We woke up at 6 am, got ready for church, packed the few remaining things we needed into the car, headed over to the RV storage and put those items into the motorhome, dropped Skruffy off and picked up Marcia’s brother Mike, and off to church we went. After church we dropped Mike off and loaded up Skruffy and Bubba, went back to the motorhome and quickly drove off. By the time we left the storage area, it was around 11:15. The 3 1/2 hour trip to Lake Mary took, 4 hours and 45 minutes!!!!!! GRRRRR!!!!! Above is one of our favorite rest areas, and it was packed with RVs and Motorhomes, all with out-of-state license plates except or ours. AND, there was another half dozen over in the truck parking area. Time to flee Florida for some of the Snowbirds. Leave now, and you can be home for Easter.
We had a uneventful trip over to I-75, and when we headed north there was a warning about a slow down at exit 285…no sooner had we pulled out of the rest area and passed old highway 54 exit and we hit TEN MILES of stop and go and stop and don’t go and stop and go traffic. Probably took us close to 90 minutes to travel the ten miles…and what can one do when you are going 7 miles per hour? Well, you play the licenses plate game!
Twenty out-of-state plates in 10+ miles….new record for me. Only one from Canada, only one from an RV and that was in the Flying J. Yes, I have made the plate numbers/letter obscure (except for the 18 wheeler) because “momma and daddy” might not have known exactly where their college student spent Spring Break….which I think was the bulk of these plates, at least 2/3rds of them in my opinion.
The Flying J was just packed….I was surprised to get right into an RV pump after an idiot in a four wheel SUV from Georgia got through at the RV pumps (no, he did not have a trailer …. it was just a SUV.) The picture to the right is the line that formed while we pumped….two islands going and there were now backed up two deep. I didn’t even get to go inside to get some coffee! Oh well, Marcia’s brother took care of that hours later when we finally arrived to his house.
Although it is shorter distance to go through Tampa and Orlando, we always go through Mount Dora, the northern route. Today I wondered if we made a mistake or not…until I heard on the radio that I-4 was packed with many slow downs. I should have headed over to a side highway earlier than I did, but around Dade City we did…finally getting on 301 north, and everything was easy from then on. After getting gas at Flying J the Interstate did open up…just to get all clogged up again, and the Dade City exit was there staring at my face…good choice, although it took us on some county roads for a bit. So a 3 1/2 hour trip too us an extra 90 minutes or so. But it is nice to be back on the road again…Tuesday we head back to the condo for one night to get the final stuff we left there, attend church Wednesday night, and then we will off and going…surely staying at that rest area the first night, or the next one down the highway.
Ugh, sounds terrible. My A#1 reason for never traveling on Sunday, too many people trying to go home from their week or week end Ditto for the week before Easter traveling North. The New Years to Easter crowd fills the highways.
ReplyDeleteYes, we try not to travel on Sunday either, but the RV storage runs out on Wednesday morning, so this just worked out the best. I should have looked at a back roads solution to begin with, highway 301 was nearly empty while I 75 was so full....they run nearly side-by-side through the area we needed to travel.
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