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...My Life as 'Drive away' driver
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.. the trip continues from HERE 220121 IA-FL 1 RV to Ocala FL (delivered) ... spending the night at Lakeland FL I thought last night was going to be a rough night. As it got closer to time to shut down, we realized that the heat in our room was either on or off. Changing the temp setting didn't make a difference. But BB shut the heat off in our room and it never got cold enough to wake her up to turn it back on. That was good as I was expecting today to be a lost day if BB hadn't gotten any sleep. The lamps on her side of the bed didn't work either so she wasn't a real happy camper with this place. But it seems like it is only the hotels who don't have problems that ask how your stay was. This one didn't, and I wasn't sure they would care what I told them. Rare that anyone would want to run the heat this for south. Breakfast was eggs and ham. No yogurt, I do not need both. 7 AM we pull out of the hotel. We had seen the other RV driver inspecting his RV when we went down for breakfast. 1st stop is an hour later in Jennings at the FL welcome center. 2nd stop is two hours later in Ocala when I dropped BB off at the airport. My fuel range shows I should have about 40-50 miles excess range when I reached Ocala. Right about 50 miles I loose my range and the gauge starts blinking. With my range gone, I do think about stopping at the closest fuel station which is the Pilot. But that place is hard to get in and out of. So I chance it and make it to Race Trac. The first pump I pull up to has the E-85 nozzle bagged off. I try the diesel but it will not start, so I move to a different pump. But when I am done fueling I do not get a receipt so I have to go in. Still in Ocala, my third stop is the drop. As I am lining myself up, I see BB pulling in behind me. While my RV is still running and I am doing my final paperwork, someone walks up to me and starts inspecting the RV. By the time I can get all of my stuff out of the RV with BB's help, they walk back to our car and hand me my paperwork. They are done. No damages. From the time I fueled to I had delivered my RV and gotten it signed for was less than 15 minutes. Some places it takes hours, lots of hours. 10 miles back north and we are at Murphy's Oyster Bar. It is 70 degrees outside so we sit outside, there is one other couple sitting outside. A little winding but nice, once we got our light jackets. We had eaten two weeks ago when BB dropped here. Great food. But this time we were not staying at the hotel next door so no place to put the left overs. BB started with eating the non-bread with her fork. I ate the 1st half of my Philly and then only ate the non-bread of the 2nd half. I was stuffed. While we sat there, I watched a semi get turned around in their driveway. The way he pulled in I never expected him to get turned around without starting over. But he did. And he hadn't turned down a wrong street, he was here to eat. We've talked about going various places, but decide to go to the Circle B Preserve today when the weather is good here. We have talked about going to the beach tomorrow, we will see. Today we used our I-Pass for the 1st time in FL where they only used to accept Sunpass. The computer accepted it, now we will see how long it takes to hit our account. 3rd stop is the Preserve. We have taken a couple of different paths, this time we take the 'lake path.' We see lots of birds and a half dozen gator's partially submerged in the lake. None were basking in the sun. We also saw a couple of wild hogs was we were leaving. I think it was about a 2-1/2 mile hike and I took about 50 pictures. 4th and final stop was the Comfort Inn here in Lakeland FL. Once checked in we/I ordered soup online from the Longhorn Steakhouse a few blocks away. This hotel has heat. But BB can't get the WiFi to work and wants to move. Mine works fine so I'm not sure changing rooms is going to solve her issue. At first she had to be in one place in the room to get WiFi but later it was working anywhere. Load board US - 298 IA - 102/98 We didn't grab any of the trips today coming out of FL and now they are all gone. So we will sit for the weekend ... ahhh ... in 70 degree weather (if we go south.) But we will need to be moving my mid week next week to be back by the weekend. LOG 7:00 - Leave Comfort Inn - Tifton GA 8:15 - Jennings FL - rest area 10:30 - Ocala FL - airport to PU rental car 10:45 - Ocala FL - Race Trac 11:00 - Ocala FL - drop RV 11:15 - Ocala FL - Murphy's Oyster Bar 2:30 - Lakeland FL - Circle B Preserve 5:00 - Lakeland FL - Comfort Inn 6:00 - Lakeland FL - Longhorn Steakhouse - togo 220122 FL ... spending the night at Naples FL Breakfast - I finally went down and grabbed a couple of cups of juice as they were taking things down. We were both still stuffed from yesterday lunch. We finally check out at close to 11 local. 