Road Trip

We in TEXAS

While in the Atlanta airport awaiting our flight, Donna decided to call brother Scott to see how they were doing. He, his wife and the three kids piled into the family vehicle and left Seattle on Friday afternoon. Scott and Beth were going to take turns at the wheel so they could get to Albuquerque virtually non-stop. She called and there was no answer, so she left a message.

Just before we were getting to board our flight she flipped open the phone to give him a call and noticed we had two missed calls and a text message from Scott. She tried to call him back, but got no answer again. I suggested replying to his text. She had never done it before, so I talked her through the process and watched in amazement as it took 5 minutes to compose a couple of four word sentences. She wanted to know where the question mark and other punctuation marks were on our simple cell phone. We don’t have any, so she sent it off. I told her it was texting, you don’t need no punctuation. You don’t need all the letters in the words. Heck you don’t even need verbs.

When we landed in Dallas, she sent him another text, “We in TEXAS.”

29,000 Palm Trees

The Purple Whale Goes To Sea

As soon as we got into Florida we took the second exit off I-95 and got on A1A heading east towards the ocean where we had a picnic lunch on the beach in the city of Fernandina Beach. Because we were not in any hurry we just stayed right on A1A all the way to Daytona Beach Shores where we are spending the night over looking the Atlantic Ocean from the sixth floor of the Holiday Inn Express (mmm, cinnamon buns.)

In the early part of the trip along the coast we get a very short (0.9 mile) ferry ride across the St Johns River between Fort George Island and Mayport Village. It departs every 30 minutes on the 1/4 & 3/4 hour and costs a whopping six bucks. We arrived, pulling up behind 2 waiting cars, with 6 minutes to sailing, talk about great timing.

Just north of Daytona Beach the Purple Whale passed the 29,000 mile mark.

Bruce Weiner Microcar Museum

Toy Cars

Today the MMC took a last pilgrimage to a museum full of cars that make the Miata look normal sized, the Bruce Weiner Microcar Museum before it closes its doors forever in February. We had a recent record turnout of 10 Miatas and a bonus RX-8. We also had near perfect weather.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1190

Bridge Run

Did a practice run today for the MMC Leaf Peeping trip in two weeks. Four hundred miles, 10 hours, 4 caches found and three bridges covering three centuries. Two of the bridges are covered, one you can drive on (shown above) and one you can’t and the 3rd is probably so old it never had a car drive over it at all.

Not so sure about the fall colors though. It is very spotty with a lot of trees in places bare of foliage and right nearby green leaves. In two weeks I’m not sure what we’ll get, blazing colors with a few bare trees or brown leaves with a lot of bare trees or something similar to today’s show which was worth the trip, but no postcard views.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1176

Moon Landing Over Mississippi

Our one and only geocache (for now) in Mississippi was not too far away from this life-size model of a Lunar Lander placed in the eastbound !-10 Welcome Center to that state. We apparently were just about a week too early to tour the new Infinity Science Center built adjacent to the Welcome Center. This exit off I-10 is the entrance to the Stennis Space Center which started life in the mid 60’s testing the Saturn V booster engines, later the Shuttle’s main engines and is still in operation today testing the engines that power cargo rockets for satellite placement and International Space Station resupplying.

How To Kill A Gnat

No, it is not to send 150 years in the past and drop it in a Confederate Prison Camp. It turns out it is rather easy. During day one we visited the Andersonville Prison Camp, so fittingly today, our last day, we visited a spot in Thomasville that those Andersonville Prisoners were moved to temporarily to find a geocache.

Google maps reports that the LSU campus in Baton Rouge, LA is about 700 miles one way from Aiken, but we managed to accumulate 2150 miles on our round trip. We were gone 8 days, witnessed one wedding and found 37 caches in four different states, ignoring Florida, because, well, its Florida. We polished off anything needed for the three Georgia Challenges in the southwest part of that state. Plus we DNF’d three caches and accidentally ruined one other. Right now it is good to be home, but ask again on Monday morning and you might get a different answer.

On our trip through the gnat capitol of the US, southern Georgia, every time we opened the car doors to get out, be it for a driver change, a geocache expedition, or whatever, invariably several gnats would end up inside the Purple Whale. Though, not 100% effective, driving with the windows open for a bit helped, but we always still ended up two or three bouncing around on the windshield. Swatting did nothing. Neither did trying to smack them with my hat. The best method for dispatching these annoying things was to let them settle on the glass and slowly bring you thumb down on them. A quick wipe on the carpet discarded the carcass and a rub of the windshield with a sleeve removed all traces of the little buggers.

17,000 Cars On The Road With Us

For whatever reason, there was gobs of traffic heading east on I-10 with us today all through Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. Fortunately there were no major slow-ups, except the tunnel under Mobile Bay, so we made great time, but we were always surrounded by fast moving cars and trucks. Mysteriously, traffic thinned to almost nothing once we got into Florida and past Pensacola.

But wouldn’t you know it, but as soon as we got off I-10 to hit the back roads of Florida, we ran into a convoy of farm implements crawling along at 25MPH. The roads were hilly and curvy enough that we, along with some others, were stuck behind them for about 20 minutes. We thought we caught a break in Campbellton when 2 of the three went straight and only one turned right with us staying on Florida Route 2. It was short lived though, as those two just took a different route through town and two minutes later popped back in front of us. Sigh.

We hunted only two caches today as we wanted to make big mileage, one was in Mississippi and the other was in Alabama, bringing us to having found caches in 40% of these United States.

Tonight we are staying at the same Holiday Inn Express in Bainbridge, GA as we did Monday evening on our way west. This time it is different, and not just because we are in a different room from then, but the hotel is flirting with disaster this weekend as it is where the band Molly Hatchet is staying while playing at the 1st Annual Redneck Expo & Golf Cart Rally that’s here in town.

The Purple Whale passed the 17,000 mile level near Spanish Fort, MS.