Tuesday-April 2nd – Still Heading Northbound.

 

We both just love to hear the local people's Georgia accents. When we mentioned it to the hotel desk clerk last night, she told us that we were the ones who have an accent, not her. And she was absolutely right because we were in her state after all. When I mentioned to Cordell that I never noticed any discernible accents in Fort Myers, he told me that it was because everyone who was there during the past three month was from out of state.

We got back on the road northbound at 8:30 this morning. Our Garmin told us that we would arrive at our hotel in Dunn, NC by 2:00 pm. Ha! Ha! The Garmin knows a lot of things about routes, traffic, speed limits, mileage, travel time, and every kind of place to stop while traveling. But it doesn't know Jack about our penchant for geocaching and how difficult it is for us to pass by some caches.

 

 

It was a beautiful sunny morning and the temperature hit 90° by late afternoon. When we thought about the weather that is forecasted at home next week, it was impossible for us to not linger in this beautiful and friendly state of Georgia. I thought that I might like to become a geohobo.

 

 

While driving in the small town of Eulonia, GA, we were surprised to see a Piggly Wiggly grocery store. I have fond memories of this chain of stores which were located where I grew up in southwest Virginia and I didn't know they were still in business--a bit of nostalgia for me.

 

We drove down a road which had beautiful trees on both sides that were draped in Spanish moss. Their limbs provided a canopy over the road.

 

 

When we crossed into South Carolina, the I-95 highway went from 3 lanes down to two and traffic was much more congested. After about 5 miles, everyone was back up to the speed limit.

We found two caches in Georgia and stopped in a Kroger grocery store to buy apples. I had failed to pack socks in my small baggage that I am using daily and Cordell told me that it would be too difficult to retrieve my large bag from under all the stuff riding on top of it. I was delighted to find some sneaker socks in Kroger that are unlike any that I already have.

We have seen numerous signs along all the roads we have travelled during our lifetimes. But today we saw one that was new to us. It read "Bush Management" and was placed in an area where workers were removing bushes from the sides of the roadway.

We found three caches in South Carolina and one was completely different from any of the 1,794 that we have found during our caching "career". I would like to replicate it at home.

When it was time for lunch, we noticed the Olde House Cafe in Walterboro had a lot of cars in their parking lot. This is usually a sign of a good place to eat, so we decided to go inside. We noticed that we were now far enough north that there were not many old gray headed people among the customers.

 

 

We also determined that despite our early start, we had travelled only 137 miles in 4 1/2 hours. At this rate it is going to take us a lot loooonger to get home than we expect. This might blow our Garmin's mind.

Approximately 60 miles from the North Carolina border, we noticed that the trees have a lot less leaves and the farther north we got, the barer the trees were and the grass is brown.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When we finally arrived at our hotel for the night, we realized that it had taken us 8 hours to make a 5 ½ hour drive. At 4:30 pm, it was 86°. It was as if the Florida sunshine followed us north.

 

We have seen a lot of self-contained RVs on the road today and almost all of them were towing vehicles. There are many out of state people staying in our hotel tonight, too. Just in one row of the parking lot, I saw tags from New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Illinois, New Hampshire, Ontario, Kansas and one from North Carolina.

 

After dinner, we took a walk around the area before settling in for the night. There was a pretty sunset here tonight even though the skyline is different from what we have been seeing in Fort Myers.

 

Our travel is now 2/3rds over and we should be home tomorrow night.

Tuesday, April 1st – Goodbye Florida!

 

They say all good things must come to an end and that was true for me today. We loaded up the car and by 8:30 this morning we had started our trip back home. It has been a fantastic 3 months for us and we remain thankful that we received this blessing to stay in such a warm climate.

Cordell was ready to come home. As for me, I have truly left a part of my heart in Fort Myers. On our way out of town, we stopped and checked out my tin heart geocache that I placed on Valentine’s Day. It is named “I Left My Heart In Fort Myers” and 13 people have already found it.

Once we were out of the Fort Myers area, we drove on some singe lane roads in hopes that traffic would not be as heavy as we have experienced on the major interstates in the past.

 

We passed through some towns that we have seen in our travels to the Orlando area. In one of them, there is a citrus processing center and every time we have been here, we have seen semi-trailers fully loaded with citrus. We think that they must be destined to be made into juice because the fruit on the bottom is surely being squashed by the ones loaded above them.

As we were merging onto Route 4 at Davenport, we had to yield to 3 large sized RVs that were travelling north also. I suppose the exodus from Florida has begun. One of them displayed a license plate from Ontario. I was glad that we don’t have to drive that far.

 

We made a stop a Burger King for a quick lunch. There was a note affixed to the mirror in the ladies room that I thought was a good idea to encourage girls and women.

When we crossed the state line into Georgia, we made stopped to stretch our legs at the Visitors Center and of course, we found a nearby geocache.

 

 

 

 

 We are spending this night in Brunswick, GA. Our hotel has a restaurant attached to it. We enjoyed delicious steak dinners and then took a walk around the complex. So we are now about 1/3^rd of the way home.