1st stop is the Purple Onion Deli-Grill in Lakeland a few miles from the hotel. BB wants be to take a right down their street. I can't. They have a 'Farmers Curb' Market' on that street for a few blocks. So we parked on the next street, walked to the Deli, ordered and then walked through the Farmers Market while we waited for our food. We walked a few blocks but still could not see the end of it. I did buy some juice from one of the vendors in a little white VW bus. Other places had syrup, honey and fudge that we looked at. Besides all the farm produce. Good food at the Purple Onion, we both had chicken Philly's. A little dry but very good. From there we got back on US-98, the same road our hotel was on and took that part of the way to Tampa. Much different than taking the freeway every day. Little towns, old houses and farms. Could have gotten a speeding ticket today. We were leaving town on a divided highway and I was already speeding up and there was a cop in the median. The speed limit was still 45 for another mile. I was mostly going with the flow of traffic but they had FL plates and I have CA, who is he going after? 1st stop is Arcadia at Walmart for the restroom, water and pop. After thinking about it later, I don't think what I 'saw' was what happened in the Walmart parking lot. After we get out of our car, I hear a horn honk and look in that direction. I see someone back into the 'cartcaddy' the use for picking up carts. The employee was on the far side of the cart and didn't get hit (from what I could see.) My 1st thought was the person backing up saw the person, blew their horn and hit them anyways. Later when I was thinking about it, it was likely someone else that saw what was going to happen and blew their horn. Either way, not good. Lots of things on this trip looked hauntingly familiar. Tonight I looked it up. Four years ago this week we had picked up a tree truck in Arcadia heading north (through Lakeland.) That is why. It was the 'goat truck.' The tree trucks were all parked in a farmers pasture and the goats came over to see what we were doing. 2nd stop was our hotel - No, we can not check in early. No, no, no. (Later when we do check in, one of the things I have to initial is a line saying that 'IF I am checking in early, I will be charged an extra $50. No thanks) 3rd stop was in Naples at the Race Trac for fuel. $.30 a gallon cheaper than at the freeway exit. Just before the exit it says 'last fuel for 50 miles.' They gotcha. 4th stop was near Carnstown at the Big Cypress Bend Boardwalk. Nothing too exciting. A half mile of boardwalk through foliage that is so thick that you couldn't see anything if there was any wildlife to see. It does give you an idea of what this area was like in places before the roads were here. When we got back to our car we realized there was a gator in the pond just a few feet right behind our car so we watched it do absolutely nothing for a while. It did close it's eyes for a while. BB had found this location online and I had looked it up to see where we were going. When I looked at the map I also saw a 'manatee' place. When we drove to the boardwalk I hadn't seen it so I looked online again. It is a 'sightseeing boat' place. 5th stop was about 10 miles from the boardwalk called Marsh Trail - Ten Thousand Islands NWR. The 10,000 Islands actually what BB had been looking for originally and then realized that 'islands' would be in the water ... in the Gulf of Mexico in this case. So we would not be driving there today. So instead we walked a mainland trail on part of that area. It had the same gator warning signs as most places do down here. I looked back last night when I wrote up our last walks. We had not taken a walk of over a mile since July. 6th and (almost) final stop is the Comfort Inn and Naples. Once we are checked in we realize that we are one of the few non-1st floor rooms that does not have a balcony. It would have been nice in this weather. Instead we have a full kitchen. Not bad for 'free.' If we were paying cash it would have been $200+ tonight. After we were checked in we looked at a Best Western online $500 a night. We are just a few points short of having enough to get that room. With Choice, where we are, we could stay another 11 nights :) Final stop is the Cracklin' Jack's a couple of miles from us. There is a Cracker Barrel and Waffle House in our parking lot but we like to try different things when it comes to food. BB had looked online and told me about most foods. I go with the BBQ chicken. I thought I was getting pulled BBQ but it was intact. BB got 'strawgrass,' fish over pasta. Way to much food but we can't agree to get the same dish so we will have leftovers tomorrow AM for breakfast. Again. We've had a few people riding in elevators with us this trip. No one seems to be sticking to the '2 person's per elevator' anymore. We take the steps most times but it depends on how much we are carrying. Load board US - 282 IA - 102/98 Nothing came off the IA load board today. Maybe they were not open? But with almost 100 trips I would think they would have been open. LOG like 10:45 - leave Comfort Inn in Lakeland FL 11:15 - Lakeland FL - Purple Onion Deli-Grill 12:45 - Arcadia FL - WalMart 2:30 - Naples FL - Comfort Inn - (no early check-in. Check in is at 4 PM) 2:45 - Naples FL - Race Trac 3:30 - Carnestown FL - Big Cyprus Bend Boardwalk 4:45 - Carnestown FL - Marsh Trail - 10,000 Islands NWR 6:00 - Naples FL - Comfort Inn 6:30 - Naples FL - Cracklin' Jack's 220123 FL ... spending the night at Wesley Chapel FL Another rough night, this time BB even left a list of issues in the room. The biggest being people. It was Saturday night in a tourist area. Sometime around midnight kids were knocking on doors. BB heard it, I didn't. Later BB heard people talking as they waited for the elevator that they had the same issue overnight. The elevator was right across from our door and we could hear all the conversations. Load and long, people arguing over the phone. People yelling at others down the hall. Long night. No breakfast. I did have the one chicken leg that I hadn't eaten last night. Plan was to eat an early lunch. 1st stop is Lovers Key State Park. Cold, raining, we didn't expect much of a crowd. $8 per car admission. They do have a 'shuttle' to get people closer to the beach but we walked. Not too many people out, just a few hard core shell pickers. It seemed most groups had a pail or a bag to carry their finds. 2nd stop was Junkanoo At The Beach to eat. They have outdoor seating but they are not serving outdoors yet today. So we eat inside. The first time in almost two years. This place is not taking any visible precautions. They are seating people in adjacent tables next to the window with a view of the beach. The tables sitting in the rear are not being used. Food and service was good. I had French Dip and potato salad. (It could have used more au jus.) BB finally got her fish taco's, it has been so long we can't remember where we were when she ordered them and they no longer made them. We were in the building a little over a half hour, I think we have waited longer inside for our 'to go' food. The bar in this place was half in, half out of the building so there was some open air but we were not directly lined up with that area. The sun had been out while we ate. We had thought about walking on the beach there but there was a security guard watching people come and go and the lot and the lot was almost full so we left to make more room. For the first few miles after we left we were following a Lamborghini. Every chance they got they gunned it a little, even at 15 mph. Lots of people were turning their heads doing a double take. We head to our next stop, as we get close to the causeway we see that it is a toll road. $5. And BB has already looked up the park we are heading to, $6. It is getting to be an expensive trip ... but we keep going. 3rd stop was the Lighthouse Beach Park. The part was better about this park was that there were trees along the beach to break the wind. We walked here for about an hour, the cost was $5 an hour and we were not paying for two hours. There were places along the causeway where we could have stopped for free but we decided to keep going. 4th stop was at the Loves in North Fort Myers for a rest break. As we are going to leave a car leaving and a pickup coming in met bumper to bumper. After a few words, the person in the car blinked and got out of the way. Cop pulled in by the time we left, not likely related. 5th and final stop for the day is the Sleep Inn in Wesley Chapel for the night. We end up getting food from O'Brien's. Mine was a second French Dip for the day. This one was also good, and also did not have enough au jus. Fries were not so good. No plans for tomorrow yet for work. We need to have the car back by 11 AM and that is less than two hours away. Temps are supposed to get down to 30 degree's here in FL tonight. In MN the temps will be closer to -0- overnight. LOG 10:00 - Leave Comfort Inn in Naples FL 11:00 - Bonita Springs FL - Lovers Key Beach Park 11:45 - Fort Myers Beach FL - Junkanoo's on the Beach - food 1:15 - Sanibel Island FL - Lighthouse Beach Park 3:00 - North Fort Myers FL - Loves 5:00 - Wesley Chapel FL - Sleep Inn 6:00 - Wesley Chapel FL - O'Brien's 220124 FL ... spending the night at St Augustine FL Breakfast, I did go down for breakfast. Eggs and really good bacon, plus yogurt. I finally finished my last bottle of juice that I got at the farmers market. This one was mango, not as good as the first flavor. (I thought I had taken a picture of the stand, but no) We pull out of the hotel in time to get to the Ocala airport when our rental car needs to be returned. We wait on the outside chance that we get a trip, can pick up my truck AND find out that there is room and makes sense for BB to ride with me, not follow me. That didn't happen. 