See Naples and Live...

Friday March 15th — The Drive South

We packed up and got out early on a gorgeous day that we could tell would be pretty hot — high 20’s. We’d have been on the road before 10am but we couldn’t find the fridge manual and we wanted it to be able to phone fridge repair places on the road from Lake Oklawaha, Florida south to Naples. How you can lose stuff in a trailer this size is beyond my imagination.  It’s 21 feet long and 8 feet wide, and it has one main room in 3 sections ( living/dining, kitchen and bedroom) with just a few cupboards — I guess at some point we should post some trailer interior pictures. Lorraine is very good at organizing and taking advantage of the limited storage space, but she’s not always so good at remembering what she did in organizing.  It took us twenty minutes to find the stupid instructions and the extensive notes on repair person contact info, serial numbers, and model numbers. We were on the road by 10:10 — still not bad.

We drove back down towards SR 316 — stopping to take pictures of roadside signs in the village of Hog Heaven — neither of us were sure if we believed this is a real place name or just something made up by the locals. The little cluster of shacks near the KOA fully surrounded by the National Forest reminded me of Canadian Cottages from the 60’s or maybe my brother’s place in Point Roberts — very simple, rustic, a place to sleep and cook while you enjoy the out doors. It would have been a nice little community if it weren’t for all the Trump signs and Confederate flags; not sure Lorraine I would fit in here.

Regardless, we weren’t staying. The plan was to head straight south through the centre of Florida along  highway 19 through the Ocala National Forest and skirt between Orlando and Tampa on Hwy 27. Convincing Google to take us that way was impossible so Lorraine was working from maps and I was trying to run by dead reckoning and following the signs.  We ran through Salt Spring again ( still no grocery store but there were three huge sandhill cranes standing right on the shoulder of the road).  After miles of Slash Pine in the Ocala forest, Highway 19 turned into 19a and we found ourselves swinging further and further east. Lorraine pointed out where I should have turned to stay west of Orlando while I was paying attention to the road and we were stuck into the Orlando Suburbs and crappy traffic. We recovered, found our way to Interstate 4 and headed for Tampa and Naples with a rather optimistic ETA of 4:30. The traffic rapidly got worse and so did the drivers.  It was at this point as we stopped for a break Lorraine discovered that the Ice-Tea she had poured in my thermos bottle that morning was hard iced tea. “Did you know that this stuff has alcohol in it?” She had almost screamed when I came back from the bathroom.
“Which ice-tea did you use?” I asked, rather baffled.
Maybe this helps explain how we ended up so far east?

In the first 11 days and 2000km of the trip we’d seen a few accidents and some atrocious driving. But Friday was truly awful. From Orlando southwest we saw well over a dozen accidents at least 3 of them serious. A countless number of times some moron or another decided that it would be good to change lanes in front of our rig with less than 3 feet of clearance. Here’s a hint, a Truck and Travel Trailer Combo weighs a minimum of about 9000 pounds gross vehicle weight; double that is likely. The driver is usually inexperienced. If you have a problem 3 feet in front of a rig like that they will go over you like a speed bump. Towing the trailer gives me renewed respect for the drivers of big rigs and a much more conservative view of driving generally. But all I can do is watch when people do that to me — I can’t slam on the brakes. Why? Well I don’t want to put the whole thing into a skid and usually there is some other asshole ( especially on the interstate) who is sitting on my bumper. Thankfully the best investment we’ve made in the trailer is the backup camera which I run all the time while we are driving. That way I can see if someone is crawling up our ass or if someone is hanging in either blind spot back of the trailer mirrors do well with that as well but the indicator bars on the trailer really give me a good picture of what’s around the back of the trailer.  The camera helps with backing up as well, of course.

The trip south went on and on with traffic jams coming into Tampa, out of Tampa, into Sarasota, between Sarasota and Fort Myers, and so on. The terrain, especially along the interstate was a reminder of why I don’t really like Florida much. Over developed, over crowded, just an endless suburban mall in the sun. You’ve got to look close to find the bits and pieces of old Florida hiding here — we’ll look for a few of those this week.

We were 6pm pulling into the trailer park well in the south end of Naples. 8 hours of driving time for a mere 500 kilometres of travel. Check-in was quick and uneventful and the park attendant provided the most help I’ve had in backing into the spot and Lorraine helped with the other side as I needed to thread the needle between the teeny little parking spot and a huge Class

A bus across from us that protruded into the lane. The park itself is very well tended and has a nice sense of community and they are next to a wildlife reserve so they have seen panthers and bobcats in the park this winter — the papers indicate that the area has seen a lot of domestic animals and pets taken by panthers — so there is still some hope that old Florida is hiding out there.

By the time we had unpacked and set up it was late to make dinner — I ran to the grocery store for a rotisserie chicken and pre-made salads and that was it for our reintroduction to Naples.  At bedtime there was one of the greatest moondogs I have ever seen — hard to photograph but I considered it an auspicious omen.