It seems to me that it must be time for the jgTravelogues to start. Friends and family are asking "where are the pictures and stories". Hopefully it isn't that they have no life. We're not sure whether to apologize or take credit for what we bring to their lives each day.
January 20 - to Janaury 24th
We seem to get into a huge tizzie each year as we near our departure for Florida. There is always a project that Mr. Jerry is working hard to get finished. This year was no different. His projects are almost always centered around building some kind of device to monitor condittions in the house. In years past, it was some kind of thing to check temperature or watch water levels in the sump pump well. This year the big project was the installation of security cameras. With a last minute push we were able to install a camera system that enables us to see various vantage points from our computer while we are away. There are some other bells and whistles that we installed that allow us to turn lights on and off, etc. It's likely that everyone who knows Mr. Jerrry will agree that he has an active mind that never seems to finish thinking up new things to create.
By Wednesday morning we were able to cram our belongings into our ever shrinking car and get the car headed out the driveway to begin our journey south. The skies were clear and we were blessed with sunshine on the first part of our trip. That lasted for much of our first day on the road. There is little to report about our driving that day. We popped one of our "books-on-tape" into the player and settled into the numbing routine of driving mile after mile. We encountered no problems as we made our way out of Ohio and through Kentucky and into Tennessee. It's only a few miles thereafter that we come to the little burg of Careyville where we usually spend our first night. We found the place basically unchanged and were in our room in short order. There are few restaurants there and the one we visited the last time was a BBQ place located in a State Park just up the road from the motel. That's where we went for the evening meal. The last time we stayed there it was a night when Blue Grass musicians storm the place and they have a hoot-n-anny to entertain the customers. Apparently that only happens on certain nights since we were left in silence this night. The most obvious thing this year is that their food and service have found a new low. Nothing we ordered lived up to expectations and we made a mental note to find a new place to eat on our first night travel after this. We like the motel and it's a good distance for driving the first day. But the lack of good food is a problem.
We were up early the next day for breakfast at the motel. Mr. Jerry struck up a conversation with a gas well driller from Louisana. He said that he was drilling wells near by and described the process in quite some detail to us. Had we had the time, Mr. Jerry would have visited his job site to see first hand how they drill down 2,000 feet, then horizontally to search out pockets of naturnal gas. He said that the seam they were working in stretched all the way from New York through Tennessee. Now that's a lot of area for gas to collect.
Since there is absolutely nothing to do there, it took no time for us to pack up and get back on the road. As I recall, we pulled back onto I-75 about 6:30 AM. The light rain we encountered the day before had steadily increased to a down pour and was going strong as we left. I don't recall ever leaving Caryville when the weather was good. It's always either raining, snowing or, icing. As we left, the rain was coming down in sheets and it didn't let up until we were well into Georgia. As we neared Atlanta, given the rain we were experiencing, we made the decision to take the bypass and not attempt to drive straight through, as we usually do. That turned out to be a very good decision.
Just as we reached the south side of Atlanta, the sun appeared and we felt it was a sign of good tidings from above. Things went well from that point as we headed for our next stop at Valdosta. Nothing much to report about that day. We were very much engrossed in our book (a murder mystery) and the time passed quickly. The stay in Valdosta was much better than the night before. There was a Cracker Barrel Restaurant right next door to the motel; they have predictably good food. It's certainly not fine cuisine, but good none the less.
After a short breakfast in the motel we were back on the road for our push into Ft. Myers. Again, there is nothing to report from that day. We were still into our book and the miles just melted away. Mr. Jerry gave a constant report on the outside temperatures as they rose from the 20's in Columbus to the mid 70's. It seems that we would gain about a degree each 25 miles. As we neared our final destination we took a detour near North Port and headed over to see about rentals at our favorite community of Riverwood. That's in Charlotte County about 40 miles from Ft. Myers. We hooked up with several folks we usually contact there to find that there were no rentals available for the times we needed them. It seems that a newly completed ball park just up the road has caused in influx of seasonal ball players who rented up everything in sight. We were closed out. Boo...!!!
After that fruitless detour we we continued our drive to our cousin's place in Heritage Palms in Fort Myers.
On Saturday we continued looking for a place to stay once we returned from our upcoming cruise, but had little success. Our first stop in that quest was the Sanibel Holiday which we quickly found in another location. The first thing noticed on Sanibel is that there was very little traffic. We did make a first stop at the Dairy Queen for a hot dog; another favorite. The Bald Headed Eagle was still nesting in the trees adjacent to the Dairy Queen. The male was perched on a tree in plain view the entire time we were there. Usually you have to strain to view the birds through some dense foilage, but this time we were treated to a great view. He seemed content to pose there for many folks who wanted to take photos, including us.
We did locate the folks at Sanibel Holiday. We found Rebecca, one of the people who works there and she remembered us well from years before. She is from Westerville, a suburb of Columbus very near us. After outlining the prices we were willing to pay, we found that there was very little to pick from. But we did give her some outlines for what we wanted and said that we would contact her when we returned from our cruise. That meant that we had no place of our own and continued to crash at our cousin's, (Janet and Stan) place until after the cruise. We did look at two nice places in their community, however decided to hold out for a different location.
On Sunday we drove back to Riverwood (Charlotte County) for one last attempt to find something we could live with there, but left with nothing. We really expected to find rental rates better than in the past and thought we would have many to choose from. That is just not the case this year. Stan pointed out that there are many rentals in the newspapers and tons of places for sale, but vacation rentals, at least where we wanted to be, are at a premium this year.
