I’m a little behind in posting so I’ll try to catch up a bit. We left Brevard on Monday, November 6. One of the things I dislike is constant interstate driving. So, our GPS, whom we refer to as Gigi, actually plotted a route that took us through secondary highways. I love getting closer to the countryside and being able to look at houses, yards, and what’s going on in small towns. Gigi did not disappoint! Our route ambled through South Carolina into Georgia, where we stayed Monday night in Augusta. Tuesday, we ambled through Georgia into northern Florida, where we spent the night in Lake City. I think in those 2 days we were on a bit of interstate for about 20 minutes. And both days provided a lovely drive through the rural south.
We drove past thousands of acres of cotton, just ready for harvesting. The thick cotton tufts looked so nice across the fields. Once harvested, the cotton is rolled up into these gigantic bales and carried off to wherever cotton goes. Along the road are dribs and drabs of cotton spillage from the large bales. At one point, we stopped to try and scoop up some cotton, but the road was narrow and what little traffic there was made it a bit dangerous to park along the roadside.
The secondary routes passed mainly through farmland, but into southern Georgia we came to timbering country. We rolled by thousands of acres of Southern yellow pine groves and lots of logging trucks. I didn’t realize that Georgia and northern Florida were such big producers of timber. And clearly, the logging companies are into renewables. As we drove along, each mile had groves of trees of differing ages. You could see a clear cut area, followed by 3 foot tall saplings, followed by 10 foot tall young trees, and on down the road until we saw groves ready to be harvested. The other crop that was very prevalent was pecans. We saw lots of pecan groves with straight lines of trees rolling across the low hills. We really enjoyed these two days driving through the countryside. It was very pleasant and very interesting. And the price of gas in South Carolina was $2.69 a gallon! When we left Binghamton, I paid $3.89. Gas is routinely lower priced in the southern states than in New York. Even in Florida, the price is just a couple of cents over $3.00.
On Wednesday, November 8, it was back on the interstate for a 4-1/2-hour drive from Lake City to Venice. We arrived at our friend Deeny’s mid-afternoon. We were glad to get there and be off the road.
On Thursday, we spent the day doing laundry, catching up with Deeny and settling in. Thursday evening, we went to Sharky’s for dinner. This is definitely a tradition for us. Venice Beach has a long pier and Sharky’s (and it’s neighboring more upscale Fin’s restaurant) is a real draw. It’s always crowded, especially if dinner is around sunset, which it was for us. It was a fantastic evening to be out strolling the pier and enjoying a good meal at Sharky’s. Being with Deeny is always wonderful, but doing our “traditional” outings with her makes it that much more special because we have good memories from the past to share and are making more memories to share in the future.
I remember forests of loblolly pines as we drove through from Alabama to North Carolina. Cotton fields and tobacco acreage were also huge back in 1970s when we were living as Southerners! Thanks for the memories.