1st stop is the airport in Ocala to change our car from a local to a one way. Usually we would stick with a local as long as possible but in this case we need to keep our one way, one week to get a car. And we need to be home Monday, so today is one week. When BB gets back in the car she checks the load board as she has been doing all morning. There is one truck in Orlando going to WI. It was from the corp location. I do not have a direct number for them, it goes through a switchboard and by the time I get to dispatch the trip is gone. It was listed as a tractor and I likely would have had to call the shipper to find out what it was. But it was gone. That was the only FL trip today. There were two GA trips, one coming back to FL and the other going to GA. Nothing worth leaving home for. No work? So we are heading to Blue Springs State Park. It was recommended by a driver on FB when they heard we were going to be 'stuck' in FL for the weekend. It is just over 60 miles so we thought we'd be there in an hour. A half hour into our trip it was an hour and a half to the park. So BB started looking closer. Everything went well until we were about a mile from the park. The computer briefly changed from 45 minutes to 30 minutes before changing back again. 45 minutes to go the final mile. Some people were parking at a local park and walking the last mile. If we thought about it, neither of us commented about it. And neither of us said it was a bad idea to wait ... that happens with us sometimes too. We could also see a lot of cars making u-turns and leaving. Sometimes that seemed to be the only times we moved. 45 minutes later we are at the gate, just like Google maps said. BUT Google maps didn't tell us that they were sending us BEYOND the park and having us make a u-turn to help keep traffic from backing up onto the main highway. It will be another 30 minutes before we are back to the gate and paying. We see that some people who likely had been waiting the same 45 minutes to get to the gate as we did, decided when they saw it would be ANOTHER 30 minutes ... they did u-turns and left at that point. We thought that the wait was because of a lack of parking. If it had been earlier it was not now. Cars were going in as fast as the booth could take the money. AND we found a place to park right away, with only a handicap spot between us and the park buildings. One of the first things we see is a sign that says a record 725 manatee were counted in the park this AM. That is up from the 14 that were counted in 1970, the 1st year that records were kept. Within the last week a record of 600+ was set, so a large bump since even then. We spent about two hours there, looking and some listening to a volunteer. Cost was $6 per car, up to eight people. The best viewing was within two blocks of the parking lot, we may have walked a mile the whole time we were there. The news/website says come early. Today I would say come late. We left at 4:30 and the parking lot was 1/2 empty with no line to get in. And the park does not close until 6 PM. While we were there was saw 'hundreds?' But like a zoo you are looking at them front a distance and they stay mostly under water. They keep stirring up the mud but when they don't the river clears quickly. We walked to the spring which is the start of the river. The spring keeps the water at 72 degrees, always. And that is what brings them back year after year. When we are ready to leave I text my son who is also in FL. We had mentioned doing something on Sunday but we headed south for warmer weather and he ended up having to work. So we met up tonight for a meal. 3rd stop was Palm Coast, first a hotel to pick him up, then Woody's for food. Opps, we eat inside again. But there is almost no one in here. My son has eaten here once before and they almost left when they saw the parking lot so empty. But really good food, (both times for him) I THOUGHT I was ordering a French Dip with a different name. But it was a stake on bread with au jus sauce. Between my teeth and my throat I only ate a third of it by the time the others were done. I should have gotten the ribs? Smaller pieces of meat. Our only lunch today had been an ice cream sandwich at the park. We had planned on eating after the park ... before we knew it was an extra hours wait to get in. When we are done we drop my son back off at the hotel and head to ours. BB had looked on line at the reviews of the hotels by Daytona Beach and even the good ones were bad. The #2 rated hotel in Daytona Beach, their last 10 reviews were all ones or two's, no fives. 4th and final stop is the Best Western in St Augustine. When BB couldn't find one in Daytona Beach she looked north of Palm Coast instead of south. Nothing in Palm Coast in our brands of hotels. Load board US - 301 IA - 97/96 Tomorrow we watch the load board again. No where to go but home now. We will likely keep moving closer to home even without a trip. We ended up further north than we wanted but if there is an early load we can still be home by Friday from anywhere in FL. If the trip shows up later in the day it will be Monday when we can deliver. This car should be returned by 10:30 on Monday ... LOG 10:00 - Leave Comfort Inn in Wesley Chapel FL 11:15 - Ocala FL Airport to change reservations from local to one way 2:15 - Orange City - Blue Spring State Park 4:30 - Leave Blue Spring 5:30 - Palm Coast - Woody's BBQ 7:30 - St Augustine - Best Western .. the trip continues HERE |
