we moved to Georgia for a two year stretch in 1991.  It is almost compete now.  They have the foresight to allow for extra lanes and extra wide bridges to accept more lanes in the future.  South Carolina could learn a great deal from Georgia and Florida.  Many  of our cities are still separated by TWO lane roads (like back in the 50's) with the exception of  Charleston to Myrtle Beach on US17. 

Gigantic tires just barely cleared the overpasses north of Jacksonville

We arrived home a little after six this evening.  The house and yard looked better than they ever have.  Darn...looked so good we feel bad about selling it!    We called the kids and we all went out for Italian...ended up with pizza because while we were gone, the place decided to only serve pasta dishes on the weekends and pizza and calzones/Stromboli the rest of the time.  What's up with that?  Bad move...and what's cheaper and less labor intensive than pasta?  Whatever, it was very good.  Coming to the end of our calorie blowout...

Our for pizza with daughter, daughter in law and granddaughter...sure missed them

Tomorrow we meet with the realtor to sign papers on the house....I don't think the buyer had a long list of things they want us to do, if he does that will be a problem...and we'll stay here.  Gosh, we got it the way we wanted it, well, the kitchen is still small...

This was a great trip in spite of the crazy weather situation.  We experienced many new places, and that's getting harder to do every trip.  There were no breakdowns, no major problems with where we stayed, we didn't witness any horrific accidents and except for early on we didn't have many moments when we wanted to rip each other's heads off!

I'd like to thank everyone who traveled along with us again our latest journey.  There were nights that I didn't feel like writing, but knowing others were following, I didn't want to disappoint anyone.  I'd always be glad the next day that I did write, because memories fade quickly, especially traveling.  Jim has only read it once or twice, he keeps saying that he can't wait to read it to 'see where he's been'! 

We've been a all round this great country of ours, but you know what?

THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE HOME

Until next year...IF we go 'On the Road Again' ....thank you and goodbye for now.