15 hours by car

For some reason I thought that Robinsonville to Clearwater, Florida was *only* an 8 hour drive but apparently it’s 15! We wanted an early start so Ann** picked me up at 7.00am. Ann had printed off AAA directions - I’ve always used Yahoo / MapQuest before and I far prefer them. On the whole we were okay but there was one point when it directed us south along a road and we really needed north (thankfully we had some maps too). Later the directions said Route 10 but the AAA map showed Route 78 and it was 78 that we wanted!

We went from Mississippi to Alabama (another first in the state for me!) to Georgia (the whole width) and then into Florida. I wanted to take a photo of those "Welcome to…" state signs but the first two came up on us too quickly. We counted down the exits to Florida and stopped the car to take a photo but the sign had been taken down!! All I took was a photo of the boring green sign.

We had one quick stop at a KFC (their zinger burgers in US are so much better (bigger!) than ours in UK!) and a few stops for petrol - I can see how much it’s gone up as at most places we were paying about $2.97.

Thankfully Ann and I got on really well as we were both dubious about having to spend 15 hours in a car with someone we didn’t really know. We chatted all the way and didn’t even play any music!

We got to Clearwater (where Pat** has a condo) at 10.30pm and were both exhausted! It was still a wonderful 85 degrees at that time of night! Of course Pat wanted to chat so we had a sandwich but mainly just listened to Pat as both Ann and I were all talked out!

I fell asleep as soon as my head hit my pillow at 3.00am.

(** - names changed to save my typing!)