Fleeing to Frigid Florida

In years past we have departed for Florida sometime before Christmas. This year it just didn't work out that way. We spent the week between Christmas and New Year's in Morganton working on affairs related to Mom's estate and starting to get some things cleared out at her house. We finally buttoned up the house on Thursday, New Years Eve, and returned to Winston-Salem. Dorcas' family had a family reunion scheduled for Sunday. In the past several years we have missed the reunion because we were in Florida. This year we decided to stay and attend. We would depart for Florida on Sunday afternoon after the reunion.

We spent Friday and Saturday packing the motor home, or at least we tried to. The southeast is experiencing a record cold spell. It was very difficult to tear ourselves away from the comfort of the wood stove in the living room and spend any time in the motor home when the daily high temperatures never got out of the 20s. There were also several outside projects on my list, but that was out of the question.

We finally finished packing and pulled out about 5:00 PM and headed south. We enjoyed watching the coach's outside thermometer. We were going south so it should be warming, but it was getting later in the day and hence colder. In the end, it held steady at about 28 degrees. We spent our first night in a rest area on I-26 near Orangeburg, SC. The temperature dropped to about 20 degrees, but we slept warmly. Thankfully Dorcas decided to pack the down comforter just before we left home. That's a first for our annual Florida trip.

We would be spending our second night at my cousin's house near Middleburg Florida, which was only 5 hours away. Cousin Laura works, so we didn't want to get there too early. We needed a diversion to kill some time! We had passed the Mighty 8th Air Force Museum near Savannah many times, clearly visible from I-95, but had never stopped. Today we had time, so we made the stop. We spent almost three hours there, but we could have spent much more time. The Mighty 8th Air Force is best known for its B-17 fleet and its daytime bombing raids in Europe during WWII. At its peak it could scramble more than 2000 B-17s and 1000 support fighters on a single mission. The airmen on the B-17s were tough. The planes were unheated and uninsulated and temperatures sometimes got down to -30 degrees. Suddenly I didn't feel so cold any more. The centerpiece of the museum is the ongoing restoration of the B-17 "City of Savannah". We departed the museum and continued south on I-95. Suddenly a car pulled up next to us blowing the horn, and the people inside were frantically waving their hands. I assumed the worst and figured the canoe or a bike had flown off the top of the car, and we were dragging it down the highway. Or perhaps we had lost the car altogether, and it was fixing to pass us on the shoulder. I was about to slam on the brakes when the phone rang and our hiking buddies Bob and Laura from NC said they had just passed us on their way to Florida. (For those that don't already know better, never, ever, ever, never pull up beside a motor home towing a car with various toys on top, blowing the horn and waving frantically.) We stopped and talked to Bob and Laura for a bit at the Florida Welcome Center, where we enjoyed some fresh orange and grapefruit juice, and picked up a few brochures. We finally arrived at Cousin Laura's house, where we parked overnight in their yard. We had a nice visit and enjoyed a dinner of pizza and beer. Overnight temperatures were again near 20 degrees. Welcome to Florida! We departed Middleburg early and headed to a campground near Brooksville FL, where we would meet friends from NC.