Feb 03, 2010 - GA to FL

No rain today, Feb 3rd, lots of sunshine, and the temperature hit 68. Yeah, baby! Throw these fleece jackets in the back seat! Beth drove, and, thanks to our guide book, I entertained her with stories of Civil War battles and other significant historical events that happened along or near our route on I-75. Well, I thought I was entertaining, anyway. We also learned a lot about cotton and peanuts and peaches, and saw lots of monuments along the roadside, including deactivated guided missiles, old Titan rockets, a collection of old military aircraft, and oh yeah, monuments to peanuts and peaches. At a Winn-Dixie just north of the Florida line we finally bought some groceries, then made a quick pass through the quarter car wash to blow all the road gunk off the truck and trailer.

Our Campsite at Fort DeSoto State Park

We finally arrived at Fort DeSoto park about 4:00 PM. After getting all set up ASAP, we went for a quick bike ride before dark. What a nice park; every camp site is separated from its neighbor by palm trees, there’s nice bath houses with washers and dryers, bike trails, and a camp store. Many of the sites back up to the water, and some campers have small fishing boats pulled up on shore right behind their sites. We’ll be here for two full days, and tomorrow we’re going to check it out more thoroughly, including the North beach, rated one of the top 10 beaches in the country.

We reset the truck’s mileage computer when we left home, and for you r-Pod people that that may be following our trip blog, average MPG for the trip down in our 5.3L extended cab Chevy pickup was exactly 12 MPG.

Me at Fort DeSoto, trying to suck in my gut.

 

Feb 02, 2010 - KY to GA

Left Richmond just before 7:00 AM with rain falling and temp around 34 degrees. Once we got up into the mountains the temperature dropped to 32, and we came up behind salt trucks several times, but no problems, traffic flowed along smoothly, no accidents, and no ice. Once we got down out of the mountains, the temp started to climb a little bit, and eventually hit 50 that afternoon. When we got close to Atlanta, the fancy schmancy traffic info billboard system told us that traffic was moving at full speed through Atlanta, so Beth said the heck with that sissy bypass, and took the pod right through downtown I-75 Atlanta. All 8 lanes of it – and that’s just the southbound side. Actually it went pretty well, at least what I could see through my fingers, because I had my hands over my eyes most of the way. Afterwards she said she felt like she’d passed some sort of a milestone, and every other driving experience from here would be relatively easy. It was like she’d been on our boat and we’d just rounded Cape Horn – once you’ve done that, it’s all down hill.

We spent the night in Forsyth, GA at the KOA on the I-75 access road. The folks there are very nice, and the campground itself is nice too, with a camp store, fishing pond, firewood, etc. They’ll even make you a pizza and deliver it to your campsite if you want. There seems to be a fair number of seasonal campers here, too. But it’s REALLY close to I-75, and the traffic noise never ends. So although it was a convenient place to spend the night, I’m not sure it would be my final destination.



Whistle Stop Cafe. Denied!



Not too far from the campground is the tiny town of Juliette, GA, and the Whistle Stop Café, setting of the movie Fried Green Tomatoes. We dropped off the pod and headed to Juliette so I could get me some of those tomatoes, but unfortunately, we got there just as they were closing up for the night, so all I got was a few pictures. The temperature the next morning was 34 degrees, but we were perfectly comfortable all night using a small electric heater and wool blankets.

The little pod is a real attention getter; it’s been a conversation starter with folks at almost every rest stop and campground so far. Most people think it’s cute as heck, but even though they don’t say as much, I think there’s a few who wonder how we could possibly cram all our junk into that dinky thing. There’s a few other campers headed to FL who are on similar schedules to ours; for the last few days we’ve been passing each other on the expressway and waving to one another in the rest stops along the way.

Feb 01, 2010 - MI to KY

Traffic on I-75 wasn't bad at all today, but it's a Monday, maybe that makes a difference, I don't know. Our buddy Mike lent us a book called "Along I-75" which is a mile-by-mile guide to the freeway from Detroit to the Florida border, with all sorts of valuable information. It's sort of like a AAA Trip-Tik, but each page, which covers about a half hour of drive time,  has all sorts of valuable information on it, like history of the area, emergency cutoffs, and speed trap locations.

Shortly after entering Ohio, we noted that the area we were entering was formerly known as "The Black Swamp." At one time the area was "an evil boggy quagmire of black muck which sucked pioneers to their knees, and if the animals and insects did not get them, then malaria probably would." Thankfully there's no longer any chance of black muck eating you alive, but I think some of the potholes in the Toledo area could have swallowed us whole. Bah-da-boom! Thank you.

Florence Mall, Y'all

Passing by a giant mall in Florence, KY, we noticed a water tank that had "Florence Y'all" painted on it. How friendly, we thought. But it turns out that the paint job originally said "Florence Mall". Many local businessmen objected to the public water tower being used as an advertisement for the mall merchants, so it was decided that the tower would be repainted. Except they couldn't come up with the money to repaint the whole thing, so they just changed the "M" to "Y" and called it good.

Even though we have the rPod with us, for our first night here in Richmond, KY, we've decided to stay in a motel room because they actually have more snow here than we do back home, and it's supposed to get a bit chilly tonight. So before we checked in we decided to go downtown and try a restaurant we read about in this book. We weren't sure where to park but we saw there was a visitor's center only a block or so away from the restaurant, so we headed for that. Except we didn't find out until we were way, way, down inside the visitor's center driveway that it was a dead end, with only angle parking, and the building didn't look like it was open, and the only turnaround was blocked by a city pickup truck. So there we were. Backing up about a quarter mile to the entrance, and then trying to back out onto the busy street would have gotten ugly real quick. So we just sort of worked the whole truck/trailer back and forth, back and forth, and by driving partially on the lawn we were able to get turned around and headed back out. Good thing the trailer is only 17' long. But we found out the restaurant was closed, anyway. 

The hotel we're at, Richmond Inn, is very nice, clean and new looking. Plus it has a "dremium" pillowtop mattress. It was our second choice, though. We had another place picked out nearby, but almost every online review we read mentioned either "bedbugs" or "cockroaches". Tomorrow night we'll be at the KOA in Forsyth, GA.